Arsenal lost further ground in the Premier League title race after dropping points against Everton in a 1-1 draw at Goodison Park.
1 min: Everton win a free kick on the right. They try to send it into the penalty area, but miss.
1 min: Peeeeep! Everton start the game, and Trossard is indeed playing at centre forward.
Continue reading...How Kon Knueppel and Khaman Maluach have played the past month has helped make a case for Duke's freshman class being among best of all time.
The Final Four features four No. 1 seeds all capable of winning a national title. So who will prevail in the semifinals? Our experts make their picks.
Just three years into his tenure, Jon Scheyer leads Duke into a Final Four game with a powerhouse program that has quickly been remade in his image.
Here's a look at how many national championships Duke basketball has heading into the Final Four of the 2025 men's NCAA Tournament:
Saints are on the brink of relegation and a points nadir – an experience that still haunts the former Derby manager
For Southampton, there was the initial pain of conceding a stoppage-time equaliser at home to Crystal Palace on Wednesday. Then came the niggling knot in the stomach as they faced up to keeping alive another shot at unwanted history: the possibility of becoming, statistically at least, the worst team in Premier League history.
For now that mantle belongs to Derby County, who were relegated with 11 points in 2007-08, a campaign in which they recorded a solitary win and were officially down before the clocks went forward at the end of March.
Continue reading...This year's NCAA tournament features four No. 1 seeds for just the second time. Is it a sign of the growing disparity in men's college basketball?
Steph driven by desire over wisdom amid Warriors' final playoff push originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
SAN FRANCISCO – It would have been wise of Stephen Curry to spend Friday on the bench in designer sweats, giving his sore pelvis a couple days to heal, watching the Warriors try to shed three years of despair.
But with nine days remaining in the 2024-25 NBA season and the Warriors caught in the maelstrom of the Western Conference playoff chase, Curry is driven more by desire than wisdom. He is following what his heart wants, not what his body needs.
Spectating was out of the question. He ignored the “questionable” tag on the injury report because that designation might have influence in November but not in April. This is when Savage Steph is on the prowl.
Curry announced his plans to Golden State coach Steve Kerr and team health and performance honcho Dr. Rick Celebrini, strapped a pad to his backside, dashed onto the court, scored 36 points in 32 minutes and led a 118-104 throttling of the Nuggets that snapped a nine-game losing streak to Denver.
Some risks are worth a little agony. Jimmy Butler III, nursing a strained left forearm, also was listed as questionable. He also played. The third and relatively healthiest member of the team’s veteran core, Draymond Green, also answered the call.
Never was there a doubt, though, that Curry not only would put himself through an evening of discomfort but also invite even more if that’s what it would take to get the W.
“The conversation is just context of where we are in the season,” Curry said. “But if any of us felt physically like we weren’t ready to go or could put ourselves in jeopardy of taking a couple steps back physically, then you have a different decision.
“But we all felt good. We got in at a decent hour. Rick and Steve are pretty proactive on some of those conversations. When we all talked about it this morning, it was a full green light.”
Curry’s redoubtable will was on display in the final five minutes of the second quarter. Playing their third game in four nights and second in two, the fatigued Warriors sagged through the first quarter and fell behind by 10 points. When Curry reentered in the second quarter, he flooded the Nuggets with a torrent of buckets, scoring 12 points in less than four minutes.
That drove the first stake into the heart of Golden State’s longest losing streak against any team in the NBA.
Curry had teammates to inspire. A Chase Center sellout crowd to thrill. And there he was – in moments of temporary insanity – landing on the sorest part of his body after intentionally drawing charge calls from bigger opponents.
The two-time MVP and four-time NBA champ is all-in on his team’s drive for another triumphant season. His mission is visible on his face. The faraway stares. The brief curling of his upper lip. The glee with which he is dissecting defenses and terrorizing individual defenders.
“There is a completely different focus, and you see the focus everywhere,” Green said of his longtime teammate. “It’s not just once he steps on the court. It’s in his practices, in his workouts. He’s on the phone he’s talking . . . he’s suggesting substitution patterns. He’s just all the way in.
“He gets into the weeds around this time. We try to keep him out of the weeds all year because it can be a bit exhausting. But he kind of knows when it’s time for him to get in the weeds, and he is right now.”
Curry’s 36-point game on Friday followed a 37-point outburst Thursday against the Lakers in Los Angeles, which followed a 52-point performance Tuesday in Memphis. Three games, four days, 125 points, three Golden State victories.
“In three different cities, at (age) 37,” Kerr said, marveling. “He looked so fast out there tonight. Maybe it’s his most underrated part of his game is his conditioning. Just incredible what he does out there, especially considering how much attention he draws defensively, how much pressure people put on him. He handles it night after night and flourishes, incredible athlete.”
The Warriors were 10th in the Western Conference standings on Feb. 1. Butler made his debut on Feb. 8 and they’d moved to seventh by March 1. The win over the Grizzlies on Tuesday lifted them to fifth place. They went to bed Friday night one-half game behind fourth-place Denver and one full game behind the third-place Los Angeles Lakers.
Golden State is 20-2 when Curry, Green and Butler are in the lineup. Their last two losses, at Atlanta and at Miami, came in games Curry was sidelined due to the initial pelvic injury.
A chance to beat a longtime tormentor? An opportunity to push Golden State’s win streak to five? A night to give his team what only he can provide?
Tender tailbone and all, Curry was going to play. Never should have been a doubt.
DIVISION ONE
Chelmsford: Essex 356-4 v Surrey
Continue reading...Here's how to follow all the action in the Final Four.
Auburn scores 83.2 points while outscoring opponents by 14.0 points per game. The Gators' record in SEC action is 17-4. Florida has a 2-1 record in games decided by 3 points or fewer.
One clip has been watched 25m times but a Netflix documentary shows him in his childhood bedroom with Wimbledon trophy
There’s a Carlos Alcaraz clip on YouTube that has to date been viewed 25m times. The whole thing is a seven-second loop of him catching a ball on his racket at Wimbledon. Currently it also has well over a thousand comments, engaged in a constantly shifting battle for most-liked, most-approved, most gushingly enthused-over.
You probably shouldn’t click on it because it is also addictive, a perfect moment of perfect Alcaraz, another endlessly replicating needle-prod of pleasure into your overstimulated brain.
Continue reading...We know Carmelo Anthony is going to be a first-ballot Hall of Famer. As he should be.
Dwight Howard is going to join him. While the official announcement will not come until this weekend, ESPN’s Shams Charania broke the news that we all expected. Howard essentially confirmed the news on X.
I want KG , Shaq, and Kareem to walk me out #hof
— Dwight Howard (@DwightHoward) April 5, 2025
While younger NBA fans may only remember Howard from his time with the Lakers and after, that version was a shell of one of the best big men in the NBA for a decade. Howard was arguably the best defender of his generation, a three-time Defensive Player of the Year, an eight-time All-NBA player, and an eight-time All-Star who won an NBA ring in the bubble with the Lakers.
Howard and Anthony were locks to make the Hall of Fame. Sue Bird is also eligible and should be an unquestioned lock. Others eligible to make the Hall of Fame this weekend include Maya Moore, the 2008 USA Basketball men's Olympic team (which included Anthony and Howard), Marques Johnson, coaches Billy Donovan and Mark Few, and Heat owner Micky Arison.
It has been a whirlwind year for Pittsburgh Penguins defenseman Jack St. Ivany.
Last May, he signed a three-year extension with Pittsburgh worth $775,000 annually at the NHL level. He made the NHL club out of training camp, and - after struggling through the first month of the season - he was optioned to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton (WBS) on Dec. 3 to find his game again.
And just four days after his re-assignment, he went down with an injury that kept him out of the lineup for almost two months. It took him a while to get back to 100 percent, both physically and mentally.
Now? St. Ivany is fully healthy and ready to capitalize on the opportunity in front of him and the rest of the squad in WBS. In 32 games with WBS this season, he has a goal and 11 points and is a plus-4, and he has spent a lot of time on the top pairing with Sebastian Aho.
"Injury was unfortunate, and it took a little time to get back," St. Ivany said. "The first, maybe, five or six games after not playing, it was a little bit of finding myself. And then, I feel like I started to string together a lot of games, and I'm having a really good time here."
St. Ivany spent 19 games at the NHL level to start the season, registering just one point. But it wasn't the production that failed to mirror what the Penguins' coaching staff saw in the 6-foot-4, 205-pound blueliner last season.
A lot of the shortcomings in St. Ivany's game in the earlygoing this season were in the defensive details that he seemed to handle with a high degree of confidence and execution in 2023-24 to pair with his physicality and skating ability.
Unfortunately, his slow start to the season was a bit of a blow to that confidence, and the coaching staff saw an opportunity to allow him to try and find that again at the AHL level. So they made the difficult decision to option him.
"When I got sent down, it was just a little bit about confidence," St. Ivany said. "I feel like my game kind of dipped a little bit. The conversations with [the coaching staff] were just that it's hard as a younger player to re-find that in their experience. And they found that going down to the AHL and playing a lot more minutes is when you can start to develop. So, for me, it's just about keeping it simple, defending hard, using my feet, and then, it's just building confidence."
St. Ivany admitted that the initial disappointment of being sent down did affect him a bit, especially given his situation coming out of the summer.
"I mean, this past summer, signing a three-year contract like I did, it was with the idea that I'd have some runway to make it to the NHL," he said. "So, obviously, it's disappointing when you get sent down because it's everyone's dream to be there, but you can't feel too sorry for yourself for too long.
"I just got back at it and started working. I love the game, so it doesn't really matter where I play. I'm going to have fun doing it."
McGroarty Scores First NHL Goal In Penguins 5-4 Overtime Loss To BluesThe Pittsburgh Penguins' 5-4 overtime loss to the St. Louis Blues on Thursday - which gave the Blues their whopping 11th straight win - obviously wasn't the desired result.
And it's evident that St. Ivany - like everyone else in Wilkes-Barre - is certainly having fun. The team culture in WBS is top-notch, as pretty much every player at the team's practice in Pittsburgh on Thursday echoed the same sentiments about how tight-knit the team is. St. Ivany was one of them.
"It's great," he said. "Some guys I played with last year, so I have familiarity there. But then, the other guys... it just feels like a college team, almost. Everyone's young, and everyone's loving coming to the rink, and it just makes playing really easy when you're playing with your best friends.
"So, I've had a great time. I feel like, down the stretch here, we've started to gel together a lot. The best teams, they have that kind of chemistry off the ice... and I feel like we definitely have that."
The chemistry that the crop of players in WBS has built is clear, and it shows in the results. The team has already clinched a berth in the Calder Cup playoffs, and they are currently vying for a first-round bye down the final stretch of the regular season.
But, at the end of the day, there is still a much bigger picture, and the guys on that team are aware of it. St. Ivany is, too.
Many of the players on what is regarded as one of the best teams WBS has had in the past couple of decades are on the brink of NHL readiness. For many of them, the work that they're putting into developing a winning culture is something they hope to carry over as they transition to the NHL level.
'We Have A Close Team': WBS Penguins Practice In Pittsburgh, Talk Chemistry Of GroupThe Penguins took to the ice for practice on Thursday at the UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex in Cranberry, Pa.
St. Ivany mentioned all the photos on the wall in WBS of players like Bryan Rust, former Penguin Jake Guentzel, and Tristan Jarry - who were part of successful AHL teams when they went through the system - and that they're in the NHL for a reason.
He knows that a championship-hungry mindset is something that they have to maintain as both a collective unit and as individuals - especially as they start to populate the NHL roster in the coming seasons.
So this Calder Cup run is vitally important to them.
"It's no surprise that when you win at the AHL level, it usually translates to the NHL level," St. Ivany said. "So, I think for us, it's just building that winning culture. And, hopefully - when we all make the jump up - it's able to translate to the next level."
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Luka Doncic and LeBron James helped the Los Angeles Lakers to a comfortable victory against the New Orleans Pelicans.
Doncic put on a game-high 35 points with team-mate Austin Reaves adding 30, while James scored 27 points with eight assists in a 124-108 win.
The Lakers bounced back from defeat against the Golden State Warriors to further boost their hopes of a top-four finish in the Western Conference.
It is the sixth successive win for the Lakers over the Pelicans, including three victories this season.
Elsewhere, Western Conference leaders the Oklahoma City Thunder, who host the Lakers in back-to-back games on Sunday and Tuesday, saw an 11-game winning streak ended against the Houston Rockets.
Jalen Green and Alperen Sengun combined for 65 points to triumph 125-111 in Houston.
The Boston Celtics set a new record for the number of three-pointers scored in a single season during their 123-103 win over the Phoenix Suns.
Boston, the defending NBA champions, scored 14 at TD Garden to take their overall tally to 1,370, eclipsing the previous record of 1,363 set by the Golden State Warriors in 2022-23.
