Providence is back in the Sweet 16 for the first the time in 25 years, and our confidential crew had a behind-the-scenes look as the Friars absolutely dominated Richmond in the second round of the 2022 NCAA tournament.
The Chiefs traded Tyreek Hill to the Dolphins for five draft picks on Wednesday and Miami has agreed to a four-year, $120 million extension with the six-time Pro Bowl wide receiver.
Cornerback Malcolm Butler is returning to the Patriots on a two-year deal worth up to $9 million, agent Derek Simpson told ESPN.
Kirk Herbstreit, who signed a multiyear extension with ESPN on Wednesday, will also be calling NFL “Thursday Night Football” games with Hall of Famer Al Michaels on Amazon Prime in 2022.
AUSTIN, Texas – Bryson DeChambeau battled to a tie with Richard Bland in his long-awaited return from injury, before confirming he may compete in another long drive competition a week after the upcoming Masters. RELATED: Bracket, Scoring | Match recaps from Wednesday | Five matches to watch Thursday at WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play DeChambeau and Bland couldn’t be separated after 18 holes at the World Golf Championships – Dell Technologies Match Play, the first time the big-hitting American has played on the PGA TOUR since missing the cut in January’s Farmers Insurance Open. The eight-time winner was recovering from a fractured hamate bone in his left hand and a torn labrum in his left hip. The 28-year-old could have been staring down a loss against the veteran Englishman but was the beneficiary of a mid-round rule change from TOUR officials that helped preserve his position in the match. DeChambeau was granted free relief from a sprinkler head on the drivable par-4 13th hole at Austin Country Club, despite the fact Belgium’s Thomas Pieters was denied it in the same circumstances earlier in the day. The issue reared up thanks to some unfortunate wind gusts during course set up that saw the red hazard line paint find its way onto the edge of the sprinkler head, effectively making an area that should be outside a penalty area, inside it. When Pieters found himself resting on top of the sprinkler but up against red painted grass in his match against Tom Hoge, he was denied permission to move his ball. While technically a correct call by the official, it was not how the course was intended to play. As a result the incident prompted the rules committee to deliberate quickly and a decision was made to amend the hazard line. But before they could change the paint, DeChambeau’s match reached the 13th hole and he chipped his second shot into the same place. After discussion with officials DeChambeau was afforded relief, tied the hole, and officials repainted as they left the green. “Two wrongs don’t make a right. To make the correction before Bryson’s match got there was important,” Chief Referee Gary Young explained. “There was nothing we could do to fix the Thomas Pieters situation. It was over with. But just to get it right was important. The decision had already been made prior to his ball getting there. We had discussed it. We were in the process of getting the paint to the location, and the call came from the official.” Had this been a stroke play event the change would not have been able to have been made but as DeChambeau’s ruling had no effect on Pieters’ match, or any others on the course, the adjustment could be made. Pieters lost the 13th hole to Hoge to reduce his lead to two holes and was visibly upset with the decision. Thankfully, despite losing the 14th as well, he was able to rally and close out a 2-up win. “One of the rules officials come up and he clarified it to me that Thomas didn’t get relief but they changed it because it just wasn’t right and apparently, they can do that in match play,” DeChambeau said post-match. “So, I felt really bad for him, but lucky break for me.” DeChambeau gave himself a pass mark in his return despite being far from his best. He missed his title defense at the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard and THE PLAYERS Championship during his hiatus and only began practicing five days prior. “I was very cautious, there were a lot of drives out there that felt really bad because it’s not going places I want it to go. (That’s) just because I’m not confident with how my wrists are moving through it,” DeChambeau said. “That will get ironed out over time, a little bit of nerves, calming that down, and playing golf again. I started touching a club last Friday and six weeks off is not an easy task to come back and play against the best in the world. “(The injuries) are fine… as of right now it’s holding up well and I pray it holds up the whole way.” If his body does hold up through this tournament, next week’s Valero Texas Open, and then the Masters, DeChambeau floated a return to the Professional Long Drivers Association’s next event at Hobe Sound in Florida on April 14-16. DeChambeau made it through to the final eight in the World Championships in Mesquite, Nevada last year and hopes to continue his quest for even more power, speed and distance. “If I’m progressing positively and not overdoing it every day and having these micro progressions and I get to Augusta where I am close to 200mph ball speed again, there is a possibility if nothing gives out, and its structurally stable, that I’ll do that,” DeChambeau said about the Florida competition. “I want to do it, I love it, it’s one of my favorite things to do to help grow the sport a bit. I know this (PGA TOUR) is where my home is, but at the end of the day I want to expand out and try and give people a little bit of a show too.” First up is Thursday’s match against Lee Westwood in Group 9 play, a match he can’t afford to lose if he is to stay alive in the title race.
AUSTIN, Texas – He was the last guy in the field. He wasn’t supposed to win. But despite being seeded 64th out of 64, or maybe because of it, Maverick McNealy made six birdies and thumped 14th-seeded Joaquin Niemann 8 and 6. The result made a perverse kind of sense at the World Golf Championships-Dell Technologies Match Play. High seed? Low? Medium? Please. The numbers next to the names don’t matter. Or maybe they do. First-round matches Wednesday reminded us sometimes it’s easier to play as the underdog. “I loved the way I executed today,” said McNealy, who before Wednesday hadn’t played match play since the 2017 Walker Cup, where he went 4-0. “This is a good tournament; you don’t have to beat the whole field. You just have to beat the man in front of you.” Or beat him by a lot. McNealy/Niemann was easily the most lopsided match Wednesday, and far from the only victory for the guys whose seeds were deep in the double digits. Keith Mitchell (62) birdied three of the last six holes to tie Patrick Cantlay (4). English journeyman Richard Bland (54) salvaged a par-filled tie with Bryson DeChambeau (9). The seeds, which loosely mirror the Official World Golf Ranking, provide a framework by which we sometimes calibrate our amazement. But past results have told us that – all together now – anyone can beat anyone on any given day. That explains how Nick O’Hern beat Tiger Woods not once but twice in this tournament, and how another Australian, Peter O’Malley, the 64th seed, beat top-seeded Woods in 2002, perhaps the biggest upset in tournament history. Match play is fickle, and this event is darn near impossible to predict. But for a three-year stretch when this tournament played out as many expected, we forgot that. Top-seeded Rory McIlroy won it all in the first year of pool play, in 2015. No. 2 seed Jason Day won it the next year, and top-seed Dustin Johnson hoisted the trophy in 2017. All seemed orderly enough. Since then, however, the lower seeds have inherited the earth. Kevin Kisner, seeded 48th, won in 2019. After the pandemic wiped out the tournament in 2020, Billy Horschel, seeded 32nd, won last year. Low seeds have a history of success in this event, but it seemed particularly surprising that the average seed of the eight quarterfinalists was 32.75 last year, when lower-seeded players won more than half of the matches. “It seems like both of them, anything is going to happen,” said Scottie Scheffler, when asked to compare seeding for this tournament versus the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. “I would say it’s probably more likely for the 64 guy to beat the 1 guy in golf than it is in basketball.” You can say that again. Scheffler was seeded 30th last year but finished second. Already a two-time winner this season, he was seeded fifth this time and beat Ian Poulter (59th) 2 and 1. That match, at least, wound up being true to its seeds. Plenty others did not. Soon after the McNealy/Niemann match ended came another upset, at least on paper. Luke List, seeded 53rd, had defeated sixth-seeded Justin Thomas 3 and 2. List has one PGA TOUR victory, at the Farmers Insurance Open earlier this season. Thomas, who was coming off a T3 at the Valspar Championship, is a former world No. 1 with 14 TOUR wins. He beat List in a playoff at The Honda Classic four years ago. “I’m definitely the underdog,” said List, who never trailed, closing out the upset with a two-putt birdie at the par-5 16th hole. “Justin’s a great player and he played well last week, and he’s gotten the better of me in the past, so I wanted to get one on him.” The upsets kept coming. Alex Noren, seeded 50th, eeked out a 1-up victory over 10 seed Louis Ooshuizen. “I played this course in college, stroke play, and I didn’t like it because I didn’t play so good here,” Noren said after taking control of the match with two birdies and an eagle in the first five holes. “But then in match play I think it’s a great course.” Lucas Herbert (39) birdied the first three holes and beat Tony Finau (18), 4 and 3. “We played a lot of match play in Australia growing up,” Herbert said. Sergio Garcia (43) beat Jason Kokrak (22), 4 and 3. Si Woo Kim (48) beat Daniel Berger (17), 2 up. Were brackets busted? Not entirely, but they were a bit banged up. Thomas was a trendy pick to win it all in Austin – 71.8 percent of brackets had him emerging from Group 6 to the single-elimination phase – and while he still could, his path has narrowed. Only .6 percent of brackets had List coming out of Group 6. Just 5.87 percent of brackets had McNealy surviving group play, and while rolling terrain at Austin Country Club resembles the back nine at Stanford Golf Course, where he played collegiately, the big question coming into this week was whether McNealy would get to play it. When he flew to Texas on Sunday, he was keeping one eye on the Valspar Championship. He knew that if the tournament was won by Sam Burns, there was a chance Burns might WD from Austin. That’s what happened, opening the door for McNealy, who got the news while watching his brother Colt’s adult-league hockey game on Monday night. “I got the call that I was in, and five minutes after that he was on the ice when his team scored with 15 seconds on the clock to win 2 to 1,” McNealy said. “It was a good five minutes there.” What transpired Wednesday was more like a good three hours. McNealy told himself to take it one step at a time, focus on the match at hand, the shot in front of him. But if he keeps playing like this, it may not be long before he claims his first TOUR win. He could play his way into the upcoming Masters Tournament. He could soon be, gulp, the favorite in these matches. Not that anyone would want that.
Michael Malone, who has coached the Nuggets across seven seasons and ranks third in franchise history with 309 wins, has reached a multiyear contract extension with the team, sources told ESPN.
With Hill, Terron Armstead, Cedrick Wilson and upgrades at running back, Miami joins the long list of AFC teams making bold offseason additions.
With many of his original picks still intact, Andy Katz makes revised Sweet 16 to champion picks with the current bracket.
Rutgers Scarlet Knights forward Ron Harper Jr., a projected second-round pick, will declare for the NBA draft, he told ESPN Wednesday.
