— St John’s 68, UConn 62
UConn led 26-12 early in the game.
St John’s was +15 in turnovers (22-7)
St John’s has won 10 in a row, 16 of last 17 games.
Red Storm is 12-1 in Big East, despite shooting 23.4% on arc in those games.
— VCU 73, Dayton 68
Dayton led 59-54 with 3:39 left to play.
Rams have won nine of their last ten games.
VCU had 23 offensive boards, out-rebounded Flyers 44-34.
— Purdue 90, USC 72
Purdue has won 11 of its last 12 games.
Purdue shot 67.5% inside the arc.
Boilers out-rebounded USC, 48-31.
— Former Panthers/Redskins coach Ron Rivera is going back to work for the Cal Bears, where he went to college and was an All-American linebacker.
Rivera’s role will primarily be administrative, and he would be involved in oversight of the program and its big-picture needs, including budget, coaching staff and the student-athlete experience.
Rivera played nine years for the Chicago Bears, was on their 1985 championship team; he was an NFL assistant/head coach from 1997-2023.
— Ohio State football coach Ryan Day signed a 7-year contract worth $12.5M/year; Day is 70-10 coaching the Buckeyes, winning the national title last month.
— Georgia Southern signed football coach Clay Helton to a 3-year deal with $1M/year; Helton has gone 20-19 in three years with the Eagles, going to bowl games all three years.
Helton had previously gone 46-24 as coach at USC, winning the Rose Bowl in 2016.
— Mid-American Conference and Sun Belt Conference have a basketball challenge Saturday; 12 games between the two leagues, designed to help the teams’ non-conference resumes.
Sun Belt is the #18-ranked league, MAC is #24.
— Famous birthdays, February 8th
Nick Nolte, 84
Mary Steenburgen, 72
Marques Johnson, 69
Mary McCormack, 56
Alonzo Mourning, 55
Jamie Martin, 55
Susan Misner, 54
Aaron Cook, 46
Johnny Hekker, 35
Klay Thompson, 35
Saturday would’ve been Jack Lemmon’s 100th birthday.
— There must be a boatload of $$$$ in hosting fantasy baseball/football leagues; with spring training starting next week, I’ve been listening to 2-3 podcasts every night, trying to learn stuff.
There are a lot of podcasts out there; some of them are bad, guys sitting in their cellars trying to get attention by yelling instead of talking.
There will be a lot more information out there next week, once pitchers/catchers report.
— Pittsburgh Pirates signed OF Tommy Pham to a one-year deal with $4M; Pham will be 37 a month from today- he hit .248 last year with 9 home runs for three different teams. Pittsburgh will be his 10th major league team in 12 seasons.
— Minnesota Twins signed OF Harrison Bader to a one-year, $6.25M deal; Bader hit .236 for the Mets last year. Minnesota will be Bader’s fifth team in a nine-year career.
— Los Angeles Angels signed IF Yoan Moncada to a one-year, $5M deal; Moncada only played in 12 games for the White Sox last year- he’s hit .275 with a .756 OPS in his nine-year career.
— Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shahid Khan has his 400-foot yacht in New Orleans for the Super Bowl this week; the yacht is worth $360M, has a crew of 37 people, sleeps 12 guests.
Not sure why a boat would have three pools and four fireplaces, but Khan’s yacht has them.
— Pittsburgh Steelers are playing a game in Ireland next year; there will be six international NFL games next year- three in London, one each in Ireland, Germany and Spain.
— Curious which NFL team will be featured on HBO’s Hard Knocks leading up to the NFL Draft; there are four teams eligible- Atlanta, Carolina, Seattle, Tennessee.
Titans have the first pick in the draft, so it would be logical for them to be the team NFL Films follows for the draft, with one of the other three teams to be followed during training camp.
Teams are exempt from being in Hard Knocks, if:
1) They’ve appeared on Hard Knocks in the last 10 years.
2) They have a first-year head coach
3) They made the playoffs in either of the previous two seasons.
