More KU fallout: Long resigns as AD
Kansas athletic director Jeff Long resigned Wednesday, less than two days after the school mutually parted with Les Miles amid sexual misconduct allegations dating to the football coach’s time at LSU.
Kurt Watson will serve as the interim AD. Long’s dismissal after three years came a day after he vowed to lead the search for Miles’ successor, a move that drew significant backlash from Kansas alumni.
It was Long who had hired Miles, his friend of more than 30 years, despite questions that ultimately led to his firing in disgrace Monday night.
Baseball: Reds 1B Joey Votto will be out indefinitiely after testing positive for COVID-19 at spring training. Votto, 37, also was placed on the IL in August after self-reporting coronavirus symptoms.
College basketball: The NCAA announced that a team needs only five healthy players to compete at the upcoming NCAA tournament . ... For the first time in the 42-year history of the Big East Conference, three players shared the league’s player of the year award. Seton Hall senior F Sandro Mamukelashvili and Villanova sophomore F Jeremiah Robinson-Earl and senior PG Collin Gillespie tied in the voting by the league’s coaches, who weren’t permitted to vote for their own players . ... Nijel Pack scored 23 points, Mike McGuirl added 17 and ninth-seeded Kansas State beat eighth-seeded TCU 71-50 in the first round of the Big 12 tournament on Wednesday night. RJ Nembhard had 11 points to lead the Horned Frogs (12-14).
NBA: Coach Gregg Popovich said the Spurs and seven-time All-Star F/C LaMarcus Aldridge agreed to seek opportunities for him play elsewhere. The Spurs will try to trade Aldridge before the March 25 deadline. If they can’t, the team can buy Aldridge out and let him sign elsewhere as a free agent. Aldridge, 35, is averaging 13.7 points and 4.5 rebounds this season.
NFL: The NFL salary cap will be $182.5 million per team in the upcoming season, a drop of 8% from 2020. The league’s loss of revenues due to the coronavirus pandemic caused the first decrease in the cap since 2011, which followed an uncapped season.
Soccer: Paris Saint-Germain played to a 1-1 draw with visiting Barcelona to reach the quarterfinals of the Champions League. PSG advanced 5-2 on aggregate. In other secondleg action, Liverpool beat host Leipzig 2-0 and advanced 4-0 on aggregate.
WNBA: Former league MVP and four-time league champ Maya Moore announced on “Good Morning America” that she will not be returning to the court next season. Moore, 31, last played in the WNBA during the 2018 season, before announcing in February 2019 that she would be taking some time away from basketball to focus on family and “ministry dreams that have been stirring in my heart for many years.” For the next year and a half, she worked for the successful release of Jonathan Irons from prison, a man from her childhood home state of Missouri who had been convicted of burglary and assault with a deadly weapon in 1998 when he was 16 years old.Last March, the conviction was vacated. Moore and Irons, 41, married last summer.