Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Kyle Busch revs up, storms to Texas win
Las Vegas native completes another NASCAR sweep
FORT WORTH, Texas — Kyle Busch took the lead after the final restart Saturday night at Texas to complete his second NASCAR weekend sweep in a row.
The Las Vegas native ended Jimmie Johnson’s three-race winning streak at Texas, getting his 36th Sprint Cup victory a week after also winning at Martinsville.
Busch also won the Xfinity race at Texas on Friday night, his 80th win in that series that was coming off a two-week break. At Martinsville, he also got his 45th Camping World Truck Series victory. That’s four consecutive NASCAR Series wins in a span of eight days.
“It’s pretty darn good, I’ll tell you that,” Busch said when asked what it’s like to be him right now. “I’ve got a great wife, a great son and I’m having a blast, living the dream.”
On the first lap after the final restart, lap 302 of 334, Busch went on the outside of Turn 4 to shoot around Martin Truex Jr. for the lead. Busch led the rest of the way in his No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota, winning by nearly four seconds over Dale Earnhardt Jr. with Joey Logano third.
“The restart was going to be key. If I could just get out in front of him, I knew I could protect the rest of the race,” Busch said. “They had a good restart, but we got a better one.”
It was Busch’s second Sprint Cup victory at Texas, where in 2013 he also swept both spring races at the high-banked, 1½-mile track.
NASCAR’s first night race of the season actually went into the next morning, ending a few minutes after midnight Texas time after the start was delayed for 1 hour, 50 minutes while drying the track after a couple of light rain showers during the afternoon.
Johnson, who had won five of the previous seven Texas races, finished fourth. When the Sprint Cup Series returns to Texas in November, he will be trying to win the fall race there for the fifth year in a row.
Chase Elliott, the rookie teammate of Earnhardt and Johnson at Hendrick Motorsports, finished fifth. Elliott has qualified fourth, but had to start at the back of the 40-car field after a transmission change in the No. 24 Chevrolet.
The four Hendrick drivers finished in the top eight, with Kasey Kahne eighth.
All four Gibbs drivers finished in the top 12, with pole-sitter Carl Edwards seventh, Matt Kenseth 11th and Denny Hamlin 12th.
Edwards led 124 laps and was running second on a restart with 113 laps to go after pitting during a caution. Within a few laps after that, he had to go back in the pits because of a loose front right wheel and dropped all the way to 19th. He has won three Cup races at Texas, the last when sweeping the 2008 races. Truex led six times for 141 laps. The last restart followed an incident that involved 13 cars on the backstretch.
Austin Dillon, on older tires, got loose with 40 laps to go when Hamlin came under him going on the backstretch. Johnson was coming up behind him and tried to avoid contact before tapping into the back of Dillon’s No. 3 that then spun.
Truex, who was not involved in the incident, and Dillon had stayed on the track running first and second when everyone else pitted during a caution five laps earlier.
Exaggerator made an impressive move on a sloppy track in sweeping to the lead in the upper stretch and went on to win the $1 million Santa Anita Derby by 6¼ lengths Saturday in Arcadia, California, beating 7-5 favorite Mor Spirit in their final showdown before the Kentucky Derby next month.
Ridden by Kent Desormeaux, Exaggerator ran 1 1/8 miles in 1:49.66 and paid $8.80, $3.60 and $2.80 at 3-1 odds. Trained by Desormeaux’s older brother Keith, the colt was next-to-last early on in the eight-horse field.
BLUE GRASS STAKES: At Lexington, Ky., Brody’s Cause stormed to the front entering the stretch and rolled to a 1¾-length victory in the $1 million Blue Grass at Keeneland, claiming a spot in the Kentucky Derby. With Luis Saez aboard, Brody’s Cause ran 1 1/8 miles on a sunny, cool day in 1:50.20 and paid $10.40, $5 and $3.40. The Dale Romans-trained winner earned 100 points toward the May 7 Derby at Churchill Downs. My Man Sam edged Cherry Wine by a head for second.
WOOD MEMORIAL: At New York, Outwork won the $1 million Wood Memorial by a head over 8-1 long shot Trojan Nation to earn 100 Kentucky Derby qualifying points. Shagaf, the 9-5 favorite in the field of eight, had a poor start from the rail and finished fifth. The winning time — 1:52.92 for 1 1/8 miles — was the slowest in the history of the race, first run in 1925.
Spencer Thornton and Tyler Adkison hit consecutive two-out solo home runs in the eighth inning to rally San Diego State to a 9-7 victory over UNLV in a Mountain West baseball game Saturday in San Diego.
The Rebels (12-18, 5-9) took a 7-3 lead into the bottom of the seventh before the Aztecs (8-20, 3-8) tied it with four runs, highlighted by a twoout, two-run double by Justin Wylie.
Wylie and David Hensley each went 3-for-4 for San Diego State, which held a 15-9 edge in hits while winning for the second time in six games.
Andrew Yazdanbakhsh, Cooper Esmay and Justin Jones each had a double and a single, with Yazdanbakhsh and Esmay each driving in two runs for UNLV, which had won three straight.
Rebels starter Kenny Oakley gave up three runs, two earned, on eight hits and three walks and struck out one in five innings.
MEN’S GOLF: At Columbus, Ohio, the No. 25-ranked Rebels played through snow flurries to post a 5-over-par 289 for a two-stroke lead at the 16-team Robert Kepler Intercollegiate. UNLV sophomore Shintaro Ban is tied for first individually after shooting 1-under 70, and teammates John Oda, AJ McInerney and Harry Hall are tied for ninth at 2 over in the 84-golfer field.
Drake Caggiula scored twice in the third period, and Brock Boeser had a goal and three assists to help North Dakota win its eighth NCAA hockey championship, 5-1 over top-seeded Quinnipiac in Tampa, Florida.
Cam Johnson had 32 saves for the Fighting Hawks (34-6-4), who won their first national title since 2000 to pull within one of Michigan for the record.
Quinnipiac (32-4-7) lost in the title game for the second time in four seasons. The Bobcats trailed 2-1 entering the third period.
Anthony Joshua stopped Charles Martin inside two rounds to snatch the IBF heavyweight belt off the American in London in only his 16th professional fight.
With two knockdowns in the second round, the 26-year-old Joshua (16-0, 16 KOs) secured a crushing knockout victory that means Britain’s Olympic champion holds the leading amateur and professional heavyweight titles.
The 29-year-old Martin (23-1-1) won the vacated belt in January, and this was his first defense, and the first loss of his pro career.
Terrance Ferguson hit seven 3-pointers to total 21 points to help the U.S. national junior select basketball team beat the under-19 World team 101-67 at the annual Nike Hoop Summit in Portland, Oregon.
Team USA finished with 36 3-point attempts, setting a record for most 3-points attempts in the event’s history. Ferguson finished with half of the team’s 14 made 3-pointers.
The 34-point margin was the largest in the 19-year history of the event.
Ferguson, who is from Dallas and is uncommitted, had six of his 3s in a span of four minutes in the first half — scoring 18 straight points — and the United States built a 44-22 lead at the break.