Alive as Red Storm goes home
Myles Cale added 16 points and eight boards, and Ike Obiagu blocked seven shots before fouling out as Seton Hall advanced to face Georgetown in the first semifinal tonight at the Garden. The eighth-seeded Hoyas upset top seed and No. 14 Villanova, 72-71, earlier in the day.
“We feel like this is our second home,” Pirates coach Kevin Willard said.
Big East scoring champ Julian Champagnie led
St. John’s with 16 points on 7-of-21 shooting and nine rebounds. Rasheem Dunn scored 15 for the fourth-seeded Red Storm (16-11), which went cold after halftime and shot 33% from the floor overall — including 6 of 25 (24%) from 3-point territory.
St. John’s hasn’t reached the Big East semifinals since it won the 2000 tournament — quite a long drought for one of the league’s charter members.
In a possible NCAA Tournament eliminator, Seton Hall avenged an 81-71 road loss to St. John’s five days earlier in which the Pirates blew an 18-0 cushion. Now, they could represent the Big East’s best chance to get a fourth team in the NCAA field, along with Villanova, Creighton and UConn.
“They just wanted it more than us,” Dunn said.
St. John’s tied it, 60-60, on a 3-pointer by Marcellus Earlington with just under two minutes left in regulation. Dunn’s two free throws put the Red Storm ahead before Cale pulled the Pirates even on a driving layup with 54 seconds remaining.
Champagnie and Mamukelashvili had late looks but couldn’t convert.
Rhoden’s foul shot 30 seconds into overtime put the Pirates ahead to stay. Cale hit a turnaround in the lane to make it 70-64 with 1:45 left and Seton Hall sealed it from the line.
Sergio Garcia rushed to the first tee and raced to the finish line Thursday in The Players Championship.
Most importantly, he avoided the kind of wreck that allowed the TPC Sawgrass to live up to its reputation as the course where anything can happen to anyone at any time.
Garcia thought he had plenty of time to get from the range to the 10th tee to start his round. The sun was in his eyes when he looked at the clock, he wasn’t sure what he saw, jogged the rest of the way and had a minute to spare. Then he fired off a 7-under 65, capped off by a birdie-birdie-eagle finish for a two-shot lead over Brian Harman.
It was a solid day that became brilliant over the final three holes.
Garcia only had to look next to him to see what kind of damage the Stadium Course inflicted, even on a pristine day of pleasant sunshine and a mild breeze.
Rory McIlroy, the defending champion, opened with a double bogey from the trees. He hit two in the water on the 18th and made a quadruple-bogey 8. He wound up with a 79, his worst score since his opening round at Royal Portrush in the 2019 British Open.
When darkness brought the first round to a halt — 21 players didn’t finish — there already were 13 scores of 80 or higher. That included Henrik Stenson with an 85, his highest score ever on the PGA Tour.
There were 22 scores of triple bogey or worse.
HEAT’S LEONARD FINED 50G
The NBA slapped Meyers Leonard on the wrist Thursday for his heated gaming moment, suspending the Heat forward a week and fining him $50,000 for using an anti-Semitic slur while streaming on Twitch.
Leonard yelled “f---ing k--- b----” while gaming earlier this week. The suspension is largely symbolic, as Leonard is already out for the season after shoulder surgery.
The NBA’s fine economy is surprisingly durable against inflation; the late Kobe Bryant was fined $100K for calling a ref an anti-gay slur in 2011.
Leonard’s purported apology was that he didn’t know that the k-word was an anti-Semitic slur.
“While I didn’t know what the word meant at the time, my ignorance about its history and how offensive it is to the Jewish community is absolutely not an excuse and I was just wrong,” he said Wednesday.
“He said something that was extremely distasteful and hurtful,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra, said. “And we’re left with the aftermath of that.”
Leonard will also need to complete a cultural diversity program.
“Meyers Leonard’s comment was inexcusable and hurtful and such an offensive term has no place in the NBA or in our society,” NBA commish said in a statement.