Meyer extension expected Friday

Sports shorts

Ohio State trustees are expected to approve a twoyear contract extension for football coach Urban Meyer on Friday.

The extension through the 2022 season will give Meyer a $1.2 million annual raise. A committee of the board of trustees rubber-stamped the deal Thursday.

The $7.6 million total cash compensation package makes the 53-year-old Meyer the highest paid coach in the Big Ten and third-highest nationally.

NBA

IRVING TO MISS REST OF SEASON » Celtics point guard Kyrie Irving will need surgery on his left knee and miss the rest of the regular season and playoffs.

The team said Thursday he is expected to make a full recovery in four to five months.

In the upcoming surgery, two screws will be removed. They were implanted after his patellar fracture during the 2015 NBA Finals. Irving recently developed an infection at the site of the screws, and now they must be taken out.

College hockey

MINNESOTA DULUTH OUSTS OHIO STATE » Louie Roehl and Jared Thomas scored in the first 3:04 and Minnesota Duluth held off Ohio State, 2-1, on Thursday night to reach the NCAA championship game for the second straight year.

Hunter Shepard made 19 saves for the Bulldogs (24-16-3), allowing only Tanner Laczynski’s powerplay goal in the third period. Sean Romeo stopped shots for the Buckeyes (2610-5).

The Bulldogs needed less than two minutes to ignite the heavily partisan crowd, with freshman defenseman Roehl scoring his third career goal after a cross-ice pass from Matt Anderson. Roehl is one of five freshmen playing defense for the Bulldogs.

Just 1:11 seconds later, they made it 2-0 when Thomas got behind the defense and scored on a breakaway.

MLB

WHITE SOX GROUNDSKEEPER RETURNS AFTER 23-YEAR PRISON STINT » Imprisoned 23 years for a crime he didn’t commit, Nevest Coleman couldn’t imagine a day like this.

He was back in his old job as a groundskeeper for the Chicago White Sox, working the home opener against the Detroit Tigers on Thursday.

“When you sit back when you’re locked up, you don’t think about (a day like this),” Coleman said. “You just think about what’s going on trying to move forward in life, trying to figure out what I’m gonna do when I get out, how I’m gonna support myself. The White Sox gave me the opportunity.”

Coleman is getting another shot after he and another Illinois man named Darryl Fulton were exonerated in a 1994 rape and murder. They were convicted in the slaying of a 20-year-old woman after her body was found in the basement of a home on Chicago’s South Side where Coleman lived. Both Coleman and Fulton confessed but quickly recanted.

After DNA testing linked the crime to a serial rapist, the two men were released from prison in November. A Cook County judge issued “certificates of innocence” in March, clearing their names. Soon after that, Coleman returned to his old job with the White Sox.