DePaul coach resigns
DePaul announced the resignation of men’s basketball coach Oliver Purnell , who had a 54-105 record with the Blue Demons. The NBA suspended Portland center Joel Freeland and Detroit forward Shawne Williams for one game apiece for head-butting each other during Friday’s game.
Seattle Mariners infielder Chris Taylor is expected to miss four to six weeks because of a broken right wrist.
In boxing, Russia’s Sergey Kovalev (27-0-1) stopped Canada’s Jean Pascal (29-3-1) early in the eighth round at Montreal to retain his three world light heavyweight titles. The large Bell Centre crowd booed when referee Luis Pabon stopped the fight with the dazed Pascal (29-3-1) against the ropes from a series of blows.
In UFC 185, Rafael dos Anjos won the lightweight championship belt, defeating Anthony Pettis by unanimous decision at Dallas. All three judges scored the fight 50-25.
Three-time National Hot Rod Assn. champion Larry Dixon walked away from a frightening crash at the Gatornationals at Gainesville, Fla. Dixon’s top-fuel dragster started to buckle at nearly 280 mph, broke apart, got airborne, landed hard and then slid into the outside retaining wall at Auto-Plus Raceway. Dixon’s upper back and left knee were sore, but he exited the car pretty much unscathed.
Leading qualifiers were Shawn Langdon (top fuel), Cruz Pedregon (funny car), Chris McGaha (pro stock) and Matt Smith (pro stock motorcycle).
In motorcycle racing, Danny Eslick won the Daytona 200 for the second consecutive year with a lastlap pass of Josh Herrin in the final turn at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Fla.
Ryan Dungey raced to his third straight AMA Supercross victory and fifth of the season at Lucas Oil Stadium at Indianapolis. He led all 20 laps en route to his 19th career 450SX victory.
The No. 5-ranked USC men’s tennis team (12-2) took a 4-1 victory over No. 14 UCLA (8-6) at the Marks Tennis Stadium at USC. The matchup did not count in the Pac-12 standings. The conference matchup between the rivals will be April 16 at UCLA.
Warren’s Veneda established herself as the top older filly or mare on the West Coast, winning the Grade I, $400,000 Santa Margarita Stakes by 7 1 ⁄
4 lengths with jockey Tyler Baze at Santa Anita. The 5-year-old, trained by Craig Lewis , got her third consecutive win. It was the first Grade I winner for owner Benjamin C. Warren , who has owned and bred horses in California for 35 years.
— Eric Sondheimer
American Pharoah, last year’s 2-year-old champion, won the $750,000 Rebel Stakes by 6 1 ⁄ lengths
4 despite a loose shoe on a sloppy track at Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, Ark. It was trainer Bob Baffert’s fifth Rebel win in six years and moved the Zayat Stables colt to fifth in the Kentucky Derby point standings. Zayat’s El Kabeir tops the standings.
Mikaela Shiffrin clocked the fastest time in both runs at Are, Sweden, to win her fourth women’s World Cup slalom race of the season. Veronika Velez
Zuzulova of Slovakia took second, 1.41 seconds back .
Alexis Pinturault of France dominated the men’s World Cup giant slalom at Kranjska Gora, Slovenia. Marcel Hirscher of Austria finished second to lock up the giant slalom season title by increasing his lead to an insurmountable 185 points over Pinturault with only one race left.
Al Rosen , voted the 1953 American League most valuable player as third baseman of the Cleveland Indians, died Friday. He was 91. Rosen also was a front-office official for several major league teams, including the San Francisco Giants and the New York Yankees. Obituary, B7.