High jumper Dick Fosbury dies at 76
Dick Fosbury, the lanky leaper who completely revamped the technical discipline of high jump and won an Olympic gold medal with his “Fosbury Flop,” has died after a recurrence with lymphoma. He was 76.
Fosbury died Sunday, according to his publicist, Ray Schulte.
Before Fosbury, high jumpers cleared their height by running parallel to bar, then leaping over with a scissors kick, with their faces pointed downward. At the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, he took off at an angle, leaped backward and bent himself into a “J” shape to catapult his 6-foot-4 frame over the bar.
Fosbury cleared 2.24 meters (7 feet, 4 1/4 inches) in Mexico City to win the gold and set an Olympic record. By the next Olympics, 28 of the 40 jumpers were using Fosbury's technique. Today, it is by far the mostused technique for elite high jumpers across the globe.
Women's basketball
SOUTH CAROLINA WOMEN CAP WIRE-TO-WIRE NO. 1 RUN IN AP TOP 25 >> South Carolina joined an exclusive group Monday, going wireto-wire as No. 1 in consecutive years in The Associated Press Top 25 women's basketball poll.
The defending national champion Gamecocks (320) became the third school to be the top team in the poll for the entire season in back-to-back years, equaling UConn and Louisiana Tech.
The Gamecocks, who are the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament, have been atop the poll for 38 straight weeks, which is the second longest run behind UConn's record 51-week streak (2008-10). Led by Aliyah Boston, the Gamecocks were once again a unanimous choice by the 28-member media panel.
Indiana switched places with Iowa in the final poll, moving back up to second after landing its first No. 1 seed in an NCAA tourney. Virginia Tech and Stanford, the other two top seeds, were fourth and fifth in the final Top 25.
Men's basketball
ALABAMA, HOUSTON TOP FINAL AP TOP 25 >> The overall No. 1 seed for March Madness is No. 1 in the final AP Top 25, too.
Alabama, fresh off an SEC Tournament title to go with its regular-season crown, ascended to the top spot, earning 48 of 61 first-place votes to jump Houston, which lost in the American Athletic Conference final without star guard Marcus Sasser. Alabama also spent a week at No. 1 last month.
Purdue, seeded first in the East Region, earned three first-place votes and was third in the AP poll after the regular-season Big Ten champion won its conference tournament, too. Kansas, which expects to have Bill Self back for the NCAA tourney after a medical scare, was fourth after receiving the No. 1 seed in the West.
Texas routed the Jayhawks in the finals of the Big 12 Tournament and rounded out the top five.
OLE MISS HIRES FORMER TEXAS COACH BEARD >> Mississippi has hired Chris Beard as its basketball coach just over two months after his firing from Texas following a domestic violence arrest.
Beard is a four-time conference coach of the year and was AP's national coach of the year in 2019.
But his two-year tenure at alma mater Texas ended abruptly in January, though felony domestic charges were ultimately dismissed on Feb. 15. A prosecutor said his office determined that the charge of assault by strangulation/suffocation-family violence could not be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
NFL
CHIEFS AGREE WITH OT TAYLOR ON 4-YEAR, $80M DEAL >> Jawaan Taylor has agreed to an $80 million, four-year contract with the Kansas City Chiefs to replace Orlando Brown Jr. as the blindside protector for Patrick Mahomes, a person with knowledge of the deal told The Associated Press.
The person spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity Monday because the contract cannot become official until Wednesday.
The 25-year-old Taylor started all 66 games he's played in since entering the league as a second-round pick of the Jaguars in the 2019 draft. While he primarily held down the right side of the line in Jacksonville, the expectation is that — much as Brown did when he arrived from Baltimore — Taylor will switch to the left side in Kansas City.