COLLEGES
Advik Mareedu outlasted Tristan Bradley in the third set to give Claremont-Mudd-Scripps Colleges a 5-4 win over Bowdoin in the semifinals of the NCAA Division III men’s tennis tourney on Wednesday at St. Louis.
Bradley won the first set in the deciding match, 7-6 (5) and Mareedu took the second set, 7-6 (1). In the third set, Mareedu came back from a 3-1 deficit to beat Bradley, 6-4.
Bradley and Reid Staples won in doubles for the Polar Bears, as did Pieter Breuker and Andrew Mendelson. Staples and Mark Kneiss won three-set singles matches.
Claremont-Mudd-Scripps Colleges will meet the University of Chicago in the finals at 2 p.m. Friday.
TRACK & FIELD: Travis Snyder of Saco qualified for the NCAA Division I track and field championships by clearing 17 feet, 9 1/4 inches in the pole vault at the East regional in Lexington, Kentucky.
Snyder, a graduate student at UConn, was one of seven vaulters who were successful at 17-9 1/4. The top 12 in each event advance to the NCAA championships, to be held June 5-8 in Eugene, Oregon.
FOOTBALL: TNT Sports will begin airing College Football Playoff games this upcoming season through a sublicense with ESPN.
The five-year agreement gives TNT two first-round games the first two years. Beginning in 2026, it expands to two first-round and two quarterfinals.
ESPN’s $7.8 billion deal with the CFP, which was announced in March, allowed it to sublicense games to other networks. Financial terms of the sublicense were not announced.
WOMEN’S BASKETBALL: Assistant coach Jenni Fitzgerald, who worked for 32 years on Lisa Bluder’s staffs at Drake and Iowa, announced her retirement.
Fitzgerald follows Bluder into retirement rather than continue on the staff of new Iowa coach Jan Jensen, who was her teammate at Drake from 1986-90.
Fitzgerald served as a special assistant to Bluder and an assistant coach over 24 years at Iowa, and she spent eight seasons before that with Bluder at Drake.
HOCKEY
NHL: Jim Hiller will continue to be the Los Angeles Kings head coach after having the interim tag removed by Vice President and GM Rob Blake.
The Kings were 21-12-1 in the regular season under Hiller after Todd McLellan was fired on Feb. 2. But Los Angeles was eliminated by Edmonton in the first round of the playoffs for the third straight year.
• Sheldon Keefe is being hired as the coach of the New Jersey Devils, less than two weeks after he was fired by the Toronto Maple Leafs.
A source close to the franchise confirmed the hiring in a telephone call with The Associated Press, adding the official announcement will be made on Thursday.
Keefe is the Devils’ fifth coach since 2019 and third since March. They fired Lindy Ruff late in the season, replaced him on an interim basis with Travis Green and missed the playoffs anyway. Green left to coach the Ottawa Senators.
BASKETBALL
NBA: Jalen Brunson had surgery to repair the broken left hand he sustained while the New York Knicks were losing Game 7 of the Eastern Conference semifinals.
The Knicks also said reserve Bojan Bogdanovic had surgery on his left wrist. No details were provided about either procedure except that both players would be evaluated again in six to eight weeks.
• LeBron James is now the youngest — and the oldest — player to make an All-NBA team. And Dallas’ Luka Doncic and Oklahoma City’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander are in position to make around $1 million per game a few years from now.
Denver’s Nikola Jokic and Gilgeous-Alexander were the only unanimous first-team selections on this season’s All-NBA team, which was revealed by the league. They were joined on the first team by Doncic, Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo and Boston’s Jayson Tatum.
On the second team: New York’s Jalen Brunson, Minnesota’s Anthony Edwards, Phoenix’s Kevin Durant, the Los Angeles Clippers’ Kawhi Leonard and James’ Los Angeles Lakers teammate, Anthony Davis.
The third team had James, Golden State’s Stephen Curry, Sacramento’s Domantas Sabonis, Indiana’s Tyrese Haliburton and Phoenix’s Devin Booker.
The NBA changed the rules starting with this season and All-NBA voting is now positionless — as opposed to having two guards, two forwards and one center on each of the teams, a formula that had been in place since the 1950s. Players also had to appear in a minimum number of games, in most cases, to be eligible for award consideration from the panel of 99 broadcasters and writers who served as the voting panel.
For James, who was the youngest player to make All-NBA when he was voted onto the team for the 2004-05 season, another selection only added to his list of accomplishments.
The 20 All-NBA overall picks extended his record, a total that’s now five more than Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. His 20 consecutive selections is obviously another record, and he’s the first player to be age 39 or older during what became an All-NBA regular season.
SOCCER
EUROPA LEAGUE: Atalanta winger Ademola Lookman was unstoppable and Bayer Leverkusen’s impossible dream of completing an entire season unbeaten with a hat trick of titles proved to be just that.
Instead, Lookman was the hat trick hero in Atalanta’s 3-0 win over Leverkusen in the Europa League final at Dublin.
It was a beating few saw coming for the new German champion whose European record unbeaten run stopped at 51 games.
TENNIS
GENEVA OPEN: Novak Djokovic celebrated his 37th birthday by beating unseeded Yannick Hanfmann 6-3, 6-3 to reach the quarterfinals.
It was the 1,100th victory for the World No. 1 at ATP tournaments.
FRENCH OPEN: Three-time Grand Slam champion Andy Murray and Daniel Evans were granted a wild card to play together in doubles at the French Open, organizers said.
They are the first non-French pair to be awarded a wild card into the men’s doubles at Roland Garros in more than 20 years.
LAVER CUP: Andre Agassi will take over from John McEnroe as the captain for Team World at the Laver Cup next year, when the event will be held in San Francisco.
Laver Cup organizers announced Agassi’s selection and said Bjorn Borg’s successor as captain of Team Europe will be named “in the coming days.”
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