Washington
Oregon WR Malik Benson puts ‘stamp’ on Washington rivalry with electrifying touchdown
SEATTLE – Malik Benson, a senior wide receiver who transferred to Oregon last offseason, received a crash course on the bitter rivalry between the Ducks and Washington Huskies last week from center Iapani Laloulu.
“I just got well educated,” Benson said. “Just with what this game means to Oregon fans.”
Armed with that knowledge, Benson set out Saturday at Husky Stadium to do whatever he could to help the No. 6 Ducks win and advance to the College Football Playoffs.
When the 26-14 UO victory had ended, Benson had produced five catches for 102 yards and the game’s most dazzling play on a 64-yard touchdown in the fourth quarter that helped secure the win.
“I’m just glad I could put my stamp on it and my team could put our stamp on it,” he said.
The pivotal play came when Oregon needed it the most.
The Huskies had scored a touchdown to trim UO’s lead to 19-14 about midway through the fourth quarter.
Benson said UO’s offense took the field sensing that Washington had seized the momentum and it was up to them to take it back with a score.
Oregon’s ensuing drive faced a critical third-and-nine at its 36 when the pivotal play-call came in.
The formation called for Benson to line up wide right as the single receiver. On the left were three receivers. At the snap, Benson said he saw UW left cornerback Tacario Davis back up, giving the receiver room to run a dig route inside against Washington’s three-deep zone.
Benson said he trusted that Moore would make the same read and deliver the ball to the right spot. As it turned out, Moore was on the same page.
Moore, who credited Washington for doing a good job disguising coverages all game, determined during his pre-snap read that the backside dig from Benson could pop open.
“I knew I had numbers backside and Malik, knowing he would get his depth, knowing he could be a playmaker with the ball in his hands, I just had to find a way to give it to him,” Moore said.
Moore, while dropping back, glanced left to the three-receiver route combination before coming back to Benson, who cut inside to a wide-open area at midfield.
Moore delivered his pass on time, but a tad high, forcing Benson to go airborne to make the grab at the Washington 48.
“Once I caught it and landed on my feet, I was like, yeah, it’s my time to turn up,” Benson said.
Five Washington defenders were in position to make a play on Benson with Oregon tight end Kenyon Sadiq as the lone blocker downfield. He secured the block on free safety Alex McLaughlin while Benson’s speed left the other four defenders grasping at air.
Benson sailed into the end zone for a memorable 64-yard touchdown that gave the Ducks a 26-14 lead with 7:55 on the clock.
“At the end of the day, I threw him the pass, but he did the most work,” Moore said.
In the end zone, Benson dropped the football, stared up at Washington fans and then made a ‘W’ with his hands. He then simulated breaking the ‘W’ by bringing his hands down over his knee.
“It just came in the moment,” Benson said. “I just seen the big ‘Ws’ all over everywhere and I just knew that I had to get into that end zone so I could get that celebration.”
Benson, who caught five passes for a career-high 102 yards against the Huskies, has made several plays that impacted wins this season.
Among the most notable: His 85-yard punt return for a touchdown against USC gave the Ducks a 21-14 lead in the second quarter. Oregon won 42-27.
Two weeks earlier at Iowa, Benson caught a 24-yard sideline pass to the Hawkeyes’ 27-yard line to help set up the game-winning field goal in an 18-16 victory.
But Saturday’s catch and run could be the play Oregon fans most remember Benson by, given the opponent, the timing of the play, the wow factor and that it came in a victory that thrust the Ducks into the College Football Playoff.
Benson said not letting down his teammates motivates him.
“Just knowing that I’m an older guy and that guys look at me, so just making plays with my numbers called,” he said.
Benson came to Oregon hoping to return to the national playoffs. He got there in 2023 with Alabama as a backup. His one year at Florida State in 2024 crumbled into a 2-10 season.
Now he’s returning with the Ducks.
“Just blessed for the opportunity,” Benson said.
Dusty May explains what happened to Michigan’s defense vs Wisconsin
Michigan basketball coach Dusty May speaks Monday, Jan. 12, 2026 at Crisler Center, ahead of Michigan’s Pacific Northwest trip.
SEATTLE — Michigan basketball went to the Emerald City and struck gold … or maize.
On a night when Washington honored its national-champion men’s soccer team, brought back former star (and former Detroit Piston) Isaiah Thomas and introduced their incoming class of football recruits to the first sellout crowd in two seasons, the Huskies simply couldn’t hang with the Wolverines on Wednesday, Jan. 14.
No. 3 Michigan battled on the boards, locked down on defense and got enough done on offense despite another lackluster shooting night to get back to its winning ways, beating Washington 82-72 in the first of two games on a Pacific Northwest swing.
Morez Johnson Jr., nicknamed “Junkyard Dog” by his teammates, showed his bite against the team with “Dawgs” across its chest, scoring 16 points and adding a career-high 16 rebounds for his third double-double of the season.
“As a coaching staff, we communicate throughout the game and there were anywhere between three and 300 instances where we said to each other ‘Rez is an absolute dog, Rez is an absolute beast’,” coach Dusty May said postgame. “We were very repetitive because he made so many plays that made us appreciate him.”
He set the tone on the glass – a battle U-M won, 42-40, as part of its 50-28 scoring advantage in the paint. Meanwhile, U-M played a largely clean game, forcing 12 turnovers and only committing eight as it outscored U-Dub, 11-2, in points off turnovers.
Johnson was aided by his fellow bigs: Aday Mara scored a team-high 20 and Yaxel Lendeborg added 14 after a slow start.
The Wolverines will stay in the Pacific time zone for their next game, heading to Eugene, Oregon, to take on the Ducks in a nationally televised game Saturday (4 p.m. ET, NBC). The Ducks, a second-round NCAA Tournament team last season, have already nearly matched their 2024-25 losses (10) this season, at 8-9 overall and 1-5 in Big Ten play. Still, three of those five conference losses have come on the road, rather than at Matthew Knight Arena. Center Nathan Bittle leads Oregon with 16.3 points per game, plus 6.7 rebounds and two assists.
Getting to the finish line
The Huskies fought back after a cold start – just seven makes in their first 26 shots – with 10 makes in their next 17 to get within five, 46-41, on a Hannes Steinbach putback.
But Michigan got hot. Lendeborg drilled a corner 3, Mara hit three straight baskets – a floater, a layup and a dunk –Lendeborg hit another hook in the lane and then Mara finished another slam on the baseline, for six straight makes.
Even so, the Huskies stuck with the Wolverines thanks to baskets on four straight possesssions. Johnson got an offensive rebound and putback off a Trey McKenney missed layup, but McKenney was then assessed with a technical foul for tripping a U-W player stepping over him.
The Wolverines struggled to extend their lead until Mara swatted a hook shot near the rim and Roddy Gayle Jr. had a runout the other way for a coast-to-coast layup to go up 11 with 5:16 to go. He then found Lendeborg on the break on the following possession for an acrobatic layup, making it 76-63.
The Wolverines weren’t perfect on offense – 17-for-23 on dunks or layups 15-for-46 on all other shots – but they did enough of the little things for coach Dusty May.
Marvelous Morez Johnson Jr.
Johnson led the way in that grinding mentality.
He dominated early on the boards with 10 in the first 15 minutes, including three on offense. The Wolverines didn’t shoot well on 3s – 5-for-23 (21.7%) – so extending possessions mattered.
“Elite,” Mara said of how he’d describe Johnson in a single word. “His ability to help us in rebounding is something I’ve never seen before. I think that was better than me scoring 20. For today’s game, one of the keys was rebounding and I think he did great.
“It’s way easier when you have a player like this on your team.”
Johnson’s greatest highlight came off a missed Gayle jumper, as he came flying in through the paint and threw down a tip-slam between two defenders to put Michigan up, 28-18.
Johnson responded to May’s recent team-wide critiques of the energy level with perhaps the Wolverines’ most energetic performance this season. He wasn’t quite as dominant after halftime, but still added eight points and four rebounds.
Coming in waves
The Wolverines started slow; they didn’t score until 2:33 in, falling behind by three. That was followed by a 12-0 run in 4:14, with all of the points coming either in the paint or from the free throw line.
Michigan, which has struggled beyond the arc for a few weeks, missed its first 10 3-pointers, but a spurt from the reserves got the group going. It was 14-9 when McKenney buried the team’s first 3. Will Tschetter followed with one of his own less than a minute later, then added a follow under the bucket, as U-M’s reserves scored eight straight.
Later, it was Lendeborg’s turn. He missed his first five attempts, then finally drilled a 3 from the left wing to get going. On the next possession he received a full-court pass from L.J. Cason and finished in the paint, then grabbed an offensive rebound off a missed free throw and had a putback in traffic. That gave him seven straight points and extended U-M’s lead to 37-26.
Tony Garcia is the Wolverines beat writer for the Detroit Free Press. Email him at apgarcia@freepress.com and follow him on X at @RealTonyGarcia.
Verizon said on Wednesday that its wireless service was suffering an outage impacting cellular data and voice services.
The nation’s largest wireless carrier said that its “engineers are engaged and are working to identify and solve the issue quickly.”
Verizon’s statement came after a swath of social media comments directed at Verizon, with users saying that their mobile devices were showing no bars of service or “SOS,” indicating a lack of connection.
Verizon, which has more than 146 million customers, appears to have started experiencing services issues around 12:00 p.m. ET, according to comments on social media site X.
Two hours later, Verizon posted an update on social media, saying that its engineers were “continuing to address today’s service interruptions,” but did not say if a specific reason for the outage had been identified or when it could be resolved.
“We understand the impact this has on your day and remain committed to resolving this as quickly as possible,” the company said.
Despite those efforts, shortly after 4:00 p.m. ET, Verizon issued a third statement that contained little new information. The company said teams were “on the ground actively working to fix today’s service issue.”
Users had initially reported problems with Verizon’s competitors, T-Mobile and AT&T, as well. But both companies said they were not experiencing any service problems.
“T-Mobile’s network is keeping our customers connected, and we’ve confirmed that our network is operating normally and as expected,” a spokesperson told NBC News. “However, due to Verizon’s reported outage, our customers may not be able to reach someone with Verizon service at this time.”
A spokeswoman for AT&T also said the company’s network was “operating normally.”
In Washington, D.C., the District’s official emergency notification system sent out a message to residents saying that the Verizon outage was “nationwide.”
“If you have an emergency and can not connect using your Verizon Wireless device, please connect using a device from another carrier, a landline, or go to a police district or fire station to report the emergency,” the AlertDC system told recipients.
New York City’s Office of Emergency Management also said it was aware of the outage without mentioning Verizon by name. The city said it was “working closely with our partners” to review the outage and “assess any potential effects on city agencies & essential services.”
Brittany Kubicko contributed.
People walk along a street in downtown of Nuuk, Greenland, on Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026.
Evgeniy Maloletka/AP
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Evgeniy Maloletka/AP
NUUK, Greenland — Along the narrow, snow-covered main street in Greenland’s capital, international journalists and camera crews stop passersby every few meters (feet) asking them for their thoughts on a crisis which Denmark’s prime minister has warned could potentially trigger the end of NATO.
Greenland is at the center of a geopolitical storm as U.S. President Donald Trump is insisting he wants to own the island — and the residents of its capital Nuuk say it is not for sale. Trump said he wants to control Greenland at any cost and the White House has not ruled out taking the island by force.
U.S. Vice President JD Vance will meet Denmark’s foreign minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen and his Greenlandic counterpart Vivian Motzfeldt in Washington on Wednesday to discuss the Arctic island, which is a semiautonomous territory of the United States’ NATO ally Denmark.
Tuuta Mikaelsen, a 22-year-old student, told The Associated Press in Nuuk that she hoped American officials would get the message to “back off.”
Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen told a news conference in the Danish capital Copenhagen on Tuesday that, “if we have to choose between the United States and Denmark here and now, we choose Denmark. We choose NATO. We choose the Kingdom of Denmark. We choose the EU.”
Greenland is strategically important because as climate change causes the ice to melt, it opens up the possibility of shorter trade routes to Asia. That also could make it easier to extract and transport untapped deposits of critical minerals which are needed for computers and phones.
Trump also said he wants the island to expand America’s security and has cited what he says is the threat from Russian and Chinese ships as a reason to control it.
But both experts and Greenlanders question that claim.
“The only Chinese I see is when I go to the fast food market,” Lars Vintner, a heating engineer told AP. He said he frequently goes sailing and hunting and has never seen Russian or Chinese ships.
His friend, Hans Nørgaard, agreed, adding “what has come out of the mouth of Donald Trump about all these ships is just fantasy.”
Denmark has said the U.S. — which already has a military presence — can boost its bases on Greenland. For that reason, “security is just a cover,” Vintner said, suggesting Trump actually wants to own the island to make money from its untapped natural resources.
Nørgaard told AP he filed a police complaint in Nuuk against Trump’s “aggressive” behavior because, he said, American officials are threatening the people of Greenland and NATO. He suggested Trump was using the ships as a pretext to further American expansion.
“Donald Trump would like to have Greenland, (Russian President Vladimir) Putin would like Ukraine and (Chinese President) Xi Jinping would like to have Taiwan,” Nørgaard said.
Mikaelsen, the student, said Greenlanders benefit from being part of Denmark which provides free health care, education and payments during study.
“I don’t want the U.S. to take that away from us,” she said.
Ahead of Wednesday’s meeting, Naaja Nathanielsen, Greenland’s minister for business and mineral resources said it’s “unfathomable” that the United States is discussing taking over a NATO ally and urged the Trump administration to listen to voices from the Arctic island’s people.
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