Sports
An energized UCLA gets back in win column with victory over Washington
From the day he started at UCLA, Mick Cronin said he spelled fun W-I-N.
Over the last two months, as one loss followed another, his team encountered M-I-S-E-R-Y, leaving a segment of the fan base feeling H-O-P-E-L-E-S-S.
So it was invigorating Sunday afternoon for the Bruins to see what transpired inside Pauley Pavilion. Players on the bench roared as Kenneth Nwuba took a charge. Lazar Stefanovic earned an embrace from Brandon Williams after racing to block a fast-break layup from behind. Berke Buyuktuncel clapped his hands over his head while running into the tunnel toward the locker room after the game ended.
For a few hours, basketball was enjoyable again for the team that had traded in the nation’s longest home winning streak for four consecutive losses inside its venerable arena while also losing eight of nine games overall.
Playing with energy, freedom and confidence, UCLA stomped Washington in a 73-61 victory that bore no resemblance to the Bruins’ 46-point loss to Utah three days earlier.
There were strong bounce-back efforts across the board as UCLA (7-10 overall, 2-4 Pac-12) ended a four-game losing streak as well as a four-game home losing streak.
Bullying his way to easy baskets and benefiting from the kinds of crisp entry passes his teammates had struggled to make all season, center Adem Bona scored 22 points while making 10 of 13 shots. Busting out of his season-long shooting slump, Stefanovic made four of seven shots on the way to 15 points.
And in maybe the most encouraging development, point guard Dylan Andrews notched a career-high eight assists to go with seven points, three rebounds and two steals.
The Bruins also made shots for a change, outshooting the Huskies 50% to 40.4% while making six of 14 three-pointers. Playing its usual sturdy defense, UCLA forced 19 turnovers that led to 26 points, including 16 on the fast break.
The victory moved UCLA out of a last-place tie with Oregon State in the conference standings and injected some hope for a turnaround over the season’s final two months.
The Bruins’ most telling statistic might have been their 20 assists given a lack of ball movement that had led to them entering the game ranking last in the conference in points scored per game (64.2).
That figure was largely the result of ranking last in field-goal accuracy (41%), three-point accuracy (28.2%) and assists per game (11.2).
No matter how much defense you play, it’s hard to win when you don’t pass and you can’t shoot.
But these Bruins seemed emboldened by a change in approach from their coach, who mostly let his players stay on the court after mistakes instead of immediately sending them to the bench. The Bruins rewarded their coach with one of their most energetic halves of the season.
UCLA might have found a winning lineup by pairing Jan Vide with Ilane Fibleuil, Buyuktuncel, Andrews and Bona, given that those were the players who sparked the team’s 21-4 run that helped the Bruins take a 30-22 halftime lead.
Vide ran the offense with purpose and hit a three-pointer. Buyuktuncel proved to be a zone buster with his passes, finding Bona and Nwuba underneath the basket for dunks. Fibleuil followed a steal with a layup.
Sahvir Wheeler’s 27 points weren’t nearly enough for the Huskies (10-7, 2-4) on a day they were outclassed by an opponent that appeared to rediscover its mojo.
Sports
Toronto Maple Leafs top pick Gavin McKenna reveals that he’s changing his jersey number
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Toronto Maple Leafs No. 1 draft pick Gavin McKenna has already been on the ice with the team as it held its development camp this week, but the highly-touted rookie is going to have to make a big change for this fall.
His number.
When he was playing for the Western Hockey League’s Medicine Hat Tigers and then again at Penn State this past season, McKenna wore the No. 72.
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Toronto Maple Leafs top pick Gavin McKenna has revealed that he’ll be opting for a new number for his rookie campaign. (Photo by Brian Babineau/NHLI via Getty Images)
The expectation was that McKenna would wear No. 72 with the Maple Leafs, and he did so this week at development camp. Plenty of fans have also already ordered No. 72 jerseys with his name on the back.
On most rosters, No. 72 is unique enough that he wouldn’t run into any issues wearing it. However, on July 1, the Leafs signed two-time Stanley Cup champion goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky, who has worn No. 72 for most of his career, except during his first two seasons with the Philadelphia Flyers, when he wore No. 35.
So, some were wondering how this would work out. Would the Leafs want their new franchise player to get his pick of the number litter, or would they defer to a two-time Vezina winner?
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Gavin McKenna wore No. 72 in juniors, as well as last season at Penn State. (Photo by Richard T Gagnon/Getty Images)
Well, it turns out that McKenna will be the one swapping numbers, and he’ll be switching to No. 92 this season.
McKenna had to get creative here because the obvious number changes were a no-go in Toronto. Adding 7 and 2 would be 9, but that was retired in honor of Charlie Conacher and Ted Kennedy.
Another option would’ve been to flip the digits and go with No. 27, but that was retired in honor of Frank Mahovlich and Darryl Sittler.
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So, 92 it is.
However, McKenna reached out to one of the three previous players to wear the number, Jeff O’Neill, to ask whether he was comfortable with him using it.
It’s fair to say he was down with the idea.
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McKenna will be a key piece of a Maple Leafs team that is looking to bounce back after a nightmare 2025-26 campaign that saw them finish last in the Atlantic Division.
Sports
Dodgers’ Eliezer Alfonzo praying his sister and stepmother will be found in Venezuela
It’ll be the culmination of nine minor-league seasons. But Eliezer Alfonzo‘s major-league debut on Sunday won’t include his family watching from Dodger Stadium.
Alfonzo’s younger sister, Eliana, and stepmother, Patricia, have been missing since last month when earthquakes caused widespread devastation in his home country of Venezuela.
“I’ve been trying to support my dad a lot, every day talking to him, trying to be with him,” Alfonzo said of the elder Eliezer Alfonzo, a retired major-league catcher. “It’s a little tough from here because I would like to be there with him, supporting him every day.”
His father, of course, would love to be in attendance for his son’s debut. He told him as much when he heard the Dodgers were calling him up.
The Dodgers switched their backup catchers Saturday, optioning Chuckie Robinson. They saw an opportunity to give Alfonzo some runway behind Dalton Rushing, with starting catcher Will Smith’s stay on the injured list expected to extend through the All-Star break.
The elder Eliezer Alfonzo, however, is doing whatever he can to locate his wife and daughter. Their dog was found alive, which gave the younger Eliezer Alfonzo hope.
“We’ve just gotta stay together as a family, as a country,” Alfonzo said. “Because I feel like we’re a beautiful country, we’re a really beautiful people over there. It’s not just about my family, it’s all families that have lost people already. But we’ve got hope. We just pray, we ask God to give them back to us alive.”
Alfonzo’s locker in the clubhouse is next to countryman Miguel Rojas’ stall. Rojas’ wife, Mariana, and their two children were in Venezuela, planning to renew Mariana’s passport and seek Venezuelan citizenship for their children, when the earthquakes hit. They managed to stay safe and have returned to the U.S.
“I just want to be here for him,” Rojas said. “At the end of the day, that’s the best thing I can do for him, is being a good teammate and being a friend for him. Because I know there’s going to be ups and downs. He’s going to have a lot of time to be caught [up] in baseball, and that’s going to probably take his mind away from stuff. But sometimes he’s probably going to feel weak, and he’s going to start thinking about his family. So I’m going to be here, I’m right next to him. And that’s what I told him.”
Rojas, who played against the elder Eliezer Alfonzo for years in Venezuela, reached out Saturday morning and promised him he’d save the ball from his son’s first major-league hit.
Sports
Kylian Mbappé’s seventh goal of the World Cup lifts France past Paraguay in physical Round of 16 match
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The United States may not have been in action on Independence Day, but France — who fittingly played an important role in the Revolutionary War — was on the pitch in Philadelphia against Paraguay in a massive Round of 16 clash for a trip to the quarterfinals.
It was a hot day in the birthplace of our nation, and that made things difficult for both teams in more ways than one.
While Paraguay is a great squad, they were significant underdogs against a heavily favored French team led by superstar Kylian Mbappé, who has been lighting it up this tournament.
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French and Paraguayan players get into a shoving match during their Round of 16 match on Saturday in Philadelphia. (Kyle Ross-Imagn Images)
Obviously, the heat itself is a factor, but it also made for a slower pitch, something that was believed to play into the hands of Paraguay.
However, most of the action in the first half was played on their end as France put the pressure on through the first half hour of the match.
It was intense, and that intensity boiled over in the 35th minute with some pushing and shoving after Mbappé and Paraguay’s Andrés Cubas started a wild shoving match.
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But while the intensity ramped up — and stayed high for pretty much the entire game — Paraguay weathered the storm and had every reason to feel good about reaching halftime with the game scoreless.
France got some more scoring opportunities in the early part of the second half, including a near-breakaway for Mbappé.
France’s Kylian Mbappe scored the go-ahead and ultimately game-winning goal against Paraguay on a penalty kick. (James Lang-Imagn Images)
In the 67th minute, France was awarded a penalty kick for a foul against Desire Doue that had to go to VAR for review, and it was Mbappé who took it.
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Mbappé has tended to do most of his damage in the second half, and that trend continued here with him drilling the penalty past Paraguay goaltender Orlando Gill.
That was his 19th career World Cup goal, and his seventh of this tournament alone, tying him with Argentina’s Lionel Messi for the tournament lead.
Paraguay seemed to fade after the Mbappé goal, but turned it on again late, forcing Mike Maignan to make his first save of the day about 89 and a half minutes into the match.
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It seemed like Paraguay’s plan was to try and get a rise out of the French, and they succeeded in drawing three yellow cards. In fact, they even tried to keep that going after the match with players meeting near midfield for some more pushing and shoving.
But France is moving on, and they will take on Morocco in a quarterfinal match on Thursday in Boston.
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