Sports
The Arizona Coyotes are gone. Someone please tell ex-owner Alex Meruelo
True to form, Alex Meruelo was defiant.
Whether in a meeting with Arizona Coyotes employees last Thursday or during a local radio interview later that afternoon or as he was sitting next to NHL commissioner Gary Bettman at a hotel in Phoenix the following day, Meruelo, the owner of the Coyotes since 2019, reacted to being forced to sell the franchise by the league by insisting he hadn’t lost it at all.
Sure, the Arizona Coyotes were moving to Salt Lake City. Sure, players and hockey operations employees were already meeting with a new owner and making plans to visit their facilities in Utah, and, sure, season ticket holders in Arizona were wondering when they would be refunded the deposits they’d put down for next season, but Meruelo’s relationship with that reality was, at best, casual.
On the “Burns and Gambo” radio show, he corrected one of the show’s hosts, insisting he was still the owner of the team, which was now simply “inactive.” He said he merely sent “players and hockey operations to Utah.” In the meeting with staff the next day, he told employees, who were worried about their jobs, that he refused to go down as the guy who lost the Coyotes. In a news conference with Bettman on Friday, the commissioner interjected on multiple occasions, jumping in to “translate” when Meruelo blurted out “I don’t like the media.” At one point, Bettman grabbed Meruelo’s arm to stop him from talking.
A thriving NHL franchise in Arizona has long been an oasis the league toiled toward. It is a vibrant market with a robust youth hockey scene, and it has long presented an opportunity to diversify hockey’s fanbase. But since the club’s inception in 1996 (the club moved from Winnipeg where it previously played as the Winnipeg Jets), the league and Coyotes fans have endured much in pursuit of that dream. There was a failed attempt to build in Scottsdale in 2001 and a move to Glendale in 2003. Six years later, in 2009, the NHL had to take control of the franchise after the team’s third owner put the team into bankruptcy. The past two seasons, the Coyotes played out of a 4,500-seat college facility after getting kicked out of their former arena following a battle over unpaid arena charges and more than $1.3 million in delinquent tax bills.
In forcing the sale of the Coyotes to Ryan Smith, owner of the NBA’s Utah Jazz, the league finally pulled the plug on its Arizona dream — at least for now. At the center of that failure is Meruelo. He was viewed as a potential savior of the franchise when he bought the team five years ago but became the final nail in its coffin, failing and defiant to the end.
Tact and grace were never Meruelo’s preferred approaches.
He made his wealth in real estate development and construction and also owns media companies and casinos. He was the first Hispanic owner to hold a majority stake in an NHL club — one located in a market that was, at the time he purchased the team, 42 percent Hispanic or Latino. Xavier Gutierrez, his top lieutenant and a longtime Meruelo confidant, became the league’s first Latino CEO and team president. Both were emphatic about their desire to connect with the fan base and rolled out a number of community-oriented initiatives to achieve the goal. Despite the fact Meruelo had a deal fall through for an NBA franchise years earlier (according to one report, the league felt the deal was too highly leveraged), the NHL hoped his deep pockets and reputation for revitalizing distressed assets would finally lift the franchise to stability.
It took just over a year for that optimism to crack. In August 2020, reports surfaced that he failed to pay players signing bonuses. Gutierrez blamed it on their lack of experience owning a sports franchise. As more vendors and employees began cropping up with complaints about unpaid invoices and strongarm tactics, it became clear that it was a feature of Meruelo’s business practices, not a bug.
Finding a long-term home for the Coyotes under Meruelo’s ownership quickly developed into his most vexing problem. In his first news conference, he addressed the need for a “financially sustainable” solution to the team’s arena woes. Given his real estate and construction background, there was optimism he’d be able to build a state-of-the-art arena as part of that plan. But as word of his business tactics made the rounds, distrust within the business and political communities grew. Instead of trying to forge inroads with power brokers and rebuild his reputation among local leaders, he was brash and arrogant. Former Tempe city councilmember Lauren Kuby recalled an interaction in which Meruelo remarked: “I bet you’ve never met a billionaire before.”
In February 2021, The Athletic published a report that Meruelo’s first 18 months of ownership was marred by a revolving door of executives, strained relationships with corporate partners, and a litany of financial issues, some made worse by the pandemic. The story, which drew from interviews with more than 50 people, detailed a pattern of unpaid bills and jilted vendors, a disastrous draft pick that earned them universal scorn and employees complaining about a toxic environment.
At a company draft party in the summer of 2021, he unexpectedly took the microphone, telling the crowd the team would leave Glendale and build a new facility in Tempe. Executives in attendance, including Gutierrez, grew visibly uncomfortable at his bombastic speech given the team’s fragile relationship with Glendale and the corporate partners in the audience.
“That was one of the first signs I had that we were really in trouble,” said a former employee. “He had no self-awareness whatsoever.”
Later that summer, the Coyotes were told they were being kicked out of their Glendale arena after the 2021-22 season, with the city manager describing the situation as the “point of no return.” Meruelo had played hardball in lease negotiations, certain the City of Glendale would never boot him from the building. For a man who owns casinos, he was an ineffectual bluffer.
It was a massive misstep. It meant the franchise had no suitable place to play while Meruelo attempted to get politicians, unions and voters behind a $2 billion development plan in Tempe that included a new arena. As he worked to secure that project, Meruelo’s years of hubris came back to bite him. Grassroots organizers pounded his track record and credit rating, citing a financial analysis commissioned by the Tempe City Council. Campaign materials characterized him as “corrupt,” “scandal-plagued” and a “deadbeat billionaire.” Local trade and worker unions lobbied against the plan. And Meruelo didn’t dive deep into his coffers to counteract that negative messaging. He said last week he poured $7 million into the referendum; campaign finance records show that he spent just over $1 million.
In May 2023, voters rejected the proposal, leaving the team again with no clear path to a suitable arena.
“I think the narrative in Tempe … is that they botched this campaign,” said Randy Keating, a Tempe City council member who supported the development proposal. “And they did.”
The clock on relocation began ticking once the proposal was voted down, yet Meruelo remained undeterred. In early March 2024, news broke that the team was eyeing state land in north Phoenix. The team was initially considering a 200-acre parcel in that area but that plan was “pared back” because of high infrastructure costs, Gutierrez later told The Arizona Republic. But bidding on the land required months of public notice; by the time the team secured a place on the agenda with the Arizona State Land Department in mid-March, the timeline became too “stretched,” according to Bettman.
In January, Ryan Smith publicly stated his intention to bring a team to Salt Lake City. In February 2023, NHLPA executive director Marty Walsh blasted the Coyotes and made it clear that the situation was untenable. He stressed the urgency of addressing the matter and applied pressure on the league to take action.
On March 6, Bettman and deputy commissioner Bill Daly met with Meruelo and asked whether he could look his players in the eyes and give them an honest answer of when they’d have an NHL-caliber home. He told them he could not. Over the next five weeks, a deal came together to send them to Utah for the 2024-25 season.
In a news conference on Friday, Bettman said the league decided it wasn’t fair for players to continue playing in a facility built to accommodate ASU’s hockey team and one-third the size of most of the league’s arenas. Meruelo called selling the franchise the most “painful decision in his life” — even though it was arguably not his decision.
As part of the sale, Meruelo will be given the exclusive right to bring a team back to the market, an effort that begins with the state land auction on June 27. Bettman said the league needs 18 months notice prior to reactivation and PHNX Sports reported that any arena must be 50 percent complete in order to trigger reactivation notice. According to Sportsnet, the “revival rights are non-transferable” and the $1 billion price tag to bring the Coyotes back is locked in. It is a path back into the NHL for Meruelo, but few people believe the league would allow that to happen.
“I have not witnessed a group more committed to doing things the wrong way and failing to develop any sort of meaningful support in the political community, business community and with the influential stakeholders they need to make this happen,” said David Leibowitz, a former communications consultant for the Coyotes who worked with three different owners, including Meruelo.
Said Keating: “I have zero faith they will be able to pull that off. The fact that he couldn’t build an arena when he had a team. Who’s going to build it now?” He added: “No one wants to do business with this guy. Why would you?”
Meruelo still exits with a golden parachute. Ryan and Ashley Smith of Smith Entertainment Group (SEG) purchased the team for $1.2 billion, $200 million of which will reportedly be divvied up among other NHL owners. Meruelo purchased the team for close to $450 million, according to two people familiar with the team’s finances. Even taking into consideration the franchise’s existing debts and yearly operating losses — which ranged from $50 to $70 million, those sources said — Meruelo is likely to net several hundred million dollars. One former employee, made aware of that fact, likened Meruelo’s tenure to that of a teenager who wrecks a car and then gets compensated with a Ferrari.
Employees within the franchise’s business side have been told their jobs are safe until the June 27 land auction. Meruelo said on Friday that those jobs will be evaluated over the next 60 days but that his intent “is to keep everything intact.” Those who remain behind have been told to focus efforts on the Tucson Roadrunners, the Coyote’s AHL affiliate that Meruelo still owns.
Last week, many of those employees and others from the past were at the anger stage of grieving. On social media, one former employee described a stint working for the organization as the worst four months of her life. A former in-game host revealed on X that the team tried to avoid paying the full amount of what she was contractually owed. Many employees attended the team’s final game in Arizona last Wednesday. Meruelo was conspicuously absent. He later claimed he didn’t attend because he was hammering out the final details of the sale of the team. In his absence, the mood was more Irish wake than funeral. Diehard fans stuck around for the final buzzer and long afterward. Players stayed on the ice in their gear and signed autographs. Employees congregated on the ice until their feet grew cold.
One young fan held up a sign that featured a border of Coyotes player photos. “THANK YOU FOR HELPING ME FALL IN LOVE WITH HOCKEY,” he wrote. In the center of the sign was a picture of Meruelo. Under that picture, in red, were the words:
“NOT YOU.”
— The Athletic’s Chris Johnston contributed to this report.
(Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic. Photos: Norm Hall, Scott Taetsch / Getty)
Sports
Can a team led by Division II transfers become college hoops’ most dangerous mid-major?
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Drake head coach Ben McCollum paced in the coaches’ locker room before speed-walking in to address his team.
His assistants had told him the players were a little quiet during warmups for the Wildcat Classic, a mid-December game against Kansas State in downtown Kansas City. Star point guard Bennett Stirtz attended the event they were about to play in as a fan a year ago. Isaiah Jackson, whose childhood home is 15 minutes from T-Mobile Center, had watched many games in the building but never stepped on the floor. When he walked through the tunnel for the first time, he took out his phone and captured the moment, then FaceTimed his parents after practice so they could see.
Stirtz and Jackson are two of the four starters who followed McCollum from Division II Northwest Missouri State when he was hired by Drake this offseason. They’d played in big games, but no environment like this. So McCollum decided to recycle a speech he’d given before the 2021 Division II national title game when he’d had a similar feeling.
“It’s always fascinating in these kinds of environments, what some people can do and what some people quite frankly can’t do, that they can do in a regular environment,” McCollum said.
He told his players to imagine there was a balance beam on the floor — four inches wide, five meters long. Could they walk across it? “Hell yeah you can,” he said.
Now raise it 10 feet in the air. You may think twice, but most could still make it.
Now what if it was 150 feet in the air?
“The same balance beam that you just told me you could walk across when it was on the ground because there was no repercussions to it, all of a sudden it lifts a little bit and you can’t walk across it anymore? Why?” McCollum asked. “Because you lost the ability to walk? No. You can still do that. Because you’re distracted by everything else around you.”
McCollum’s point: Block it out — the crowd, the noise — and just put one foot in front of the other.
A few hours later, the Bulldogs sprinted back into that locker room, knocking off a Big 12 team on a shot by Stirtz with 3.4 seconds left in overtime.
Drake opened 2025 as one of the final four undefeated teams in Division I, playing with a confidence reinforced by the results its leaders brought from the D-II ranks. The Bulldogs faced their first setback Wednesday, dropping their Missouri Valley Conference road opener 74-70 to UIC, but they’re off to a 12-1 start that no one saw coming, with three wins over high-major programs.
“They look good on film, but when you watch them in person, they’re even better,” said Vanderbilt coach Mark Byington, who called McCollum after Drake beat Vandy in November to ask if he’d get on a Zoom and talk through how he did it. “And what they’re better at in person is some details that you might not catch by watching film. And then when you see them in person, they hit every single detail.”
In 15 seasons at Northwest Missouri State, McCollum won 12 regular-season conference titles and four national titles. Long before he was coaching at their level, Division I coaches would mention that they’d been studying Northwest Missouri State’s offense. They expected McCollum to succeed in D-I, but not this much and this fast.
Meanwhile, McCollum’s players expect to win because they know McCollum is going to put them in the right places and always know exactly what to say.
“They’re a well-tuned machine,” Byington said. “I shook his hand after our game and told him this group can make a deep run in the (NCAA) Tournament. Not just win a game; they can make a run.”
Why did it take so long for McCollum to get a Division I job?
“I’m a slow trigger by nature,” McCollum said, “because I evaluate every decision quite a bit.”
In the last few years, McCollum was in the mix for several low- and mid-major openings, but he was always hesitant to move his family. Drake was a job he’d always eyed — he’s originally from Iowa, and it’s a program with a winning history in a strong league — but it still took him five days to accept after it was offered. “We had a good setup,” McCollum said. “And, you know, your culture doesn’t necessarily travel.”
That wasn’t necessarily true, because all it took to get three of his returning starters to go with him was one visit each to his office. If he were to go, would they come along? Stirtz, Jackson and Daniel Abreu said yes immediately.
Stirtz and Jackson both wanted their shot at D-I, too. They had the same two offers out of high school: William Jewell College and Northwest Missouri State.
Abreu, who did have two D-I offers in high school (Abilene Christian and Jacksonville), was ready for a challenge. “I was getting bored of the scouts after year two, playing the same teams over and over again,” Abreu said. “I can’t believe (McCollum) did it for that long.”
Those three yeses got McCollum off to a head start building the lineup he needed. Stirtz is the point guard who can do a little of everything; Jackson is the distributor and lockdown defender; the 6-6 Abreu plays with a physicality that allows him to guard up. McCollum had a big on the way in Cam Manyawu, a Wyoming transfer who followed assistant Bryston Williams to Drake.
The final piece needed was a shooter. McCollum had one at Northwest Missouri State but thought he was finished playing. Mitch Mascari had his MBA after five years in Maryville and had accepted a job as a credit analyst in asset management at First Trust Portfolios in Wheaton, Ill. He was supposed to start in two weeks, but after McCollum accepted the Drake job, Mascari started thinking maybe he too wanted his shot at D-I and put his name in the transfer portal on the final day it was open. McCollum called him right away, and Mascari asked McCollum what he thought he should do.
“Naturally, when you coach somebody for five years, you build up a level of trust and whatever probably opinion that I would have given him, he probably would have done it and listened,” McCollum said. “And so I couldn’t give him my opinion. I could just give him the positives and negatives of both. And then it was ultimately his decision to make and he chose to come and play.”
The one starter McCollum could not bring with him was Wes Dreamer, the conference player of the year who is now the leading scorer for a professional team in Germany. That meant McCollum had to do more teaching than his former Bearcats had witnessed before, and he had to rethink the team’s style of play.
Making this hot start even more unlikely is the possibility that McCollum may have as little depth as he’s ever had. Mascari has played every minute in five of the 13 games. Stirtz has come off the floor twice in the 11 games against D-I opponents — both in the final minute of comfortable wins over Stephen F. Austin and Belmont.
The offense is built around getting Mascari 3s and Stirtz a gap to drive, with Abreu making the occasional 3 and always looking for openings to cut. Whichever big is on the floor is a roller/cutter, and Jackson distributes while also providing timely drives or cuts to the basket. The former Bearcats have found in D-I that sometimes it takes more time to find a quality look, but they will exhaust every opportunity to get a great shot.
“We have to move it,” McCollum said. “All five guys have to connect to be able to create windows and avenues, to be able to get to the paint and get below the defense. We’ve had to invest in five or six different ways, where it’s just like if they guard this, then we have to go to this and this and that.”
Jackson says the difference between Division II and Division I is that these big schools play at a quicker pace and take “early, average shots.” McCollum has always believed that to beat good teams, you’re going to have to score against a set defense.
“We play a slower tempo because we don’t take bad shots, and we won’t take bad shots,” McCollum said. “We refuse to take them. And so it naturally slows the game down.”
McCollum’s players always feel like they have the answers to the test, and the coach has always been willing to scrap plans if the opponent throws a curveball. The offense is like a decision tree.
“A lot of our offense is predicated on how the defense reacts,” Mascari said. “So if a defense is reacting in a different way than we anticipated, we’re just going to do something else. Sometimes we’re walking down the floor, and we have no idea what we’re about to do. So how is the defense supposed to?”
Drake may lead the country in shot clock violations, which is part of the reason Drake is turning the ball over at one of the worst rates in college basketball — 20.5 percent of its possessions against D-I competition. The Bulldogs would rather run out the clock than take a mediocre shot, and they stay composed when the seconds tick away late in a possession. Against Vandy, they had three shot clock violations. “That never fazed them,” Byington said, noting Drake also made three late-clock 3s.
Defensively, the Bulldogs seem to rarely ever make a mistake, and McCollum is meticulous in demonstrating how to guard every action they will see, from the footwork to body position to where to be on the floor. He gives his players easy cues to remember.
“It’s not really what you know,” McCollum said. “It’s what they can comprehend and then execute.”
This may be the most impressive stat for Drake this season: Without one player taller than 6-8 in the rotation, Drake ranks 15th nationally in defensive rebounding rate and 17th in offensive rebounding rate. After getting out-rebounded by Stephen F. Austin in its first game against a Division I opponent, the Bulldogs have won the battle of the boards every game since. That aspect of this start astonishes even McCollum.
“They’re just destroying people on the boards,” McCollum said. “Defensive rebounding, we’ve always been No. 1 in the country (in Division II). Offensive rebounding, we’ve just been physical. We just go get the ball. Little chip on our shoulder.”
Three years ago Northwest Missouri State entered the season as the defending national champs with four starters returning. The Bearcats had gone 97-3 the previous three seasons. It was star guard Trevor Hudgins’ senior season.
And McCollum wanted them to fail.
Every preseason he puts his team through an exhausting conditioning test. Every player has to run 20 line drills and 20 down-and-backs in 20 minutes. You have to do both in one-minute windows and can’t start again until the beginning of each minute. If you don’t pass, you try again the next day. Before the test three years ago, the Bearcats had a hard lift — squats and resistance bands. They were being set up to fail. “Our legs were done,” Jackson said.
Jackson was the only player who made time, but McCollum still made him run the next day with all of his teammates because he wanted to see them all pass it together.
“They need to teach themselves to respond,” McCollum said. “You don’t just respond to failure well. You’ve got to develop that habit through failing and then figuring out the response to it.”
Against K-State, Drake found failure. After leading 29-9 early, K-State started to chip away late in the first half, going on a 14-2 run. “That crowd popped,” Stirtz leaned over to tell Mascari at halftime.
Mascari had been on fire, making all six of his 3s in the first half. But K-State mostly took him away in the second half, face-guarding him and Stirtz. Midway through the half, K-State sharpshooter Brendan Hausen got a clean look for the first time and buried it to tie the game. It felt like K-State was in control, with Drake looking tired and hopeless in the half court.
With 23.9 seconds left, Abreu went to the free-throw line, the Bulldogs’ first loss looming if he missed. During the under-16 timeout of the second half, Drake had broken its huddle early, and Abreu was joking with a security lady stationed at the free-throw line. McCollum affectionately calls him Buddy the Elf because he’s always in a good mood. A day earlier, Abreu said that he never watches basketball — he prefers movies — and his ignorance of the basketball world is a gift. “The nerves aren’t there because I just don’t know,” he said.
He buried both free throws to force overtime.
“They’re tough. I mean they’ll outlast ya,” McCollum said. “That’s the thing, like there’s a level of toughness. There’s a level of outlast. There’s a level of, you know, who’s going to take it further? And we’ve just tried to train them to be able to create those habits to take it a little bit further and fight a little bit more.”
In overtime, Stirtz found the little bit more.
He scored five of Drake’s first seven points in OT, and after K-State’s Coleman Hawkins buried a 3 with 12.3 seconds left to tie the game, Stirtz got the inbound pass and calmly jogged the ball up the floor. Drake set up with all four teammates lined up on the baseline and let Stirtz go to work. Stirtz crossed over, got Hausen on his heels and buried the game-winner.
That was a response.
The hero returned to his locker stall and sat. He leaned back, hands on his lap and stared straight ahead in a daze.
Stirtz is a K-State fan. His grandparents are football season-ticket holders. Both his older brothers went to K-State, and his younger brother plans to enroll there next year. His mom wore a K-State shirt under her Drake shirt in support of Stirtz’s girlfriend, a K-State dancer who watched his game winner from the opposite baseline. In high school, Stirtz sent his film to K-State coaches. Once he got his Northwest Missouri State offer, the only ones he would have considered were Division I offers. Those never came. When Stirtz committed to the Bearcats, McCollum told friends he thought he’d stolen one.
Byington marveled at how Stirtz and the three other former Bearcats ever ended up at that level: “Those guys are probably starters on most SEC teams.”
Hyperbole? Maybe. But not with Stirtz. He’s so good that NBA scouts are starting to take notice. And college basketball is taking notice of the Bulldogs. They were picked fifth in the Missouri Valley in the preseason coaches’ poll. They were projected to win the league before Wednesday’s loss at UIC, according to Ken Pomeroy’s metrics, and nationally they’ve been on the verge of getting ranked. In this week’s Associated Press poll, they received the second-most votes among teams outside the Top 25.
Stirtz is as unassuming a star as you’ll find. He never celebrates a made bucket. He’s quiet off the floor. But in that overtime, Stirtz wanted the ball and he wasn’t going to let the Bulldogs lose. Against the school he had dreamed of playing for, Stirtz realized the fact that he was being face-guarded meant the Wildcats didn’t think they could guard him, and he started to believe it himself.
“I ain’t one for individual s—,” McCollum told his team once he got to the celebratory locker room, “but damn, that’s a big shot.”
Then McCollum reminded his players of the satisfaction of what they’d just accomplished. He nearly went into the next challenge, before catching himself, “I’m not even going to ruin the moment,” he said. “Let’s just get our prayer and get out of here.”
The Bulldogs knelt, and Abreu delivered the perfect line. “Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for Bennett.”
Stirtz then headed to the news conference, where he informed the media that his game winner was the first buzzer beater of his life. Technically, there were still those 3.4 seconds on the clock, but that’s just about the only flaw in this script, which somehow keeps getting better.
(Photo: Mitchell Layton / Getty Images)
Sports
Sugar Bowl's corporate sponsor CEO slammed for 'addiction to divisiveness' statement after terror attack
Allstate CEO Tom Wilson ignited a firestorm of backlash on social media Thursday with a video statement addressing Wednesday’s terror attack in New Orleans that killed more than a dozen people.
Wilson’s statement came ahead of the Sugar Bowl, of which Allstate is the official corporate sponsor, after the game was postponed to Thursday due to the attack. In the video, Wilson suggested Americans have an “addiction to divisiveness” and must “accept people’s imperfections and differences.”
“Our prayers went to victims and their families. We also need to be stronger together by overcoming an addiction to divisiveness and negativity. Join Allstate working in local communities all across America to amplify the positive, increase trust and accept people’s imperfections and differences. Together we win,” Wilson says in the video.
Wilson’s words sparked outrage among social media users. The suspect has been identified as 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Jabbar. The FBI is working to determine Jabbar’s “potential associations and affiliations with terrorist organizations,” after an ISIS flag was found affixed to the truck.
Political activist Charlie Kirk spoke out against Wilson for his comments amid Jabbar’s suspected ties to ISIS.
Sean Davis, CEO and co-founder of conservative magazine The Federalist, suggested it’s time to cancel Allstate insurance plans.
Sports content creator Jon Root spoke out against Wilson and mocked his comments.
SUPERDOME WELCOMES SUGAR BOWL FANS AFTER NEW ORLEANS TERROR ATTACK
Injury lawyer Adam Loewy not only condemned Wilson’s statement, he called out Allstate as a company in response to the controversy.
Other smaller social media users have expressed their own grievances and intent to end their insurance plans in response to Wilson.
“What was Allstate thinking with that statement[?] I have just canceled my policy and signed up with State Farm,” one user wrote.
“That limp-wristed Allstate commercial about the terrorist attack is just what I needed to know that I won’t give them my business,” another wrote.
And one user even called the commercial “The worst, most ill-conceived of the college football season.”
Jabbar’s younger brother told the New York Times that he and his Army veteran brother were raised Christian in Beaumont, Texas, before the now-deceased attacker converted to Islam as an adult.
“What he did does not represent Islam,” the younger brother said. “This is more some type of radicalization, not religion.”
Retired FBI agents Scott Duffey and Chris Swecker told Fox News Digital that Wednesday’s attack could embolden ISIS, other terrorist groups or individuals who have been radicalized.
“This is a time where ISIS is under extreme stress and their existence is being threatened in Syria and elsewhere. It would make sense for them to double down on their message to radicalize Americans to put them into action and activate any cells that they have in place,” Swecker said.
Days before the attack, a pro-ISIS outlet called on Muslims living in the U.S., Europe and Russia to conduct attacks on New Year’s Eve.
“Oh monotheists in Europe, America, Russia and other lands of the Crusaders, we know that you are eager to join your brothers in the land of Jihad, but the paths have been cut off for you,” a translated version of the post read on Sunday. “The Crusaders are among you. Their security has been prolonged, and your brothers are being killed.
“The time has come to take out the swords from their sheaths and to hamstring the horses in their places that Allah loves and is pleased with,” the post continued. “They are preparing for the feast of their polytheism, so turn their feast into mourning and their joy into a calamity.”
The outlet asked Muslims, or “Crusaders,” if they felt safe in their homes as their brothers and sisters were in detention centers and camps before calling on them to “repeat the attack on them and repeat the days of those who preceded you on this path.”
The attack in New Orleans comes nearly two weeks after a suspected terror attack on a Christmas market in Germany.
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Sports
'It's the only show in town': UCLA will face far more hostile road crowds in Big Ten
When Tyler Bilodeau, Kobe Johnson and the other UCLA starters approach center court for tipoff against Nebraska on Saturday inside Pinnacle Bank Arena, the roars from a sold-out crowd washing over them, one thing will be thunderously clear.
They’re not in Gill Coliseum, Maples Pavilion or any of the other sleepy Pac-12 arenas anymore.
Noise will be a constant companion as UCLA navigates its first Big Ten schedule. Nine conference teams are averaging at least 10,000 fans for home games, with Indiana’s average of 16,514 leading the way. Purdue ranks second with 14,876 fans per home game, followed closely by Nebraska (14,848), Michigan State (14,797) and Illinois (14,789).
“I don’t think I can name a single Big Ten stadium where their fans don’t come and, like, show out and support and they’re talking trash,” said UCLA junior guard Skyy Clark, a veteran of the experience after having spent his freshman season at Illinois. “It definitely gets loud and rowdy, so it’s a fun environment to play in.”
Well, maybe not always for the visitors.
Nebraska (11-2 overall, 1-1 Big Ten) has won 19 consecutive games on its home court during a streak that began in December 2023. With a victory over the No. 15 Bruins (11-2, 2-0), the Cornhuskers would tie the school record of 20 straight home wins they set twice previously.
UCLA coach Mick Cronin understands the challenge that awaits after having taken Cincinnati to Pinnacle Bank Arena in December 2014, when his Bearcats lost in double overtime. At the time, Cronin called the 15,147-seat facility “probably, outside of Louisville, the best arena I’ve ever been in.”
The atmosphere Saturday will certainly be more raucous than what the Bruins experienced in the Pac-12, where some libraries might have been louder than the basketball arenas.
Often it seemed as if the wrestling and basketball banners hanging from the rafters inside Oregon State’s Gill Coliseum outnumbered the fans.
Washington State players once made a habit of venturing into the stands to personally thank fans who showed up inside Beasley Coliseum, the goodwill gesture needing only a few minutes to complete.
At Maples Pavilion, UCLA blue often eclipsed Stanford red.
“There’s some schools — obviously we’re not in their league anymore — you go play in those places and there’s 1,000 people and it’s cold and you’re paranoid because your guys can’t get going, there’s just no energy in the building,” Cronin said this week.
Arizona was the only Pac-12 team to average at least 10,000 fans for home games during the conference’s final season. Oregon State, Stanford and Washington State averaged fewer than 4,000 fans, with California barely topping that threshold at 4,022.
There will be a carryover effect in the Big Ten given that all four newcomers from the Pac-12 rank in the bottom five in home attendance, with USC’s average of 3,872 the lowest and UCLA ranking next to last with an average of 4,830.
The Bruins can expect more than double those figures almost every time they board a plane for the Midwest or the East Coast.
“In those college towns,” Cronin said, “it’s the only show in town, so they get great attendance. … So the energy won’t be a problem in the building in those places. You better play with toughness, you better travel your defense because teams with home crowds like that tend to play harder and I think it’s fool’s gold to think you’re going to go into those type of places and score 80 points.”
The Bruins might also want to pack their winter coats. The forecast for Lincoln, Neb., on Saturday calls for a high of 24 degrees, giving Cronin a chance to use the ski mask and gloves his brother, Dan, bought him for Christmas.
“I was like, ‘Yo, man, I live in Southern California,’ ” Mick Cronin said, “and he’s like, ‘You’re in the Big Ten.’ How about that? The guy’s a comedian.”
Injury updates
Cronin said forward William Kyle III was probably out for the game against Nebraska but could return as soon as Tuesday against Michigan after undergoing surgery for an undisclosed condition.
Forward Eric Dailey Jr. is expected to wear a mask “for the foreseeable future” after absorbing a shot to the face against North Carolina last month, Cronin said.
In his first game wearing the mask, against Gonzaga, Dailey made four of five three-pointers. “He may not take it off the rest of the year,” Cronin cracked.
Etc.
Former UCLA forward Berke Buyuktuncel is averaging 7.9 points and a team-leading 6.6 rebounds in his first season at Nebraska. “I’m happy for him,” Cronin said. “He’s definitely gotten stronger and I think he fits into what they do.” Bruins forward Lazar Stefanovic said he looked forward to reuniting with his former roommate. “The thing I loved about him was when we would play video games, he would make, like, all the jokes and stuff and everybody in the apartment would have a lot of fun with it,” Stefanovic said. “And he was good at video games.” … UCLA made 42.9% of its three-pointers in December, raising its accuracy from long range for the season to 37.1%. “The advantage we have in our starting lineup,” Cronin said, “is everybody can shoot.”
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