Washington
SMU surges back with big second half to beat Washington State in Acrisure Invitational
SMU (6-2) shot 55% from the field in the second half, and going a perfect 13-of-13 from the free throw line in outscoring Washington State 50-29 after the intermission.
SMU missed its first nine shots on Wednesday, and shot just 31% from the field in the first half in the Acrisure Holiday Invitational championship game against Washington State.
But in what felt like a tale of two halves, the Mustangs managed to find their way back and cruise to a decisive 77-60 win over the Cougars inside Acrisure Arena.
“We just started throwing it into our bigs and our bigs began making plays,” SMU senior guard Boopie Miller said. “They threw it back out to us when (WSU) came to trap and our shots started falling.”
College basketball continues inside Acrisure Arena on Thursday, with four men’s games. The day starts with TCU taking on Santa Clara and will continue with Washington facing Colorado State, USC meeting Saint Mary’s and New Mexico matching up with Arizona State in the Acrisure Classic.
On Tuesday, in the Acrisure Invitational title game, SMU turned a game that they trailed at halftime into what looked like an easy victory, at least at the end.
SMU (6-2) shot 55% from the field in the second half, and going a perfect 13-of-13 from the free throw line in outscoring Washington State 50-29 after the intermission.
“There’s going to be games like this,” Miller said. “But we’ve just got to keep believing in ourselves and in our shots and just lock them up on defense and I think we did that tonight.”
SMU held Washington State (6-2) to 37% from the field for the game and 30% from beyond the arc.
Miller led all scorers with 16 points in the game. A day earlier, his game-winning shot lifted the Mustangs over Cal Baptist inside Acrisure Arena.
Nate Calmese led Washington State with 15 points.
The Mustangs won’t play again until Tuesday against Alabama State. Washington State will play at Nevada on Monday.
This week marked the first time both teams played inside Acrisure Arena. Miller said that it’s been a fun experience coming out to the desert to play in what he thinks will be a worthwhile experience for teams in the future.
“It’s amazing out here, man,” Miller said. “I’m a kid from Chicago, so just coming out here and exploring the world out here is amazing to me and I know my teammates appreciate it, too.”
Andrew John covers sports for The Desert Sun and the USA TODAY Network. Email him at andrew.john@desertsun.com.
Trinity Rodman signs record deal with Washington Spirit
USWNT forward Trinity Rodman signed a three-year deal with the NWSL’s Washington Spirit. The deal makes Rodman the highest-paid female footballer in the world.
unbranded – Sport
Washington Spirit goalkeeper Aubrey Kingsbury has announced that she and her husband Matt are expecting a baby in July.
The couple made the announcement in a video on the Spirit’s social media channels, holding a baby goalkeeper jersey on the pitch at Audi Field.
Kingsbury becomes the most recent Spirit star to go on maternity leave, following defender Casey Krueger, midfielder Andi Sullivan and forward Ashley Hatch.
Sullivan gave birth to daughter Millie in July, while Hatch welcomed her son Leo in January.
Krueger announced she was pregnant with her second child in October.
Kingsbury has served as the Spirit’s starting goalkeeper since 2018, and has been named the NWSL Goalkeeper of the Year twice (2019 and 2021).
The 34-year-old has two caps with the U.S. women’s national team, and was named to the 2023 World Cup roster.
The club captain will leave a major void for the Spirit, who have finished as NWSL runner-up in back-to-back seasons.
Sandy MacIver and Kaylie Collins are expected to compete for the starting role while Kingsbury is on maternity leave.
The Spirit kick off their 2026 campaign on March 13 against the Portland Thorns.
YAKIMA, Wash. — Yakima could soon take a major step toward redesigning Sixth Avenue after the Washington State Public Works Board awarded the city a $985,600 loan.
The loan was approved for the design engineering phase of the Sixth Avenue project. The funding can also be used along Sixth Avenue for utility replacement and updated ADA use.
The Yakima City Council must decide whether to accept the award. If the council accepts it, the city’s engineering work will move forward with the design of Sixth Avenue.
The cost of installing trolley lines is excluded from the plan. The historic trolleys would need to raise the funds required to add trolley lines.
The award is scheduled to be discussed during next week’s City Council meeting.
Microsoft will ramp up its investment in the University of Washington.
Brad Smith, the company’s president, made the announcement at a press conference with University of Washington President Robert Jones on Tuesday.
That means hiring more UW graduates as interns at Microsoft, he said.
And he said all students, faculty, and researchers should have access to free, or at least deeply-discounted, AI.
“ Some of it is compute that Microsoft is donating, and some of it is pursuant to an agreement where, believe me, we give the University of Washington probably the best pricing that anybody’s gonna find anywhere,” Smith said. He assured the small group of reporters present that it would be “many millions of dollars of additional computational resources.”
The announcement today didn’t include any specific numbers.
But Smith said Microsoft has already invested $165 million in the UW over several decades.
He pointed to Jones’ vision to spur “radical collaborations with businesses and communities to advance positive change,” and eliminate “any artificial barriers between the university and the communities it serves.”
Microsoft’s goal is for AI to help UW researchers solve some of the world’s biggest problems without introducing new ones.
At Tuesday’s announcement, several research students were present to demonstrate how AI supports their work.
Amelia Keyser-Gibson is an environmental scientist at the UW. She’s using AI to analyze photographs of vines, to find which adapt best to climate change.
It’s a paradox: AI produces carbon emissions. At the same time, it’s also a new tool to help reduce them.
So how do those things square for Keyser-Gibson?
“ That’s a great question, and honestly, I don’t know the answer to that,” she said. “I’m highly aware that there’s a lot of environmental impact of using AI, but what I can say is that this has allowed us to make research innovations that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.”
“If we had had to manually annotate every single image that would’ve been an undergrad doing that for hours,” Keyser-Gibson continued. “And we didn’t have the budget. We didn’t have the manpower to do that.”
“AI exists. If we don’t use it as researchers, we’re gonna fall behind.”
Microsoft reports on its own carbon emissions. But like most AI companies, it doesn’t reveal everything.
That’s one reason another UW student named Zhihan Zhang is using AI to estimate how much energy AI is using.
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