Hometown Broadcasting Sports Tuesday 5/26/20
26 May 2020 Sports
The NHL Players’ Association’s executive committee authorized moving forward in talks with the league on returning to play from the coronavirus suspension, approving 24 teams making the playoffs with other aspects still to be negotiated
In giving the format the green light, the NHLPA stressed several details still need to be negotiated before games can begin. The proposal will now go to the NHL board of governors, which is expected to approve the plan in the next few days. Once approved, the proposal effectively ends the season of the league’s bottom seven teams.
Under the plan proposed by the NHL/NHLPA Return To Play committee, the top four teams in each conference would play each other in a mini-tournament for seeding while the remaining 16 teams face off in a best-of-five series play-in round to set the final 16 to compete for the Stanley Cup. The next step would have the Return To Play committee sort out a host of other issues, ranging from health and safety protocols to determining where games will be played, with the league preparing to group teams in a select number of hub cities.
Las Vegas has become the city most mentioned as a potential site, particularly because of its large concentration of hotels that could house numerous teams. Other cities mentioned include Columbus, Ohio; Nashville, Tennessee; Raleigh, North Carolina; St. Paul, Minnesota; and Edmonton, Alberta.
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The NBA is in talks with The Walt Disney Company on a single-site scenario for a resumption of play in Central Florida in late July, the clearest sign yet that the league believes the season can continue amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The National Basketball Players Association is also part of the talks with Disney. Games would be held at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex, a massive campus on the Disney property near Orlando.
NBA spokesman Mike Bass said the conversations were still “exploratory,” and that the site would be used not only for games but for practices and housing as well.
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Eddie Sutton, who waited so long to be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, couldn’t hang on long enough to make it to the ceremony.
The man who led three teams to the Final Four and was the first coach to take four schools to the NCAA Tournament, died Saturday. He was 84.
Sutton died of natural causes at home in the Tulsa, Oklahoma, area, surrounded by his three sons and their families. His wife, Patsy, died in 2013.
Elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame on April 3, Sutton fell short as a finalist six times before finally being selected. He had said he believed that a scandal that ended his stint at Kentucky was likely the culprit for his lengthy wait. The NCAA announced 18 allegations against the program in 1988, and he resigned in 1989.
Sutton was 806-328 in 37 seasons as a Division I head coach — not counting vacated victories or forfeited games — and made it to 25 NCAA Tournaments. He led Final Four squads at Arkansas in 1978 and Oklahoma State in 1995 and 2004. He took Creighton, Arkansas, Kentucky and Oklahoma State to the NCAA Tournament. He was Associated Press Coach of the Year in 1978 at Arkansas and in 1986 at Kentucky.
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NBA legend Patrick Ewing is out of the hospital after recently testing positive for COVID-19. Ewing’s son, Patrick Ewing Jr., announced Monday that his father has returned home and is “getting better.” The elder Ewing, the head coach at Georgetown University, announced his positive test on Friday.
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In NASCAR’s new normal, with a Memorial Day race in a stretch of four national events in four days, Kyle Busch returned to the old normal — winning. But for Busch to secure his record 97th victory in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, the driver of the No. 54 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota had to make a last-lap pass of Austin Cindric, who blew past Busch during an overtime restart in Monday’s Alsco 300 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Helped by a spate of cautions over the final 50 laps, Busch survived a pit-road speeding penalty and claimed his first Xfinity win of the season and his ninth at Charlotte. He won for the first time in five national series starts during a stretch of seven races in 11 days, as NASCAR has returned to action after a 10-week hiatus necessitated by the coronavirus pandemic. Daniel Hemric finished second, followed by Austin Cindric, Ross Chastain and Justin Allgaier to round out the top five.
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Tiger Woods and Peyton Manning held on to win by one stroke over Phil Mickelson and Tom Brady to win The Match: Champions for Charity event on Sunday in Florida. The match raised $20 million for Covid 19 relief efforts.
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