4/3/23 Hometown Broadcasting Sports Monday
3 April 2023 Sports
Monday Sports
From Wayne Mausser
Giannis Antetokounmpo had 33 points, 14 rebounds and six assists and the Milwaukee Bucks beat the Philadelphia 76ers 117-104 on Sunday night to move a step closer to the top playoff seed in the Eastern Conference.
The Bucks (56-22) have a two-game lead over Boston (54-24) with four games left. Boston won the season series with Milwaukee and has the tiebreaker. Philadelphia (51-27) is third in the East.
Brook Lopez scored 21 points, Khris Middleton had 19 and Jrue Holiday and Bobby Portis each added 18 as the Bucks shot 57.5%. Middleton also had nine assists.
Tyrese Maxey had 29 points and Joel Embiid 28 for the 76ers.
The Bucks bounced back three nights after a 140-00 los to Boston that matched their most-lopsided defeat of the season. The Bucks never trailed thanks to a blistering start that enabled them to build a 31-15 lead. Milwaukee made its first first eight shots from the floor and 12 of its first 13. The Bucks were 5 of 5 from 3-point range during that stretch. The Bucks eventually led by 20 during a first half in which they shot 67.4%.
After making their first five 3-point attempts of the night, the Bucks missed 14 of their next 15. But after the Bucks’ lead dwindled to four with about four minutes left in the third quarter, Bobby Portis ended the dry spell by sinking a 27-footer.
Grayson Allen left midway through the third quarter with a sprained right ankle.. The Bucks are at Washington on Tuesday night.
Jesse Winker had two hits and three RBIs, including a key two-run single in Milwaukee’s five-run sixth inning, and the Brewers beat Jameson Taillon and the Chicago Cubs 9-5 on Sunday.
Christian Yelich, Garrett Mitchell and Brice Turang also had two hits apiece — part of a 13-hit attack for Milwaukee in the rubber game of the opening set between NL Central rivals. Eric Lauer (1-0) pitched 5 1/3 innings of two-run ball, settling down after a shaky start.
Winker was acquired in a December trade with Seattle. He had a pinch RBI single in the eighth inning of Milwaukee’s 3-1 win on Saturday.
Taillon (0-1) was charged with three runs and seven hits in four innings in his Chicago debut. The 6-foot-5 right-hander signed a $68 million, four-year contract in free agency — one of the biggest moves in a busy offseason for the Cubs.
Patrick Wisdom hit two solo homers for Chicago, which won 4-0 on Thursday on opening day. Dansby Swanson went 1 for 4 with a walk and an RBI single.
Milwaukee went ahead to stay on Mitchell’s RBI triple in the fourth, and then broke it open in the sixth. Winker’s single into the gap in left-center drove in Turang and Joey Wiemer for a 5-2 lead. Willy Adames followed with another RBI single against Julian Merryweather. Brian Anderson added a sacrifice fly and Mitchell had another run-scoring single as the Brewers sent 10 batters to the plate.
Trailing 9-3 in the eighth, Yan Gomes nearly hit a grand slam for Chicago, but he had to settle for a sacrifice fly when Wiemer caught his drive at the wall in right field. A Cody Bellinger fielder’s choice drove in another run before Wisdom was retired, ending the inning.
Brewers RHP Freddy Peralta starts Milwaukee’s home opener on Monday against the New York Mets. RHP Carlos Carrasco pitches for the Mets in the opener of a three-game set.
Elsewhere in the NL Central, the Reds beat the Pirates 3-1. The Cardinals were off.
Kim Mulkey returned home to Louisiana wanting to bring LSU its first basketball championship. The Hall of Fame coach did just that in only her second year at the school. Her Tigers used a record offensive performance to beat Caitlin Clark and Iowa 102-85 on Sunday and win the first basketball title, men’s or women’s, in school history.
Mulkey now has the third-most national titles behind Geno Auriemma’s 11 and Pat Summitt’s eight. Mulkey has never lost in a championship game. The 102 points broke the previous high for a championship game, surpassing the 97 that Texas scored against Southern California in 1986.
Jasmine Carson scored 22 points, Alexis Morris added 21 and Angel Reese had 15 points and 10 rebounds for LSU (34-2).
Trailing by 21 points early in the third quarter, Iowa started hitting from the outside to go on a 15-2 run, hitting four 3-pointers and converting a 3-point play to get within 65-57.
The Hawkeyes (31-7) trailed 73-64 with 1:03 left in the third quarter when Clark was called for a technical foul. She swatted the ball away on the floor after a foul call against a teammate. That counted as a personal foul for her, her fourth of the game. Clark played the entire fourth quarter with four fouls but couldn’t get the Hawkeyes much closer.
The game was tight for the first 15 minutes before Carson got hot from the outside. She made all six of her shots in the second quarter, including four 3-pointers. After one of them, she threw her hands in the air, which Mulkey mimicked on the sidelines.
For good measure, the graduate student banked in a shot just before the halftime buzzer to give the Tigers a 59-42 lead at the break. It was the most points ever in the first half of a championship game, breaking the record held by Tennessee since 1998.
LSU shot 58% from the field in the opening 20 minutes, including going nine for 12 from behind the arc. The Tigers finished the game shooting 54% from the field, including making 11 of 17 3-pointers.
Clark had 16 points and five assists before picking up her third foul with 3:56 to go in the half, which didn’t go over well with the sellout crowd of more than 19,000 fans. She finished with a game-high 30 points.
Four years after becoming a winner on the PGA Tour, Corey Conners has added another Texas Open title to his résumé. Finishing the week at TPC San Antonio at 15 under, Conners utilized a stellar final round to usurp Patrick Rodgers and fend off a surging Sam Stevens and Sam Ryder. While the victory this season was far less of the Cinderella story of 2019 — Conners memorably Monday qualified through a six-man playoff en route to winning — it was nevertheless ideal with the first major championship of the season knocking on the door.
Stevens finished a shot-behind at 14-under and Ryder was 13-under.
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