BASKETBALL
Trey Davis scored a season-high 43 points as the Maine Red Claws held on to defeat the Westchester Knicks 116-111 Sunday at White Plains, New York.
Yante Maten added 25 points and seven rebounds for Maine, which was without two-way players Tremont Waters and Tacko Fall. Fall left the game after two minutes with an undisclosed injury. Wayne Blackshear had 18 points off the bench, and John Bohannon had seven points, 11 rebounds and seven assists, in 31 minutes.
Lamar Peters led the Knicks with 24 points and 11 assists.
The Knicks outscored Maine 41-27 in the fourth quarter but their comeback fell short. Ignas Brazdeikis, the New York Knicks’ 2019 second-round pick had 15 points, nine rebounds and five assists, and JJ Moore added 21 points.
USA MEN: USA Basketball is off to a rolling start in the qualifying for next year’s FIBA AmeriCup.
Kyle Fogg scored 18 points, Justin Anderson added 17 and the U.S. defeated Puerto Rico 95-73 to improve to 2-0 in the qualifiers.
The two wins in this window of qualifying virtually ensures that the U.S. – which is being coached by Mike Fratello for these games, with a roster composed mostly of G League players – will qualify for the AmeriCup. All that’s required to make that field is to finish third or better in a four-team division; besides the U.S. and Puerto Rico, the other teams in that group are Mexico and the Bahamas.
BASEBALL
MAJORS: Mookie Betts led off and played right field against the Chicago Cubs at Camelback Ranch at Glendale, Arizona, in his first game with the Dodgers,
Betts received an enthusiastic welcome from the sellout crowd of 13,282 when he was introduced before the game with the rest of the Dodger starters and again when he batted in the first inning.
He flied out to left in his first at-bat, flied deep to right in the third inning and drove in a run with a sacrifice fly to center in the fifth inning before coming out of the game.
• Free-agent second baseman Brian Dozier and the San Diego Padres reached agreement on a minor league contract with an invitation to big league spring training.
GOLF
PGA: Viktor Hovland won the Puerto Rico Open to become the first Norwegian winner in tour history, chipping in for eagle on the par-5 15th and racing in a 30-footer for birdie on the par-5 18th for a one-stroke victory over Josh Teater.
WORLD GOLF: Patrick Reed, who was two shots behind with four holes to play, ran off three straight birdies to overtake a faltering Bryson DeChambeau, closing with a 4-under 67 for his second tour title, at Mexico City.
TENNIS
RIO OPEN: Third-seeded Cristian Garin beat Italian qualifier Gianluca Mager 7-6 (3), 7-5 in the rain-hit final at Rio de Janeiro.
Both semifinals were finished Sunday afternoon after rain halted play shortly after midnight when Garin and Mager had already won the first set.
Garin quickly beat fifth-seeded Borna Coric 6-4, 7-5. But the 128th-ranked Mager had a tougher time in finishing off Balazs, eventually prevailing 7-6 (4), 4-6, 7-6 (2).
DELRAY BEACH OPEN: Fourth-seeded Reilly Opelka worked overtime and won two matches, topping Yoshihito Nishioka 7-5, 6-7 (4), 6-2 to take the championship at Delray Beach, Florida. Opelka defeated second-seeded Milos Raonic 4-6, 7-6 (6), 6-3 in a rain-delayed semifinal, then returned to the court a few hours later for the final.
OPEN 13: Stefanos Tsitsipas beat Felix Auger-Aliassime 6-3, 6-4 to retain the title at Marseille, France.
SKIING
WOMEN’S WORLD CUP: Federica Brignone now leads the overall standings ahead of Mikaela Shiffrin after winning an Alpine combined event at Crans-Montana, Switzerland.
By earning 100 World Cup points, Brignone opened a gap of 73 to three-time defending champion Shiffrin, who has taken an extended break from racing after the death of her father in Colorado.
Shiffrin’s return is unclear with up to 12 points-scoring events left at five different venues until the season ends March 22 in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. Several races are in her specialist slalom and giant slalom disciplines.
BOBSLED
WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS: Francesco Friedrich of Germany is now the most decorated driver in the history of bobsledding’s world championships, winning his record-setting 10th gold medal at Alterberg, Germany.
Friedrich and brakeman Thorsten Margis finished off an easy win in the two-man event, completing their four runs in 3 minutes, 40.44 seconds. That was 1.65 seconds faster than silver medalists Johannes Lochner and Christopher Weber of Germany – and represented the biggest winning margin at a world title race in bobsled in 12 years.
Latvia got the bronze, with Oskars Kibermanis and Matiss Miknis finishing 1.79 seconds behind Friedrich.
LUGE
WORLD CUP: Russia’s Aleksandr Denisev and Vladislav Antonov were easy winners of a watered-down doubles luge race at Winterberg, Germany, as many of the circuit’s top sliders sat out in protest over track conditions.
Denisev and Antonov won by more than six-tenths of a second, a massive margin in luge. Latvia’s Oskars Gudramovics and Peteris Kalnins took the silver, and Poland pulled off a surprise with Wojciech Jerzy Chmielewski and Jakub Kowalewski taking the bronze.
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