Benjamin Machetti broke a scoreless tie with just over 10 minutes to play in regulation and Michael Torres scored an insurance goal from long range in the 89th minute as St. Joseph of Connecticut topped top-seeded St. Joseph’s 2-0 Wednesday in a Great Northeast Athletic Conference men’s soccer semifinal at Standish.

Mike Sheridan stopped three shots for the Monks (13-6-1), and Matthew Goebel turned away seven shots for the shutout.

The Blue Jays (12-3-3) will play the championship game at Johnson & Wales on Saturday.

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL

COACHING DIVERSITY: The Atlantic Coast and Southeastern conferences have led the way among the so-called power leagues in hiring coaches of color to lead women’s basketball programs.

The two conferences each have five Black head coaches, including three women changing jobs in the most recent cycle: Texas A&M’s Joni Taylor, Syracuse’s Felisha Legette-Jack and Virginia’s Amaka Agugua-Hamilton. Four of the ACC coaches are Black women and Virginia Tech’s Kenny Brooks is the only Black male head coach of a women’s team at a Power Five school.

The total number doesn’t suggest a major shift over the past two seasons across 65 Power Five schools with 14 Black women being in charge of teams – up one from 2021. That’s less than 22% of the total in a sport that was played by more Black athletes (40.7%) than any other race, according to a report with data from the 2020-21 season.

Still, hiring trends are leaning toward more equality with five of the 12 openings in the Power Five conferences this past offseason going to women of color.

“It’s a very solid number,” Richard Lapchick, who is the head of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at Central Florida, said of the ACC and SEC. “If that persisted over a number of years, I think there would be a lot of happy Black women head coaches spread across the Power Five conferences that aren’t there now.”

Lapchick also pointed to the fact that the ACC has two Black female athletic directors (at Duke and at Virginia). The SEC also has two female minority ADs, at Vanderbilt and Missouri.

“I think there is something to be said about leaders making decisions,” Duke AD Nina King said. “You have a diverse group and you’ll bring a diverse group of coaches to the table.”

MEN’S BASKETBALL

KANSAS: Kansas suspended Hall of Fame coach Bill Self and top assistant Kurtis Townsend for the first four games of the season, along with imposing several recruiting restrictions, as part of the fallout from a lengthy FBI investigation into college basketball corruption.

Norm Roberts will be the acting coach for the defending national champions beginning with their opener Monday night against Omaha. Self and Townsend also will miss games against North Dakota State and Southern Utah along with a high-profile showdown between the No. 5 Jayhawks and No. 7 Duke in the Champions Classic.

Self and Townsend will rejoin the team to face North Carolina State at the Battle 4 Atlantis in the Bahamas on Nov. 23.

The school already had barred the two coaches from off-campus recruiting this past summer. It will also reduce the number of official visits during the 2023-24 academic year, reduce the total number of scholarships by three over a three-year span and reduce the number of permissible recruiting days during the upcoming year by 13 days.

The infractions case against Kansas stems from a federal investigation in 2017 that led to the conviction of shoe company executives, a middleman who worked with them and several assistant coaches.

Kansas was among the schools named in the case, along with Arizona, LSU, Louisville and N.C. State.

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