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🚨 Headlines
🏀 College hoops scoreboard: Seton Hall upset No. 5 UConn, No. 21 Duke beat No. 10 Baylor, Villanova knocked off No. 12 Creighton and No. 11 UNC handed No. 7 Oklahoma its first loss. Full scoreboard.
🏒 36th season: 51-year-old Jaromir Jagr began his 36th professional hockey season on Wednesday, recording an assist for his hometown Kladno Knights in the Czech league.
🏈 “Deflategate” flashback: Certain footballs during the Chiefs win over the Patriots were underinflated by two pounds. The balls were 11 pounds per square inch; rules state they must be 12.5-13.5 PSI.
🏀 Comanche admits to murder: NBA G League player Chance Comanche has admitted to fatally strangling a woman in Las Vegas earlier this month, one day before his team’s game.
🎓 Pac-12 to WCC: Oregon State and Washington State, the two remaining Pac-12 schools, are working on an agreement to join the West Coast Conference for non-football sports.
🏀 Joel Embiid is unstoppable
Joel Embiid is having one of the best scoring seasons in NBA history, and the 29-year-old is beginning to build his case as arguably the most prolific scorer we’ve ever seen.
His latest feat: The reigning MVP scored a season-high 51 points on Wednesday against the NBA’s top-ranked defense, leading the 76ers to a 127-113 win over three-time Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert and the Timberwolves.
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Scoring: He’s now scored 30+ points in 13 straight games and 40+ points in three straight games. This was his second 50-point game this month.
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Scoring + rebounding: Embiid joins Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Wilt Chamberlain, Elgin Baylor and Walt Bellamy as the only players with 12 straight games of 30+ points and 10+ rebounds.
Crazy numbers: Embiid is scoring a league-best 35.1 points per game, which would rank 10th all-time. And he’s doing it while playing just 34.1 minutes a night and frequently sitting out the fourth quarter. He also ranks sixth in rebounds (11.8).
Consider this: In 1962, Chamberlain became the only NBA player to average more points per game than minutes per game in a season. Embiid is on pace to join him.
His numbers so far:
The big picture: Is Embiid the greatest scorer in NBA history? It sounds crazy, but it might just be true. No player has ever averaged more points per 36 minutes (31.19) and his career points per game (27.66) trails only Chamberlain (30.07) and Michael Jordan (30.12).
The last word: “He is getting better, which is scary,” said teammate Tyrese Maxey after a recent win. “He did a layup today … a eurostep high glass, touch layup. I looked at Pat Bev[erley] and said, ‘He’s 7’2” and just ran full speed and did the same layup I just did.’ And that’s scary. Just kudos to him, man. We appreciate him.”
🏈 National Signing Day: Top classes
It was a busy National Signing Day, with Georgia flipping a five-star from FSU to cap off their No. 1 class and Ohio State breathing a sigh of relief after keeping the No. 1 overall recruit, WR Jeremiah Smith.
Top 10 recruiting classes, per Rivals:
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Georgia
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Texas
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Alabama
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Miami
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Ohio State
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Oklahoma
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Oregon
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Auburn
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Notre Dame
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Clemson
All-Name Team: OL King Large (SMU), QB Air Noland (Ohio State), WR Sanfrisco Magee (Mississippi State), WR Exodus Ayers (Oregon State), TE Decker DeGraaf (Washington), DT Legend Journey (Cal), DE Tycoolhill Luman (Rutgers), LB Crews Law (UNC) and DT Commandre Cole (Memphis) headline our All-Name Team.
🏈 Re-drafting the QBs of the last five years
We re-drafted the NFL QBs who joined the league in the last five years based on performance and potential. Here’s our draft order, courtesy of Yahoo Sports’ Jay Busbee:
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Joe Burrow (original selection: No. 1 in 2020)
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Brock Purdy (No. 262 in 2022)
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Jalen Hurts (No. 53 in 2020)
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Tua Tagovailoa (No. 5 in 2020)
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Trevor Lawrence (No. 1 in 2021)
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Justin Herbert (No. 6 in 2020)
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C.J. Stroud (No. 2 in 2023)
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Kyler Murray (No. 1 in 2019)
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Anthony Richardson (No. 4 in 2023)
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Justin Fields (No. 11 in 2021)
11-25: 11. Bryce Young (No. 1 in 2023), 12. Jordan Love (No. 26 in 2020), 13. Sam Howell (No. 144 in 2022), 14. Daniel Jones (No. 6 in 2019), 15. Will Levis (No. 33 in 2023), 16. Gardner Minshew (No. 178 in 2019), 17. Kenny Pickett (No. 20 in 2022), 18. Aidan O’Connell (No. 135 in 2023), 19. Mac Jones (No. 15 in 2021), 20. Desmond Ridder (No. 74 in 2022), 21. Zach Wilson (No. 2 in 2021), 22. Bailey Zappe (No. 137 in 2022), 23. Jake Browning (Undrafted in 2019), 24. Trey Lance (No. 3 in 2021), 25. Tommy DeVito (Undrafted in 2023)
📸 Photo of the week
I just stumbled upon this shot from Sunday’s Chiefs-Patriots game and can confidently say it belongs in the Louvre. So good.
📆 Dec. 21, 1891: The first basketball game
132 years ago today, 18 students in Springfield, Massachusetts, played the first game of basketball, a new sport invented by 30-year-old schoolteacher James Naismith.
Origin story: The physical education director at Springfield College, known at the time as the International YMCA Training School, tasked Naismith with creating an indoor game to give students an “athletic distraction” during the harsh New England winters.
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Naismith asked a janitor for a pair of boxes to fashion into goals, but the janitor returned with peach baskets. Thus, he named his new game “basket ball.” A year later, Naismith published the 13 original rules and organized the first public game.
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“The invention of basketball was not an accident,” Naismith said. “It was developed to meet a need. Those boys simply would not play ‘Drop the Handkerchief.'”
*The first defector: Mogilny was the first NHL draftee to defect from the Soviet Union in order to play in North America.
📺 Watchlist: High-stakes battle
The Rams host the Saints tonight (8:15pm, Prime) in a high-stakes battle between NFC playoff contenders.
Where it stands: The Rams (7-7) are currently the NFC’s No. 7 seed, while the Saints (7-7) are on the bubble while still fighting for the NFC South title. Whoever wins tonight will earn a huge leg up in the playoff race.*
More to watch:
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🏈 NCAAF: USF vs. Syracuse (8pm, ESPN) … Boca Raton Bowl.
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🏀 NBA: Lakers at Timberwolves (9pm, NBA)
*NFC playoff picture: 1. 49ers, 2. Cowboys, 3. Lions, 4. Buccaneers, 5. Eagles, 6. Vikings, 7. Rams, 8. Seahawks
🏀 NBA trivia
Joel Embiid’s 35.1 points per game would be the third-highest in a season this century.
Answer at the bottom.
🏈 Good read: From 9-to-5 to the NFL
Cowboys rookie Brandon Aubrey is 31-for-31 on his field goal attempts this season, including 8-for-8 from beyond 50 yards. Not bad for a former software engineer who never played high school or college football.
From Yahoo Sports’ Jeff Eisenberg:
On a warm September day in 2019, Brian Egan pulled up to a sprawling sports complex in the Dallas suburbs. The part-time kicking coach had organized a free clinic for aspiring kickers who lived nearby.
As the participants arrived, Egan quickly recognized that one stood out from his usual teenaged clientele. Warming up alongside more than a dozen high school and middle school kickers was a tall, strapping newcomer with a grown man’s face and physique.
“That guy doesn’t look like he’s in high school,” Egan remembers thinking. So Egan introduced himself and asked the newcomer about himself.
Brandon Aubrey told Egan that he played college soccer at Notre Dame, that Toronto FC had drafted him 21st overall in 2017 and that his pro career had stalled after two underwhelming seasons in an MLS feeder league.
Even though Aubrey had recently taken a 9-to-5 job as a software engineer, the 24-year-old couldn’t shake the lingering suspicion that he was meant to do something else. Lately, he’d begun to wonder if kicking a football might be his calling. He’d searched on Google for Dallas-area kicking coaches, and Egan was the top result.
Egan only needed to watch Aubrey kick a football a few times that day to realize that the former pro soccer player had unusual talent. The ball exploded off Aubrey’s foot. He had, as Egan puts it, “natural ball striking ability.”
Little did Egan know how far his strong-legged new pupil would go. Just four years later, Aubrey has shattered the record for consecutive made field goals to start an NFL career and he is poised to blow past the record for most touchbacks in a season.
“Everyone has their own unique story,” Aubrey told reporters earlier this season. But few NFL players have one as remarkable as his.
Keep reading.
Trivia answer: Kobe Bryant (35.4 ppg) and James Harden (36.1 ppg)
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Daniel Miller is a sports fanatic who lives and breathes athletics. His coverage spans from major league championships to local sports events, delivering up-to-the-minute updates and in-depth analysis for sports enthusiasts.
