Silva: Each NFL team enters the offseason with a series of pressing needs. Sometimes a team can address them all, sometimes they ignore them all. But if a team's smart, they'll listen to us. These are the most crucial aspects for NFC teams.
SportsTalk: Albert Pujols signs with the Angels and Prince Fielder joins the Tigers. Which team is better now?
Ryan Callahan scored three goals as the New York Rangers beat Philadelphia 5-2 on Saturday for their seventh straight win over the Flyers.
Jeremy Lin hit a free throw with 4.9 seconds left to overcome a dreadful second half and lift the New York Knicks to their fifth straight victory, 100-98, over the Minnesota Timberwolves on Saturday night.
Arc's five up, five down: After No. 11 Michigan State's 58-48 upset of No. 3 Ohio State, you'd be a fool to discount the Spartans' national title chances now.
CFT: Jordan Jefferson makes it clear he wasn't happy with LSU's game plan in the Tigers' BCS Championship Game loss to Alabama.
Move over, Hollywood and NFL types, golf's two real A-listers take center stage Sunday at Pebble Beach, both in need of a win.
The United States swept favored Switzerland out of the Davis Cup on Saturday when Mardy Fish and Mike Bryan beat Roger Federer and Stanislas Wawrinka 4-6, 6-3, 6-3, 6-3.
Luis Suarez's refusal to shake hands with Patrice Evra overshadowed Manchester United's 2-1 win over rival Liverpool that lifted the defending champions to first place in the Premier League on Saturday.
Marlies Schild of Austria won her sixth World Cup slalom of the season Saturday after overall leader Lindsey Vonn and defending champion Maria Hoefl-Riesch crashed out in the opening run on the windy Pyrenees course.
Robins: It’s the Year of the Dragon on the Lunar calendar, and this Chinese influence could extend to it also being the year of the Pekingese on the green carpet at the 136th Westminster Dog Show on Tuesday.
AP
LAS VEGAS - The Mountain West Conference got exactly what it wanted Sunday with four NCAA tournament bids and the highest seeding ever for one of its schools.
New Mexico (29-4) is the third seed in the East and will face No. 14-seed Montana in the opening round, with a possible second-round matchup against sixth-seeded Marquette.
Also heading to the Big Dance are San Diego State (25-8), which earned the league's automatic bid by winning the conference tournament, UNLV (25-8) and BYU (29-5).
The four teams are the most the league has ever sent to the NCAA tournament in its 11-year history. Three times the Mountain West has sent three teams, and the highest seed before this year was Utah with a No. 5 seed last year, when it lost to No. 12 Arizona in the opening round.
UNLV and San Diego State sealed their NCAA bids at the Mountain West tournament at the Thomas & Mack Center over the weekend, where the Aztecs edged eighth-ranked New Mexico 72-69, snapping the Lobos' 15-game winning streak, and UNLV upset No. 14 BYU in two sensational semifinals Friday night.
"This is high-level basketball," Fisher said after the Aztecs beat the Runnin' Rebels 55-45 in the title game Saturday. "Anybody that watched the New Mexico-San Diego State game, if there were no labels on the jersey, they would say, 'This is as good as it gets anywhere.' And it was. I think we displayed that. BYU and Vegas was more of the same.
"This is a really good league that has nine teams in it," Fisher added, "and four of us are going to go to the NCAA tournament. That's representing your league well."
Now, Fisher suggested, it's time to really get some respect.
"Now what we need to do is step up and win a few games," he said. "That's the challenge we will all face."
All four Mountain West teams are playing Thursday, with the Lobos in San Jose, Calif. The 11th-seeded Aztecs will face No. 6-seeded Tennessee in the Midwest Regional at Providence, R.I., while BYU and UNLV will play in Oklahoma City.
The Cougars are the seventh seed in the West and will face Florida. The Runnin' Rebels are the eighth seed in the Midwest and face Northern Iowa.
New Mexico is hoping to go further than any Mountain West team — Utah in 2005 and UNLV in 2008 both reached the round of 16.
Lobos coach Steve Alford said he was just hoping that they wouldn't have to play a bigger team early on. With none of his 10 players taller than 6-foot-8, the only team that gave New Mexico matchup problems has been San Diego State, which handed them two of their four losses.
"That's what's so amazing about this team: to play 33 games and win 29 with nobody over 6-foot-8 is amazing," Alford said.
Montana has a couple of big players in 7-footer Derek Selvig and 6-11 Brian Qvale but aren't expected to pose a mismatch for the Lobos. Marquette and Washington also have a couple of bigger players but don't have a huge advantage over the Lobos.
Arc's five up, five down: After No. 11 Michigan State's 58-48 upset of No. 3 Ohio State, you'd be a fool to discount the Spartans' national title chances now.
Beyond the Arc: No. 11 Michigan State ends No. 3 Ohio State's 39-game home winning streak with a 58-48 victory.
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Jeremy Lin hit a free throw with 4.9 seconds left to overcome a dreadful second half and lift the New York Knicks to their fifth straight victory, 100-98, over the Minnesota Timberwolves on Saturday night.
Doron Lamb hit a 3-pointer with 3:18 left to put No. 1 Kentucky ahead to stay, and the Wildcats took a big step toward a Southeastern Conference regular-season title by beating Vanderbilt 69-63 Saturday night for their 17th straight win.
Wesseling: Each NFL team enters the offseason with a series of pressing needs. Sometimes a team can address them all, sometimes they ignore them all. But if a team's smart, they'll listen to us. These are the most crucial aspects for AFC teams.
