KOBE BRYANT
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Kobe Bryant’s wife remembered him as a devoted father and husband who arrived early for school pickups and wrote heartfelt cards and letters.
Rob Pelinka, Bryant’s longtime agent and close friend, recalled his final texts from the NBA superstar minutes before he was killed last month in a helicopter crash. Bryant was attempting to secure an internship for the daughter of another friend who was sitting with him in the chopper.
Michael Jordan called Bryant “a little brother” and said that when he died, “a piece of me died.”
Bryant’s athletic achievements were only part of the reason roughly 20,000 people gathered for a public memorial service honoring him at Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles. The event offered another chance to celebrate Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, and the other seven victims of the crash with tears, memories and laughs.
Los Angeles already knew Bryant was much more than a basketball icon. His friends and family told the world.
HOCKEY
NEW YORK (AP) - Hurricanes president Don Waddell resisted the urge to acquire anyone to address Carolina’s injury-depleted goaltending ranks before the NHL trade deadline.
Waddell, however, did manage to upgrade the rest of his roster to better position his team in the tightly contested Metropolitan Division over the final six weeks of the season.
The Hurricanes acquired center Vincent Trocheck in a multiplayer deal with Florida. And they bulked up their defense by adding Sami Vatanen from New Jersey and sending a first-round draft pick to land Brady Skjei from the New York Rangers.
The Hurricanes weren’t the only Metropolitan team making moves when just seven points separate the third-place Philadelphia Flyers and seventh-place Rangers.
The New York Islanders acquired Jean-Gabriel Pageau from the Ottawa Senators, and then signed the playmaking forward to a six-year contract extension.
Patrick Marleau is back in the Eastern Conference after the Pittsburgh Penguins acquired the 40-year-old in a trade with San Jose. The Penguins then brought back forward Conor Sheary, a member of Pittsburgh’s past two Stanley Cup winners, in a trade with Buffalo.
Overall, the 32 trades completed were the most on the NHL’s final day of trading. And the 55 players dealt matched the record set on March 3, 2010.
And the two biggest deals that didn’t happen involved Chris Kreider, who elected to re-sign with the New York Rangers, and Wild forward Zach Parise, who stayed put in Minnesota.
NBA
WASHINGTON (AP) - Khris Middleton scored Milwaukee’s final nine points and the the Bucks beat Bradley Beal and the Washington Wizards 137-134 in overtime.
Middleton, who finished with 40 points, hit a 3-pointer from the top of the key with 30.2 seconds left to five the Bucks a 135-132 lead.
After Beal made two free throws, Middleton was fouled with 7.8 seconds left and made both attempts from the line to make it 137-134 and Troy Brown, Jr.’s 3-pointer rimmed out at the buzzer.
Beal, one night after scoring a then-career high 53 points in a loss at Chicago, topped it with a 55-point effort that included 22 points in the fourth quarter and seven more in overtime.
BASEBALL
LAKELAND, Fla. (AP) - José Altuve insisted he tuned out the hecklers. He couldn’t avoid a pitch that grazed him.
Altuve was loudly booed when he was introduced for his spring training debut, cheered when he struck out and called a cheater by several fans. Quite a difference from past years, when the diminutive All-Star second baseman was among the most popular players in the majors.
But that was before Altuve and his Houston teammates were implicated in the sign-stealing scandal that’s rocked baseball.
Altuve and fellow starters Alex Bregman, Carlos Correa and Yuli Gurriel all played for the first time in the exhibition season. After Houston opened the Grapefruit League in the stadium it shares with the World Series champion Washington Nationals, this was the first time the Astros were away from their complex - providing a taste of the reaction they might receive on the road this year.
COLLEGE BASKETBALL
LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) - Kansas is back on top of the college basketball world after knocking off Baylor in a matchup of Big 12 heavyweights, while the Bears dropped to No. 2 in The Associated Press men’s poll after their nip-and-tuck loss in Waco.
The Jayhawks (24-3, 13-1 Big 12) received 62 of 64 first-place votes from the national media panel to take over the No. 1 ranking for the second time this season. Kansas was atop the poll for one week in December, when it seemed as if just about every school that ascended to No. 1 promptly lost in a topsy-turvy start to the season.
Baylor (24-2, 13-1) received two first-place votes and fell to second after its 23-game winning streak came to an end. Gonzaga was No. 3 after a loss to BYU, and Dayton leapfrogged San Diego State for No. 4 after the Aztecs lost for the first time in a week when every team in the top 10 found itself in a new position from last week.
Dayton (25-2) has won 16 straight to reach its highest standing in the poll since finishing third during the 1955-56 season, while the Aztecs (26-1) are the nation’s only one-loss Division I team. They were followed by Florida State, Duke, Kentucky, Maryland and Creighton in rounding out the top 10.
NEW YORK (AP) - South Carolina still leads the way in The Associated Press women’s college basketball poll in a week that saw seven ranked teams fall to unranked opponents.
The top of the poll was unscathed with none of the first seven teams losing. The No. 1 Gamecocks clinched their fifth Southeastern Conference title in seven years on Sunday and received 27 of 30 first-place votes from the national media panel.
No. 2 Baylor got two first-place votes and No. 3 Oregon got one. Stanford stayed at No. 4. Louisville, UConn and Maryland were the next three teams in the poll. North Carolina State, UCLA and Mississippi State rounded out the first 10 teams in the poll.
STANFORD, Calif. (AP) - Sabrina Ionescu became the first player, man or woman, in NCAA history to reach 2,000 points, 1,000 assists and 1,000 rebounds and notched her record 26th career triple-double hours after speaking at Kobe Bryant’s memorial service, leading No. 3 Oregon past fourth-ranked Stanford 74-66.
Ionescu hit the milestone on a defensive rebound with 1:47 remaining in the third quarter and finished with 21 points, 12 assists and 12 rebounds in her first triple-double against a top-10 opponent and eighth overall this season to help Oregon (26-2, 15-1 Pac-12) clinch at least a share of its third straight conference regular-season title.
Ionescu also had a triple-double Friday night at California while playing near her East Bay hometown of Walnut Creek, then delivered her eighth career road triple-double for the Ducks on an emotional day just hours after attending the service for Bryant and daughter, Gianna, in Southern California.
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