BASKETBALL
NBA veteran Tony Snell scored 23 points, Marial Shayok added 20, and Luka Samanic and Mfiondu Kabengele recorded double-doubles as the Maine Celtics extended their winning streak to four games with a 110-84 G League victory Friday night against the Cleveland Charge at the Portland Expo.
Samanic finished with 16 points and 10 rebounds, and Kabengele had 13 points and a season-high 17 rebounds.
HOCKEY
ECHL: Reid Stefanson scored the go-ahead goal early in the second period as the Maine Mariners skated to a 4-2 win over the Trois-Rivières Lions at Cross Insurance Arena.
Maine’s Alex Kile opened the scoring 5:12 into the game. Trois-Rivières tied it with a power-play goal at 11:11, but Stefanson restored the lead 2:42 into the second. Connor Doherty made it 3-1 early in the third, and Tim Doherty added a late empty-net goal.
Mariners goalie Michael DiPietro finished with 22 saves.
NHL: Goaltender Pheonix Copley signed a one-year extension with the Los Angeles Kings worth $1.5 million.
Copley’s 15 wins since making his Kings debut on Dec. 6 at Ottawa are the most in the league over the past two months. He is 15-3-1 with a 2.92 goals-against average and .897 save percentage in 20 games this season.
GOLF
PGA: Defending champion Scottie Scheffler took the lead into the weekend in the WM Phoenix Open, with local favorite Jon Rahm right behind at TPC Scottsdale.
The second-ranked Scheffler played 25 holes Friday, completing a 3-under 68 in the first round and shooting a bogey-free 64 in the second to get to 10 under. He had a two-stroke lead over Rahm and Adam Hadwin when play was suspended because of darkness.
Rahm, the former Arizona State star ranked No. 3, also returned early to finish the first round. He shot 68-66 to possibly set up a showdown with Scheffler for the No. 1 ranking.
Hadwin had eight holes left when play was suspended. None of the afternoon starters were able to finish the round.
EUROPEAN TOUR: Tom McKibbin of Northern Ireland and Chinese amateur Ding Wenyi were tied for the lead at the Singapore Classic when second-round play was suspended by darkness.
McKibbin finished his second round with a 3-under 69 for an 11-under total of 133.
Ding, 18, also reached 11 under through 14 holes before play was suspended.
BASEBALL
MAJOR LEAGUES: Pitcher Cristian Javier and the Houston Astros agreed to a $64 million, five-year contract that avoided a salary arbitration hearing.
Javier gets a $2 million signing bonus and salaries of $3 million this season, $7 million in 2024, $10 million in 2025 and $21 million each of the following two years.
SOCCER
FIFA: It’s Lionel Messi vs. Kylian Mbappe again, this time for the FIFA Best Men’s Player award for 2022.
Argentina’s World Cup-winning captain and France’s superstar forward head the three-player shortlist announced on Friday, eight weeks after leading their teams in an epic World Cup final in Qatar.
Karim Benzema completed the top three in the voting by a global panel of national team captains and coaches plus selected journalists in each of FIFA’s 211 member countries, as well as fans voting online.
Beth Mead of England, Alex Morgan of the United States and Spain’s Alexia Putellas are the finalists for the Best Women’s Player award, selected by a separate global voting panel.
The winners will be announced at a Feb. 27 ceremony in Paris.
BOXING
WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS: The president of the International Boxing Association is offering financial support to boxers who defy a U.S.-initiated boycott of the upcoming world championships, which he said was decided by people “worse than hyenas and jackals.”
USA Boxing and the Irish Boxing Association said this week they will not send teams to the women’s worlds next month or the men’s championships in May. They cited longstanding governance issues at the IBA, which is suspended from the Olympics, and the IBA’s decision to allow Russia and its ally, Belarus, to compete with flags and anthems after the invasion of Ukraine.
“Those who are doing this to our athletes are worse than hyenas and jackals, they violate the integrity of sport and culture,” IBA president and Russian businessman Umar Kremlev said Friday at a tournament in Morocco, according to an account of the event on the association’s website.
The world championships have lost their usual status as a qualifier for the Olympics after the IBA, then known as AIBA, was suspended by the International Olympic Committee in 2019. The IOC had concerns about the association’s then-perilous finances and a history of suspect decisions by referees and judges in Olympic bouts. IBA’s president
The IOC is organizing Olympic qualifiers at continental events like the Pan-American Games and will administer the tournaments at next year’s Paris Games.
– Staff and news services
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