BASKETBALL
The Maine Celtics have earned the No. 2 seed for the G League’s Showcase Cup tournament that starts Sunday in Las Vegas.
Maine will play the seventh-seeded Motor City Cruise at 11:30 p.m. Sunday in the first round of the eight-team tournament. The championship game is Wednesday at 5 p.m.
HOCKEY
ECHL: Anthony Nellis broke a 1-1 tie midway through the second period and Olivier Archambault scored twice for the Trois-Rivières Lions in a 5-2 win over the Maine Mariners at Trois-Rivières, Quebec.
Maine’s Andrew Romano opened the scoring with a power-play goal early in the second period, but Archambault tied it less than three minutes later. Goals by Nellis and Alexis D’aoust made it 3-1 after two periods. Archambault and Peter Abbandonato each added a goal early in the third.
Conner Bleackley scored a power-play goal for the Mariners with nine seconds left.
SOCCER
ENGLAND: The Premier League’s pandemic-affected schedule took a further hit on Saturday when a COVID-19 outbreak in Aston Villa’s squad sparked the postponement of its match against Burnley, reducing the number of fixtures this weekend to four.
There was only one game on Saturday – Arsenal’s 4-1 win over Leeds. That was played despite Arsenal Manager Mikel Arteta saying there had been more coronavirus cases among the club’s players and staff.
SPAIN: Seventeen-year-old Gavi Paez scored one goal and set up the 85th-minute winner by Nico Gonzalez as Barcelona earned a 3-2 win over Elche 3-2 in the Spanish league.
Barcelona’s first win in four games across all competitions moved it to seventh place, still a distant 15 points from leader Real Madrid.
GERMANY: Marco Richter scored twice for Hertha Berlin in a 3-2 win over Borussia Dortmund, which fell to nine points behind Bayern Munich going into the Bundesliga’s winter break.
FRANCE: Down to eight men after two players received two yellow cards and another got a red card, second-division side Nancy reached the last 32 of the French Cup by beating Ligue 1 team Troyes 4-2 in a penalty shootout after they finished regulation in a 1-1 tie.
SKIING
WORLD CUP: Bryce Bennett added to a long list of American success in Val Gardena, Italy, by winning the first classic downhill of the season.
The 6-foot-7 Californian joined Steven Nyman (three downhill victories) and Bode Miller (one super-G victory) as American winners at the resort in the Dolomites.
For his first career victory, Bennett finished 0.14 seconds ahead of Otmar Striedinger of Austria and 0.32 ahead of Niels Hintermann of Switzerland amid perfect conditions.
• Olympic champion Sofia Goggia and American rival Breezy Johnson finished 1-2 in a women’s downhill for the third time this season, at Val d’Isere, France.
Goggia stretched her unbeaten run in the discipline to a year, having won all seven downhills she has competed in since Dec. 18, 2020. The Italian missed the final two races of last season because of a knee injury.
Goggia beat Johnson by .27 seconds, with Austria’s Mirjam Puchner .91 behind in third.
The result sent Goggia past Mikaela Shiffrin to the top of the overall standings, leading the American three-time champion by 10 points.
Shiffrin sat out the race but is scheduled to compete in a super-G on the same hill Sunday.
Comments are not available on this story.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
