COLLEGES
The Pac-12’s football schedule has been scrambled for a second straight week, with positive COVID-19 tests leading to the cancellation of Saturday’s California at Arizona State and Utah at UCLA games.
Instead, Cal will play UCLA on Sunday at the Rose Bowl. The game will kick off at 9 a.m. local time, and the teams will have had less than two full days to prepare for each other.
Friday’s announcements capped the most tumultuous week of COVID-19 disruptions of the college football season. Fifteen of the 59 games originally scheduled for Week 11 have been called off.
Arizona State’s home opener was nixed because of several positive COVID-19 tests among the team’s players and coaching staff, including head Coach Herm Edwards. The school said the positive tests put the football team below 53 available scholarship players, which is the minimum allowed according to the league’s cancellation policy.
Utah also determined it didn’t have the minimum number of scholarship players available for its game because of positive COVID-19 cases and the resulting isolation of players under contact tracing protocols.
• No. 15 Coastal Carolina’s game against Troy was canceled because of a “combination of positive COVID-19 tests and injuries to a specific position group within the Troy football program.”
• UAB has called off next week’s game at UTEP, after previously postponing a home game this week against North Texas.
HIGH SCHOOLS
FIELD HOCKEY: Abby Allen collected three goals and an assist as Biddeford (6-0) capped an unbeaten season with a 5-1 win at Marshwood (1-2-1).
Carley Lovejoy contributed a goal and an assist, and Riley Langevin also scored. Jill McSorley and Anna Lavigne each had an assist.
BASKETBALL
FORMER CELTICS PLAYER DIES: Terry Duerod, a college basketball standout who played for Dick Vitale at Detroit in the 1970s before winning an NBA title with the Boston Celtics, has died. He was 64.
The school announced Duerod’s death and said he’d been fighting leukemia.
Duerod was drafted by the Detroit Pistons in the third round in 1979 and played 143 NBA games over four seasons with Detroit, Dallas, Boston and Golden State. He won a title with the Celtics in 1981.
NBA: Udonis Haslem announced that he’s returning for an 18th season with the Miami Heat, and left the door open for extending his career after that.
GOLF
LPGA: Former world No. 1 and two-time major winner Ariya Jutanugarn and her sister, Moriya, have tested positive for COVID-19 and have withdrawn from next week’s event in Florida, the Pelican Women’s Championship.
SOCCER
MLS: Major League Soccer intends to open its 2021 season as planned in early March but will remain nimble because of the coronavirus.
The league plans to play an entire regular season while working around the international calendar, which was made busier because of events pushed back by the pandemic.
SOUTH AMERICA: Uruguay thrashed Colombia 3-0 in a South American World Cup qualifier marked by goals from its 33-year-old strikers Edinson Cavani and Luis Suarez.
• Brazil unconvincingly beat Venezuela 1-0 at home, but that was enough to take the lead in World Cup qualifying with nine points from three matches.
The winning goal in Sao Paulo was scored by Roberto Firmino from close range in the 67th minute.
BASEBALL
GOODEN GETS PROBATION: Former New York Mets pitcher Dwight Gooden has been sentenced to a year of probation in connection with a drug arrest in New Jersey in 2019.
Gooden appeared before a judge in a virtual proceeding on Thursday. He had pleaded guilty in August 2019 to one count of cocaine possession stemming from a traffic stop in June 2019.