LSU women win NCAA title, denying Iowa and Caitlin Clark

• April 2, 2023

DALLAS (AP) — Kim Mulkey’s LSU Tigers used a record offensive performance to beat Caitlin Clark and Iowa 102-85 in the national championship game on Sunday to win the first basketball title in school history.

The victory made Mulkey the first women’s coach to win national championships at two different schools. She won three at Baylor before leaving for LSU two years ago.

“Coaches coach a lifetime and this is the fourth time I’ve been blessed,” Mulkey said. “Never in the history of LSU basketball, men or women, has (anybody) ever played for a championship.”

The feisty and flamboyantly dressed Mulkey, who wore a sparkly, golden, tiger-striped outfit, now has the third-most titles of all time behind Geno Auriemma’s 11 and Pat Summitt’s eight. Mulkey has never lost in a championship game.

“My tears are tears of joy,” she said. “I’m so happy for everybody back home in Louisiana.”

Clark, The Associated Press national player of the year, couldn’t lead the Hawkeyes to their first national title despite one of the greatest individual performances in NCAA Tournament history. The junior finished with 30 points. She scored 40 in the semifinals to knock out unbeaten South Carolina one game after she had the first 40-point triple-double in NCAA history in the Elite Eight.

The dazzling guard, who grew up in Iowa, set the NCAA record for points in a tournament, passing the 177 that Sheryl Swoopes scored in 1993 en route to leading Texas Tech to the title that year. Clark ended her tournament with 191.

The 102 points broke the previous high for a championship game, surpassing the 97 that Texas scored against Southern California in 1986.

Jasmine Carson scored 22 points, Alexis Morris added 21 and Angel Reese had 15 points and 10 rebounds for LSU (34-2).

“It’s no one-man show around here. When I go down, the next man is up,” said Reese, who was honored as the Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four. “Every single time, every time I go out or Alexis (Morris) goes out, everybody always comes to step up.”

Trailing by 21 points early in the third quarter, Iowa started hitting from the outside to go on a 15-2 run, hitting four 3-pointers and converting a 3-point play to get within 65-57.

The Hawkeyes (31-7) trailed 73-64 with 1:03 left in the third quarter when Clark was called for a technical foul. She swatted the ball away on the floor after a foul call against a teammate. That counted as a personal foul for her, her fourth of the game.

“I thought they called it very, very tight,” Clark said. “Hit with a technical foul for throwing the ball under the basket — sometimes that’s how things go.”

Clark played the entire fourth quarter with four fouls but couldn’t get the Hawkeyes much closer.

“They really played well, they were ready to go. They did a great job. I’m just so proud of my team,” Iowa coach Lisa Bluder said. “This is brutal, it’s really tough to walk out of that locker room today and not be able to coach Monika (Czinano) and McKenna (Warnock) again. I’m very thankful for the season we had and don’t want to take anything away from that.”

After Katari Poole hit a 3-pointer in front of the LSU bench, Mulkey started weeping. A few seconds later after another LSU basket, Reese taunted Clark by putting her hand in front of her face with a “you can’t see me” gesture and then pointed to her ring finger at the end.

As the final seconds ticked off, Mulkey and Reese hugged, setting off a wild celebration by the Tigers.

The game was tight for the first 15 minutes before Carson got hot from the outside. She made all six of her shots in the second quarter, including four 3-pointers. After one of them, she threw her hands in the air and Mulkey mimicked it on the sidelines.

For good measure, the graduate student guard banked in a shot just before the halftime buzzer to give the Tigers a 59-42 lead at the break. It was the most points ever in the first half of a championship game, breaking the record held by Tennessee since 1998.

“I’ve been working for this my whole life,” Carson said at halftime. “It feels great to finally display it on this stage.”

LSU shot 58% from the field in the opening 20 minutes, including going nine for 12 from behind the arc. The Tigers finished the game shooting 54% from the field, including making 11 of 17 3-pointers.

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Clark had 16 points and five assists before picking up her third foul with 3:56 to go in the half, which didn’t go over well with the sellout crowd of more than 19,000 fans that included first lady Jill Biden and Billie Jean King, who sat together in a luxury box.

Before this game, Carson had gone scoreless in five of her seven postseason games in her career. She had 11 points in this NCAA Tournament before Sunday.

It was high-scoring first quarter despite there being a lot of stoppages because of foul calls, which made getting into an offensive flow more difficult. Clark had a huge first quarter, scoring 14 points, but Iowa trailed 27-22.

Carson banked in a 3-pointer before the buzzer.

​ Orange County Register 

Angels’ Mike Trout, Shohei Ohtani homer back to back in win over A’s

• April 2, 2023

OAKLAND — Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani weren’t about to be shown up by a rookie.

An inning after Logan O’Hoppe blasted the first homer of his career, Trout and Ohtani hit back-to-back towering shots to center field, lifting the Angels to a 6-0 victory over the Oakland A’s on Sunday.

The Angels took two of three in the season-opening series, outscoring the A’s 19-1 after absorbing a frustrating 2-1 loss on Opening Day.

The Angels have high hopes for their run-production this season because of the depth of their lineup.

O’Hoppe, who has hit eighth or ninth each of the first three games, has driven in the Angels first run each game. He came to the plate in the fourth inning after Hunter Renfroe reached on an infield hit and Luis Rengifo walked.

Facing left-hander Ken Waldichuk, O’Hoppe got a 1-and-1 fastball over the heart of the plate and he hammered it over the fence in left-center.

O’Hoppe, the Angels’ 23-year-old No. 1 prospect, has four hits in his first 10 at-bats, with six RBIs so far this season.

An inning later, Taylor Ward led off with the second of his three hits, and then Trout drilled a ball 434 feet, bouncing off the green wall beyond the center field fence.

Trout also had a single and a double, making the 15th time in his career he had been just a triple short of the cycle.

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Just after Trout’s homer, Ohtani hit a ball even farther, connecting for a 447-foot blast for his first homer of the season.

The 6-0 lead was plenty for left-hander Tyler Anderson, whose Angels debut was exactly what the team must have expected when they signed him to a three-year, $39-million deal over the winter.

Anderson induced soft contact throughout his six scoreless innings, striking out four and walking two. Only one of the four hits that Anderson allowed had an exit velocity over 90 mph.

Anderson followed Ohtani and Patrick Sandoval to the mound this weekend, as Angels starters combined to allow one run in 17 innings.

More to come.

​ Orange County Register 

Dodgers’ Michael Grove ready for 2023 debut Monday

• April 2, 2023

LOS ANGELES ― When spring training was all said and done, Michael Grove didn’t expect to see his name on the Dodgers’ Opening Day roster. He was already in Oklahoma City, keeping his arm loose in near-freezing weather, preparing for the start of the Triple-A season.

Two days after the Dodgers told him to pack his bags, Grove was re-packing for Southern California. Pitcher Ryan Pepiot had an oblique strain and was a surprise addition to the injured list on the morning of Opening Day. Grove, not Pepiot, was suddenly in line to fill the rotation spot of injured right-hander Tony Gonsolin.

Grove will make his regular season debut Monday against the Colorado Rockies.

“I guess it was a little awkward,” he said of the last-minute change of plans. “That’s the nature of the business ― just have to be ready when my name’s called, whenever that may be. This time it was before the season started. I’m just trying to be ready mentally and physically.”

Spring training was a bit of an adventure for Grove. In his final outing, he retired one of the five Arizona Diamondbacks hitters he faced in the first inning, then was removed from the game. The relaxed Cactus League rules allowed Grove to return to the game when the second inning began. He pitched another four innings without allowing a run.

Prior to that game, he had allowed one walk and struck out 14 batters across 12⅓ innings. He’d also allowed three home runs among five earned runs in all.

Underneath those uneven statistics, there were encouraging signs. Grove has tinkered with his slider in an attempt to elicit more movement from the pitch. In the game against the Diamondbacks, the pitch averaged 2,448 rpm, according to Statcast; last season it averaged 2,274 rpm.

It was only one game, but the results were encouraging. The Diamondbacks swung and missed at Grove’s slider eight times and put the ball in play only once. There is reason to believe it could be an even better pitch Monday.

“In Arizona, it’s cold, dry air, and altitude,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “Get to sea level and the ball does a little bit more as far as spin. Michael can really spin the baseball. I do think that slider and curveball will play up.”

Roberts said Grove figures to get two or three starts if Gonsolin returns from his sprained ankle later this month as expected. Pepiot’s injury could take even longer to heal. For his part, Grove said he isn’t thinking about what a strong debut Monday would do for his long-term future in the Dodgers’ rotation.

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Only recently, Grove was told what he needed to do to get back to the major leagues. Now that he’s back, it’s a matter of doing the same things in order to stick around.

“For me it’s just consistency and making sure that my pitches are in a good spot,” Grove said. “I have a little different arsenal this year than last year. Sequencing-wise, making sure that I’m using pitches in the right spot.”

ALSO

Max Muncy was not available one day after he absorbed a baseball to the groin. Chris Taylor started at third base and Mookie Betts got the start at second base in place of Miguel Vargas, who had a scheduled day off. Roberts said he doesn’t believe Muncy’s injury will require an injured-list stint. … Tony Gonsolin’s threw 40 pitches over two “innings” in a bullpen session. Roberts said his next appearance on a mound will come Wednesday against live hitters at the Dodgers’ Camelback Ranch facility in Arizona. … James Outman stole the Dodgers’ first base of the season in the seventh inning.

UP NEXT

Dodgers (RHP Michael Grove) vs. Colorado Rockies (RHP Ryan Feltner), Monday, 7 p.m., SportsNet LA, 570-AM

​ Orange County Register 

1 killed, another injured in Santa Ana hit-and-run

• April 2, 2023

One person died and another remained in the hospital on Sunday, April 2, after being struck by a hit-and-run driver along a residential street in Santa Ana, authorities said.

Around 2 a.m., the two pedestrians were standing near a vehicle in the street along the 500 block of West St. Gertrude Place when they were struck by an SUV heading west, the Santa Ana Police Department said in a news release. The driver fled before authorities arrived to find the two victims lying in the roadway.

The victims were taken to a hospital where one was later pronounced dead, police said. Their identity was not released Sunday afternoon pending notification of family.

Information on the other victim’s condition was not immediately available.

A description of the SUV was not available Sunday afternoon and no arrests had been announced. It was not immediately known if drugs or alcohol factored into the collision.

Anyone with information on the hit-and-run crash should contact Santa Ana Police Inv. L. Bao at 714-245-8223 or the Santa Ana Police Department’s Traffic Division at 714-245-8200.

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​ Orange County Register 

Angels’ Luis Rengifo credits Jose Altuve for new approach at plate

• April 2, 2023

OAKLAND — Luis Rengifo may have taken more from the World Baseball Classic than simply the experience of playing in a charged atmosphere.

Rengifo said he spent a lot of time with José Altuve while they were teammates with Venezuela. Previously, the Angels infielder only had a few short conversations with Altuve on the field when the Angels played the Houston Astros.

“Altuve is a leader,” Rengifo said. “He knows what he’s doing before every at-bat. He puts the ball in play every single time. That’s what I want.”

After struggling for much of his sporadic opportunities in the majors, Rengifo enjoyed a breakthrough season in 2022. The switch-hitter hit .264 with 17 homers and a .724 OPS in 511 plate appearances, including a .909 OPS against lefties.

Through his first two games this season, Rengifo has already drawn three walks. One of them opened the floodgates for an 11-run inning after the Angels had struck out four times in two scoreless innings against Oakland right-hander Shintaro Fujinami.

“Luis’ at-bat to lead off that inning was phenomenal, spitting on a couple of those splits that  guys had swung over the top of in the first two innings,” Angels manager Phil Nevin said. “The last-pitch slider that he took down and in was a great take, and we were off and running.”

Nevin said that Rengifo has a slightly more upright stance from the left side now, and that could help his pitch recognition.

Rengifo, however, said that one of the changes is the approach that he learned from Altuve.

“I feel more confident every single time when I go in the box,” he said. “I am ready every single time. The game has slowed down.”

RENDON SITS

Third baseman Anthony Rendon was out of the Angels’ lineup a day after banging his left knee against the rolled up tarp while chasing a ball in foul territory.

“The tarp won,” quipped Rendon, who added that he still could have played on Sunday and he expects to play on Monday.

Nevin said the Angels had planned all along for Rendon to have one of the days off on this season-opening six-game trip, and now he’s planning on Rendon playing all three games in Seattle.

“He went into the tarp pretty hard yesterday, and with everything that’s going on, I thought today was the best one (for a day off),” Nevin said.

Rendon is also awaiting discipline from Major League Baseball, which is investigating his altercation with a fan after Thursday’s game. Nevin said he has “not heard anything” about a decision on Rendon.

NOTES

Right-hander Griffin Canning (groin) is scheduled to throw a bullpen session on Monday. …

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First baseman Jared Walsh (headaches, insomnia) has been making progress on the issues at a facility in Utah, Nevin said. Walsh began taking  swings with the Angels’ Triple-A team in Salt Lake City. Nevin said there is still “no timetable” for Walsh to return. …

Catcher Max Stassi (hip) is on the injured list, but the family emergency that initially took him away from the team is the primary issue, Nevin said. “Keep him in your thoughts,” Nevin said. “That’s all I can say.” …

Although the Angels were using a straw Golden State Warriors hat to celebrate homers this weekend in Oakland, that won’t be a season-long fixture. Staff assistant Tim Buss, who is unofficially in charge of such things, said the Angels are still searching for something to use throughout the season. …

Catcher Matt Thaiss is scheduled to get his first start of the season behind the plate on Tuesday, Nevin said.

UP NEXT

Angels (LHP Reid Detmers, 7-6, 3.77 ERA in 2022) at Mariners (RHP George Kirby, 8-5, 3.39 in 2022), Monday, 6:40 p.m., T-Mobile Park, Bally Sports West, 830 AM.

​ Orange County Register 

Speed puzzling competition series launches in Orange County

• April 2, 2023

Decisions have to be made fast: What’s the plan for sorting? By color? By texture? Pull out all the edges?

This is speed puzzling, and teams have to decide quickly what is their best bet for turning the 500 tiny pieces they just dumped out of a box into the picture on the cover — in minutes, not hours.

On Saturday, the relatively new Orange County Speed Puzzlers hosted its third competition. The winning time was 34 minutes 57 seconds, completed by Trisha Siedlecki of Roland Heights and Allyson Longo of Anaheim.

When the coronavirus arrived three years ago and people suddenly found themselves at home with a lot of time on their hands, many dusted off puzzle boxes that had been stashed away.

And when it got hard because of the shutdowns to buy more puzzles, they started trading with others to refresh their supply.

“There is a really great puzzle swap community in Orange County,” said William Shandling of Anaheim, who is a co-founder of Orange County Speed Puzzlers with Lisa Moskowitz.

Several from the local swap community attended the USA Jigsaw Puzzle Association’s speed puzzling nationals in San Diego in October, Shandling said, and were interested in a regular competition closer to home.

So Moskowitz and Shandling teamed up and the first was held in February.

For Saturday’s competition, they got sponsorship from Ravensburger, a German toy company that has numerous puzzle lines.

But the company didn’t just pull 30 boxes of the same puzzle off a warehouse shelf, Shandling said. It surprised the organizers by offering to design a new puzzle for the competition, he said.

“It’s a really important step in the process, picking the puzzle for the competition,” he said. Along with being something that can be finished within time, it has to be fun for the puzzlers.

“We don’t want any diabolical puzzles where people are going to be frustrated,” Shandling said.

The organizers decided on a graphic arts motif, with a little April Fool’s twist here and there, he said, in honor of the competition’s date. The image included all the trappings of a puzzle competition, including name tags, a tiny version of the puzzle and a first place certificate.

Saturday’s competition drew 30 teams of two to GameCraft Brewing in Laguna Hills. Each played at their own table with spectators watching from an outside perimeter.

Competitions start with a lot of frenetic energy. Teams quickly sort the pieces into piles based on how they most likely will come together — maybe all the pieces that look like they would fit a building in the background or a grassy area.

Then they get to piecing things together.

“Our top puzzle pros, they won’t say more than 10 sentences to each other the entire game,” Shandling said.

Sometimes if a teammate gets stuck on a part of the scene they are working on, the pair might swap chairs or push piles around, Shandling said. “Just to give ourselves a fresh perspective.”

The winning team Saturday received two newly released 1,000-piece puzzles from Ravensburger. Second place received 700 piece puzzles and third place 550 piece puzzles.

June 4 will be the group’s next competition at GameCraft. Find them at Instagram.com/orange_county_speed_puzzlers or search on Facebook.

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​ Orange County Register 

2 injured, 1 arrested after fight at pro-Trump rally in Huntington Beach

• April 2, 2023

At least two people were injured and one was arrested after skateboarders fought with crowds gathered at the Huntington Beach Pier in support of former president Donald Trump.

The clash was reported about 12:30 p.m. Saturday said Huntington Beach police spokeswoman Jessica Cuchilla.

She said one person with “minor injuries” was transported to the hospital, and a man was arrested in connection with the fight.

Trump supporter Nick Taurus, injured at the rally, posted on Instagram that after “taking a skateboard in the head for President Trump … I’m still alive, I’m still kicking, it didn’t knock me out.” At one point, he removed a bloody bandage from his forehead to show the wound.

About 50 people attended the rally, “and for the majority, it was peaceful,” Cuchilla said.

The demonstrators carried U.S. and “Make America Great Again” flags, chanted “God bless Trump!” and proclaimed Huntington Beach to be “MAGA Country.”

The rally came two days after a grand jury in New York voted to indict the ex-president, who is accused of paying off porn star Stormy Daniels during his 2016 presidential bid to keep information about an alleged affair out of the campaign. His then-attorney, Michael Cohen, served prison time for the crime.

Trump and his attorneys have denied any wrongdoing in the case. He is scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday in New York.

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​ Orange County Register 

Susan Shelley: The persecution of Donald J. Trump

• April 2, 2023

Arrested for corruption or corruptly arrested?

As of this writing, the former president of the United States and frontrunning GOP candidate for president in 2024, Donald J. Trump of Florida, has been indicted by a grand jury in Manhattan on charges that are still under seal as of this writing. According to some news reports, Trump will be in New York City on Tuesday to be formally charged, arrested and booked.

There’s obviously a lot of interest in the booking photo. You can expect to see it on shirts, hats, coffee cups, tote bags, posters, flags and murals on the sides of trucks. Trump supporters are ready to run with Notorious DJT.

Two days before the indictment was announced, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was on MSNBC telling host Joy Reid that “we spend too much time talking about him….We cannot keep giving him all the press he wants.”

Right, good luck with that.

Pelosi seemed to think Trump was fabricating the story when he announced on his Truth Social account that he was going to be arrested. “This whole thing about his indictment coming out when he didn’t even really know if he was going to be indicted, I don’t think,” she said. “And for a week and a half, all we hear is about him. And that’s exactly what he wanted.”

The former House speaker obviously noticed Trump’s rising popularity. Last week, a Fox News poll found that the man Pelosi sniped at as “a former, ex, impeached, twice, president, and defeated, president of the United States” had expanded his lead in the GOP primary race and was at 54%, leading Florida Governor Ron DeSantis by 30 points. In February, Trump led DeSantis 43% to 28%.

Fox News’ pollster stated that “the rumor that Trump is going to be indicted by the district attorney in Manhattan has helped him quite a bit among Republican primary voters.”

But Pelosi’s comments are cause to wonder if the rumor was also helping Trump among independents and perhaps even some Democrats.

By Thursday evening, the Trump campaign had sent out a fundraising email that featured the New York Times headline, “Grand Jury votes to indict Donald Trump in New York.” It referred to the indictment as “a disgusting witch hunt” and slammed the DA, Alvin Bragg, as a “Soros-funded District Attorney” who had “relied on the testimony of a convicted felon and a disbarred liar.”

That’s a reference to Michael Cohen, a now disbarred attorney who reportedly worked as a “fixer” for Trump, and who went to prison for lying to Congress six times. Cohen also pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations, which may be relevant. Reporters and legal experts have speculated that Bragg has taken a New York state misdemeanor related to maintaining accurate business records and enhanced it to a felony by claiming that it was tied to a federal crime, specifically a campaign finance law violation.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume the speculation has hit the nail on the head, and let’s also assume that Trump did exactly what he’s accused of doing. What is he accused of doing?

He’s accused of using his own money to pay his own lawyer to prevent public embarrassments threatened by an adult film actress and a former Playboy model. He’s accused of writing it down in the business records as “legal” expenses. And he’s accused of doing this so close to the 2016 election that it must be considered a donation to his own campaign, which should have been reported as such and wasn’t.

Even assuming this is all true, it’s questionable whether campaign finance law required these payments to be reported as donations to the Trump presidential campaign. There are many reasons why a married businessman, whose business is built on licensing his own name, would seek to prevent splashy headlines about alleged affairs with the women in question. Don’t forget that at the time, the whole known universe expected Hillary Clinton to win the 2016 election. Experts in politics and polling thought Donald Trump was on his way back up the escalator to shoot promos for “The Apprentice.”

But even assuming that the payments had to be reported as donations from the candidate to the campaign and were not, is that a crime for a grand jury to spend months investigating? Calling witnesses? Issuing indictments?

Hardly. Campaigns might be fined for a reporting violation. But federal prosecutors didn’t bring any charges against Trump for campaign finance violations or anything else.

Interestingly, a federal prosecutor was working in the Manhattan district attorney’s office for a while. And this is a very strange story.

Mark Pomerantz, according to his biography on the website of Simon & Schuster, publisher of his “fascinating inside account of the attempt to prosecute Donald Trump” (list price $29.99), “was a retired lawyer living a calm suburban life when he accepted an unexpected offer to join the staff of the district attorney of New York County in February 2021 to work on the investigation of former president Donald Trump.” Oddly, this job offer came with no salary. This former federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York worked in the county district attorney’s office on the Trump case “pro bono” from February 2021 to February 2022.

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He resigned in a huff after newly elected District Attorney Bragg, who replaced Cyrus Vance, Jr., reportedly expressed hesitancy about the evidence that supposedly justified an indictment of Trump.

And that’s when Pomerantz wrote his book, “People vs. Donald Trump.” In it, the publisher informs us, he tells “why he believes Donald Trump should be prosecuted.” The book was published two months ago.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan told Fox Business News that Bragg only decided to pursue charges against Trump after the former president announced his candidacy for 2024. “He’s leading in every single poll,” Jordan said, “so I think that’s what changed his mind.”

The Judiciary Committee is now investigating Alvin Bragg for election interference.  However, with the way Republicans are raising money on this indictment, that could turn out to be a victimless crime.

Write Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on Twitter @Susan_Shelley

​ Orange County Register