BASKETBALL
Gators’ Stone picks Miami
Former University of Florida forward Keith Stone is transferring to the University of Miami for his senior season. The 6-8 Stone, a South Florida native, expects to graduate this summer and will be eligible to play for the Hurricanes in 2019-20. Stone averaged 6.1 points and 3.9 rebounds in 17 games for Florida this season before he suffered a season-ending knee injury Jan. 19. He started 39 games in three seasons with the Gators.
Greed said to fuel bribes
A scandal in which college basketball coaches were bribed to steer NBA-bound players to favored agents and money managers was motivated by greed, a prosecutor told jurors Tuesday — before defense lawyers criticized the case as an FBI-led setup. Assistant U.S. Attorney Eli Mark said at the opening of a criminal trial that Christian Dawkins cheated to elevate prospects for his fledgling sports management company. The prosecutor said Dawkins was aided in his scheme by Merl Code, a Clemson point guard in the 1990s who developed many contacts while doing work for shoemakers Nike and Adidas. Mark said Code played a key role in the crimes by introducing college basketball coaches to two investors in Dawkins’ company. Those individuals, the prosecutor said, were undercover FBI agents. Mark said Dawkins gave envelopes stuffed with cash to coaches who Code brought to him. He said the men arranged payouts to coaches at South Carolina, Arizona, Southern California, Creighton and Texas Christian University. Dawkins’ attorney, Steven Haney, said his client was 22 years old when the undercover FBI agents posing as investors and a cooperator seeking leniency from criminal charges met him on a yacht in lower Manhattan in 2017 to convince him to bribe college coaches. Haney said that although Dawkins accepted thousands of dollars in cash given to him on the yacht, jurors will learn that Dawkins and Code resisted the plan to bribe coaches.
GYMNASTICS
Olympic trials to St. Louis
USA Gymnastics announced Tuesday the 2020 U.S. Olympic men’s and women’s gymnastics team trials will be held in St. Louis on June 25-28, at the Enterprise Center, home of the NHL’s St. Louis Blues. Making the announcement 14 months in advance is a signal that USA Gymnastics is optimistic it will maintain its role as the sport’s national governing body amid the fallout from the Larry Nassar scandal. The U.S. Olympic Committee began the process of stripping USA Gymnastics of its governing status last fall. USA Gymnastics filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in December in an effort to reach settlements in the dozens of sex-abuse lawsuits it faces from athletes who blame the group for failing to supervise Nassar, a team doctor accused of molesting them. Nassar, 55, is serving an effective life sentence for child porn possession and molesting young women and girls under the guise of medical treatment. The bankruptcy filing also stayed any legal claims by the USOC against USA Gymnastics. Newly hired USA Gymnastics President and CEO Li Li Leung said Tuesday she has been in close contact with the USOC and said she is confident her organization will still have the power to select the U.S. Olympic team next summer. The men’s and women’s Olympic trials will be combined next year after being split in 2016.
ATHLETICS
New AD backs Wade
New LSU Athletic Director Scott Woodward began his tenure at his alma mater by asserting he would throw “100 percent support” behind recently reinstated basketball Coach Will Wade — unless he’s presented with new information that forces him to reconsider. “I have not met with Will,” Woodward said during his formal introduction as LSU’s top athletics official Tuesday afternoon. “We’ve seen each other in group meetings. I need to be briefed, and I need to find out what’s going on. Coach Wade is LSU’s coach, and until then he’s going to have my 100 percent support.” Woodward agreed last week to leave Texas A&M and take over at LSU for Joe Alleva, who has been reassigned within the university. Wade was suspended before the regular-season finale after he declined to meet with Alleva about a leaked FBI wiretap transcript that begged questions about whether the coach committed recruiting violations. Wade’s suspension covered the entirety of LSU’s postseason, which ended in the third round of the NCAA Tournament. The coach finally met with Alleva and NCAA compliance officials after changing attorneys and was reinstated by Alleva, who noted he had little choice but to do so in the absence of evidence that Wade violated NCAA rules.
TENNIS
Anderson out of French
Two-time Grand Slam runner-up Kevin Anderson is skipping the clay-court swing this season because of a lingering right elbow injury. Anderson announced Tuesday via a post on Twitter that he is withdrawing from the French Open, as well as tune-up tournaments in Estoril, Madrid and Rome. The 6-8 South African has been dealing with elbow issues for much of the year. He has played in only 10 matches in 2019, citing the elbow when pulling out of tournaments in New York, Delray Beach, Indian Wells and Acapulco. Anderson lost to Novak Djokovic in the Wimbledon final last year, and was the runner-up to Rafael Nadal at the 2017 U.S. Open. He is ranked No. 6.
Zverev loses in Barcelona
Second-seeded Alexander Zverev lost to 81st-ranked Nicolas Jarry in the Barcelona Open on Tuesday after failing to convert a match point, while former champion Kei Nishikori and third-seeded Dominic Thiem easily advanced to the third round. Zverev lost 3-6, 7-5, 7-6 (5) to Jarry, a 23-year-old Chilean who was given a lucky loser spot in the tournament. The third-ranked German cruised in the first set but was broken late in the second and then three times in the third before falling in the decisive tiebreaker after more than 2½ hours for his fifth loss in seven matches. Thiem cruised to a 6-3, 6-3 win over Diego Schwartz-man. Nishikori, the Barcelona champion in 2014 and 2015, defeated American Taylor Fritz 7-5, 6-2. Nishikori is the only player other than Rafael Nadal to win the Barcelona title in the past eight years.
FOOTBALL
No releasing Kraft video
A video that police say shows New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft paying a massage parlor worker for sex should not be publicly released for now because it would ruin his chance for a fair trial, a judge ruled Tuesday. Circuit Judge Leonard Hanser accepted arguments by Kraft’s attorneys that releasing the video would likely make it impossible to seat a jury for his trial on misdemeanor prostitution charges. He said the video shouldn’t be handed to the news media as a public record until a jury is seated, a plea agreement is reached or the state drops the case. Kraft has pleaded not guilty but has issued an apology for his conduct. Hanser wrote that under normal circumstances, an older man allegedly paying for sexual services would be “a rather tawdry but fairly unremarkable event.” “But if that man is the owner of the most successful franchise in, arguably, the most popular professional sport in the United States, an entirely different dynamic arises,” Hanser wrote. He said the video would be shown widely on television and on the internet and it would be difficult for him to find unbiased jurors.