College Basketball
COLUMBIA, S.C. – Suspended South Carolina players Jamall Gregory and Eric Cobb have been dismissed from the Gamecocks men’s basketball program.
Coach Frank Martin said Monday announced the decision on Monday.
The reserves had been arrested in March and charged with misdemeanors for shooting a BB pellet gun. Cobb, a 6-foot-9 forward, was charged with assault for firing at an occupied car.
Gregory and Cobb were among five players Martin suspended before an NIT victory over High Point last month. The other players – forward Chris Silva and guards Marcus Stroman and TeMarcus Blanton – remain suspended.
College Football
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – A former Vanderbilt football player being retried for rape appears to have abandoned attempts to blame college culture. Instead, a lawyer for Cory Batey told jurors during opening statements Monday that he was drunk and manipulated by three teammates.
Batey and three other former players are charged with raping an unconscious female student in a dorm in June 2013.
Batey is standing trial alone this week. He and another player were previously convicted in the case but the verdict was overturned after lawyers discovered that the jury foreman was a victim of statutory rape.
MLB
PHOENIX – Monday night marked a storybook beginning for Trevor Story’s major league career.
The 23-year-old Colorado Rockies shortstop became the first player in major league history to hit multiple home runs in his big league debut on opening day.
Story is the first National League player to hit at least two homers in his first major league game. Four American League players have done it.
Olympics
Four months before the Rio de Janiero Olympic Games begin, troubling issues are suppressing ticket sales and causing Brazil to consider how it might fill empty seats.
Worries about the Zika virus, a political crisis and ongoing concerns about crime in the country have contributed to depressed sales and caused the country’s new minister of sports to get creative with only about half of all tickets sold.
The opening ceremony is set for Aug. 5, which means that the 100-day mark is approaching rapidly in a country that is now less stable than it was when the Games were awarded.
Soccer
MADRID – Spanish tax authorities say they are investigating allegations of tax irregularities involving soccer player Lionel Messi after documents released by an international probe of offshore accounts.
Messi’s family released a statement Monday denying wrongdoing.
The Barcelona star was among those named in reports by international media who received a vast trove of data and documents leaked from a law firm based in Panama.
Last year, Spanish authorities charged Messi and his father with three counts of tax fraud for allegedly defrauding Spain’s tax office of 4.1 million euros ($4.4 million) in unpaid taxes from 2007-09. They will stand trial in late May and face nearly two years in prison if found guilty.
Associated Press
