(WOMENMIZZ)—The fifteen-year career of Robin Pingeton as women’s basketball coach at the University of Missouri is stumbling to an sad ending.
The Lady Tigers lost their last regular-season game to Vanderbilt 100-59, the first time an opponent has topped 100 points against a Missouri women’s team in 25 years.
Pingeton’s Tigers will be the 15th seed in the SEC tournament, facing Mississippi State tomorrow evening. Mississippi State is the 10th seed. Missouri won a regular season game against MSU, 78-77 on January 27.
Her departure is not a surprise. Missouri has gone 79-98 in the last six years with losing records in four of those seasons, twice racking up only nine wins. Going into the likely last game of the year and of her career, Missouri is 14-17.
Overall at Missouri, Pingeton is 250-217 and has taken the team into ten postseason appearances and made four trips to the NCAA women’s tournament. She’s 584-373 including her stint with Northern Illinois.
(MIZZ)—The Missouri Tigers again have shown an inability to capitalize on a big win, losing to Vanderbilt 97-93 in overtime after holding a three-point lead with nine seconds left in regulation.
Missouri had led most of the game but could never put the Commodores away.
It’s a costly loss that drops Missouri out of a top-four seed in the SEC tournament and the double-bye that would have been part of that seeding.
Coach Dennis Gates blamed himself for the loss, saying he hadn’t done what he had to do.
Missouri plays Oklahoma in Norman tomorrow night.
The loss drops Missouri to 19th in the coaches poll. They’re 15th among AP sportswriters. They’re 10-6 in the conference now. Auburn, the nation’s top team, is 15-1 with Texas A&M second at 12-4 and Florida and Alabama at 12-4. (zou)
(MOOSE)—Former Kansas City Royals third baseman Mike Moustakis is coming home to retire. The Moose is going to sign a one-day contract before a game on May 31 so he can retire with the team he helped win the 2015 World Series. The team will host a pregame ceremony for him before they play the Tigers.
He hit 139 homers in his eight seasons with a n 11.5 WAR before he was traded to the Milwaukee Brewers, where he played for a season and a half before going to Cincinnati for three years. He split 2023 between the Rockies and the Angels, signed a minor league deal in 2024 but was cut before the season started.
He hit .284 with 22 homers and 82 RBIs in the championship year of 2015. He hit .304 against the Mets in the World Series.
(SPRING TRAINING)—How are the Royals and Cardinals doing in spring training?
The Cardinals are last in the Grapefruit League at 3-6 through Sunday. They’ve been outscored 37-46 and are winless (0-5) outside Roger Dean Stadium. As a team, the ‘Birds are hitting only .193. Nolan Arenado is 3 for 12. Masin Wynn and Nolan Gorman are hitless in 12 at-bats each. Jordan Walker is 1 for 11. Victor Scott and Wilson Contrares are having a good spring. Both are 5 for 9 (.556). St. Louis is averaging five hits per game.
The Royals 6-4, sixth in the Cactus League. They’re 65-65 in the runs-scored, runs-against sats and hitting .257 as a team through Sunday. Bobby Witt is at 294. Michael Massey is at .417. Vinnie Pasquantino, coming back from a fractured wrist last year, is looking for his stroke at .188.
(CHIEFS)— The offseason for the Chiefs already is producing changes and apprehension. Early speculation is focusing on three guys.
Linebacker Nick Bolton will become a free agent next month. He knows he’s a hot commodity. The Chiefs know it, too. The former Tiger has racked up at least 100 tackles in three of his four seasons. He’s indicated he’s like to stay in KC, but—–
Offensive guard Trey Smith is not under contract for 2026 and coming off his first pro-bowl season. He also is 25 and is the kind of guy a lot of teams would like to pick up. But he was a stalwart in a leaky offensive line last year. Ian Rapaport with NFL insider thinks Kansas City will make him a franchise player for 2026 and pay him about $23 million for a one-year deal, making him the highest-paid guard in the league.
But the financial impact goes beyond Smith because it affects the players’ budget. The big loser, according to some analysts, could be Isiah Pacheco, who missed ten games but the Chiefs didn’t seem to miss him much. The running game led by a rejuvenated Kareem Hunt might make Pacheco expendable.
Moving Along. At about 200 mph:
(INDYCAR)—Defensing INDY car champion Alex Palou dominated the race on the streets of St. Petersburg, the first race of the series schedule.
The win gives him a leg up on winning his third INDYCAR championship. It’s his 12th career win in the series.
But six-time champion Scott Dixon thinks he could have won he race if his radio hadn’t quit working, forcing him to make pit stops based in dashboard information rather than communications from his crew chief.
Even with that difficulty, Dixon’s runner-up finish gave Chip Ganassi Racing a 1-2 finish with the cars of rival Penske Racing’s Josef Newgarden and pole sitter Scott McLaughlin.
Two-time Indianapolis 500 champion Josef Newgarden closed to within nine-tenths of a second late in the race but faded to third, passed by an onrushing Dixon, who finished less than three seconds behind Palou.
Palou called his win “amazing,” which it might have been because of his past struggles at St. Pete.
The season opened poorly for the third Penske driver, Will Power, who had to replace his engine before the start and was then caught up in a crash on the third turn of the race. Power, who turned 44 earlier in the week, is in the last year of his contract with Penske. He wants to keep racing, would prefer to stay with Penske but says serious contract negotiations have not yet begun.
McLaughlin announced before the race that his contract with Penske had been extended.
(NASCAR)—Christopher Bell has become the first driver since 2018 to win two of the first three NASCAR Cup races, crossing the finish line at the Circuit of the Americas after a tough but clean race. He also won at Atlanta last week.
Bell finished second at COTA last year. This year seemed like a replay of 2024 in some ways. “These road-course races are so much fun,” he said afterwards. But he didn’t want to wreck Busch to get past him. “We tried to be so cautious…His car started falling off, and ours was still strong. I kept thinking ‘don’t beat yourself.’”
Kyle Busch seemed on the verge of ending his 59-race winless streak when the last caution came out that allowed the field to bunch up with him. He and Bell raced hard and clean before Busch’s worn tires forced him to slow, allowing Bell to get past him with ten laps to go, and then William Byron and Tyler Reddick got past him, too.
Byron was able to get to Bell but couldn’t get an opening to pass. Chase Elliott, who came back from an early spin to finish fourth, watched the three fight it out in the closing laps and called the contest “a great example of three very respectful talented race car drivers duking it out for the win without crashing each other.”
Busch is looking for his first win since June, 2023 at Madison, Illinois. After the race he told interviewers, “I feel like maybe the two-lap fresher tires the No. 20 (Bell) had was the difference. All things considered, I’d love to have equal tires to the No. 20 and get back after it and see what we could do that way. But I also hated to see that yellow that came out. I felt like we had a little bit of a gap there, enough of a gap that I was protecting my tires.”
(photo credits: Moustakis—KC Royals; Bell—Bob Priddy; Palou—Rick Gevers)