(BBPORTALS)—Add the name of Jacob Crews to the list of bolting Missouri Tiger basketball players.
Crewse to play another year of college ball, but he’ll need an NCAA hardship waiver to get it. He’s the fourth Tiger to jump ship. So far, nobody has transferred TO Missouri but it’s still early in the shopping season to have anything in the cart although Coach Dennis Gates is looking at a lot of merchandise, particularly on the guard shelf.
The story is the same in Springfield and in Billiken-Land.
(ROYALSHOME)—Kansas City’s Council is considering whether the city should pay about one-third of the cost of a new stadium for the Royals. The ordinance putting up $600,000 of the $1.9-billion needed authorizes the city manager to negotiate a 30-year deals with the team to play in an area known as Washington Square Park.
The proposal also would prohibit the Royals from thinking about moving to another state, county, or city and it would call for the stadium being ready for the start of the 2030 season. Owner John Sherman has indicated the team wants to play “in the heart of the city,” although he has not reacted to the proposed ordinance.
(CHIEFSHOME)—Kansas Governor Laura Kely has signed a bill creating the Kansas Sports Facilities Authority, the latest step in her state’s effort to get the Chiefs to move to Wyandotte County Kansas with a training facility in Olathe.
Kelly’s statement says, “The Kansas City Chiefs’ historic agreement with the State of Kansas is monumental for our economy, creating thousands of new jobs, attracting tourists from around the world, and elevating Kansas as an elite place to put down roots…This bill provides the necessary governance structure and guardrails to manage and oversee the team’s facilities, ensuring Kansans for generations to come will continue to cheer on our beloved team at home. We’re turning Kansas into a premier destination for sports and entertainment without raising state taxes or taking funding away from essential services.”
(BATTLEHAWKS)—The St. Louis Battlehawks scored 21 points in the last quarter to top the Birmingham Stallions 34=30. Backup quarterback Harrison Frost took over the quarterbacking duties at halftime.
The Battlehawks squandered a 10-0 first quarter lead, part of which was a 54-yard field goal by former University of Missouri place kicker Tucker McCann to fall behind 16-13. It was 30-20 with 11:45 left before “Hawks and Frost took control of the game. They took the lead with 1:42 left.
The Battlehawks will play the DC Defenders next Saturday, the first of three straight road games. They opened the season with a win against the Defenders.
(MCCANN)—Tucker McCann has been out of football for five years but has continued to work out and made the Battlehawks roster in mid-January and immediately made his presence felt with a 58-yard field goal in the season opener, his first field goal in a competitive game since August 12, 2021.
He was an undrafted free agent in the 2020 draft coming out of Mizzou. He signed with the Tennessee Titans but injured an ankle in a preseason game and was sent to the practice squad. He was cut in October of 2021.
(THEBASEBALL)—Both of our baseball teams have shown they’re not much more han mediocre in the first couple of weeks of the season.
(ROYALS) —-The Royals finished the week at 7-9 only a game out of first place in the AL Central division. For the most part the team seems to have left it hits-bats in Florida. Salvador Perez and Vinnie :Pasquantino are hitting .264. Jonahan India is hitting .184. The star of the team, Bobby Witt Jr., is hitting only 260. The bright spot is Mikael Garcia who is at .324 after the first 15 games.
Starting pitching is pretty sold. Michael Wacha turned in a masters’ performance Saturday against the White Sox on Saturday. His first 17 pitches were strikes. He went into the eighth inning having thrown only 80 pitches. The Royals won the game 2-0 and Wacha lowered his ERA to 0.43.
(CARDINALS)—The Cardinals are above break even thanks to outstanding starting pitching in the early going. Michael McGreevy is giving up only 2.64 earned runs a game. Andre Pallante has an ERA of 1.80 and Matthew Liberatore is respectable at 3.38.
Jordan Walker has been a surprise in the first two weeks, hitting .314. But the whole team’s average is only ,224.
(SOPHIE)—Sophie Cunningham has signed on for another season with the Indianapolis Fever of the women’s NBA. The signing keeps the popular “Trois Leches” (Spanish for “Three Milks” that combine for a popular dessert) of Cunningham, Caitlin Clark, and Lexie Hull. The three are the core of the Fever, a team that won the Commissioner’s Cup in 2025 although Cunningham and Clark both missed playing time
Terms of the contract haven’t been revealed but the new collective bargaining agreement specifies that someone who’s been in he league as long as she has will be paid at least $292,500, a sizeable increase from the salaries in the last CBA. This will be her eighth season. She’s 29, played thirty games for the Fever last year before a torn MCL put her on the sidelines. She had career best shooting percentages last year—43.2% from the three-point line and 46.9 overall.
Cunningham is setting up her second career as a media personality and podcaster. She’s going to be part of the USA Network’s studio coverage of the WNBA when she’s not on the court. She’ll also contribute to the network’s digital and social platforms.
AND she will be a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model this year.
The league starts its season on May 8. The Fever will play its first game the next day.
For the speedy set—
(INDYCAR)—Not all of the attention next weekend will be focused on the racing on the streets of Long Beach, California.
A new movie will attract a lot of attention—a documentary about driver Robert Wickens, whose seeming meteoric career was ended by a crash that left him partially paralyzed. It’s going to be the story of a driver who was determined to drive racing cars again—and has been.
An earlier documentary tracked his life from wheelchair to racing car:
Wickens was IndyCar’s rookie of the year in 2018, having run so well in the first part of the season to accumulate enough points to win the award although a crash at Pocono left him a paraplegic.
Four years later he was back in a race car—an IMSA TCR series entry with hand controls that he and his co-driver took to two wins and a championship.
The movie is called, “The Weight of Speed.”
The Long Beach race is the last one before the teams move to Indianapolis for a race on the IMS road course and the 110th Indianapolis 500.
(NASCAR)—Ty Gibbs made Grandpa’s day on Sunday with his win at Bristol, his first in 131 cup starts for Joe Gibbs racing.
Ty Gibbs made the critical decision that gave him the win when the caution flag waved for a Chase Elliott spin. Gibbs refused to pit when many other leaders did.
His gain in track position paid off when he restarted with the lead and fourteen laps to go in regulation distance. But a later caution flag meant the race would go into overtime. He withstood the challenge of Ryan Blaney and beat him to the line by .05 second, the closest finish at Bristol since Missouri’s Rusty Wallace beat Ernie Irvan by one foot in 1991. It’s also the first race win for a car number 54 in almost 47 years—when Lennie Pond won his only Cup race, at Talladega, in 1979.
Blaney and Kyle Larson had dominated the race until those cautions. Larson finished behind Blaney, in third.
Missouri NASCAR fans get a chance for their first close race of the year—at the Kansas Speedway, not far from the apparent future home of the Kansas City Chiefs.
(Photo credits: Stadium—Kansas City Royals; Sophie—Irishstar.com; Gibbs—Bob Priddy)
Natalie Sago, a Farmington, MO native, will be among the NBA referee’s for the playoffs.