Connect with us

Published

on

LAS VEGAS — Knocked out of the playoffs this time last week, Joey Logano seized on his reversal of fortune to become the first driver locked into NASCAR’s championship finale.

Logano was below the cutline and eliminated from the eight-driver field when he left Charlotte Motor Speedway last Sunday. But when Alex Bowman‘s car failed postrace inspection, Bowman was disqualified and Logano reinstated to the playoff field.

The only two-time Cup champion in the playoff field, Logano passed Daniel Suarez with five laps remaining Sunday for his fourth career victory at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. It is the second win of the playoffs for Logano, and the Team Penske driver makes a Ford the first one locked into the winner-take-all final four at Phoenix Raceway next month.

He needed a massive fuel-saving effort to win.

“Man, we did some fuel mileage stuff, didn’t we?” Logano said. “What an incredible turn of events here the last week. It takes the whole team to do the fuel mileage stuff. Not just the engineers, spotter. It takes all of us to do it. Total team win.”

Logano had to hold off pole sitter Christopher Bell, who led a race-high 156 laps, over the closing two laps. A late pit stop put Bell 30 seconds behind Suarez, and Bell was cruising in his Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing trying to run down Suarez when Logano got to Suarez first.

Bell didn’t have enough to catch Logano and finished 0.662 seconds back.

“We’re going to the championship four again!” Logano shouted on the frontstretch. He and Kyle Busch are the only two-time active champions, with Logano now in position to win a third Cup title.

Bell, who has made it to the championship race the past two years, was clearly disappointed after such a dominating day.

“I don’t know, I don’t know, and I don’t think I’ve come to terms with this yet,” Bell said. “Just a bummer. I think everyone on this team did everything perfect. Just because I ran second today doesn’t mean I’m going to finish anywhere next week. You’re never safe in this deal, so we needed to win today and unfortunately, we didn’t.”

Suarez, who was eliminated from the playoffs last week, finished third in a Chevrolet for Trackhouse Racing.

“It’s a little heartbreaking. I think we could have won it,” Suarez said.

William Byron of Hendrick Motorsports was fourth as he attempts to qualify for the championship race for a second consecutive year.

“It’s going to take a win, I feel like, so we have to keep working for it and keep running up front,” Byron said. “If we run up front, it will do two things — we’ll be able to compete for a win and score a lot of points. We just have to keep running like this.”

Byron was followed by teammate Bowman in fifth and then Gibbs driver Martin Truex Jr., who was eliminated from the playoffs in the first round in his final season of full-time NASCAR racing.

Gibbs driver Denny Hamlin was eighth in a massive recovery on an underwhelming day and only four playoff drivers finished in the top 10.

“Not a clean day. That certainly sums it up. You’ll have that,” Hamlin said. “We did the best we could to get the best finish.”

Kyle Larson, winner of two straight at Las Vegas as well as last week at Charlotte, came from two laps down to finish 11th. He was the top-seeded driver at the start of Sunday and is now third in the standings behind Logano and Bell.

“It was a messy, messy day. This was a long, hard-fought 11th-place finish,” Larson said. “We got the most we could out of the rest of the day.”

The remaining three playoff drivers had terrible days as reigning Cup champion Ryan Blaney, Chase Elliott and regular-season champion Tyler Reddick were all collected in the same early crash.

Logano is locked into the championship race, while Bell, Larson and Byron are above the cutline. Hamlin, Reddick, Blaney and Elliott are all below the elimination mark with two races remaining in the round.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

Continue Reading

Sports

Source: Rangers happy if Bochy stays beyond ’25

Published

on

By

Source: Rangers happy if Bochy stays beyond '25

The hiring of Skip Schumaker as a senior advisor may mean that the Texas Rangers have their future manager under contract.

But if current manager Bruce Bochy, who is likely to be inducted into the Hall of Fame once his career is over, wants to continue beyond 2025, the Rangers will enthusiastically welcome that.

According to one source, Bochy will have the latitude to continue if that’s what he wants.

“If [Bochy] wants to manage beyond 2025, [the Rangers] are good with that,” a highly ranked source told ESPN.

Bochy, who turns 70 in April, just completed his 27th season managing in the big leagues — for the San Diego Padres and San Francisco Giants before he became the Rangers’ skipper in 2023 — and ranks eighth all time in managerial wins with 2,171, the most for any current manager.

Next season, he will likely pass Dusty Baker and Sparky Anderson on the list. Bochy’s teams have won four championships — the Giants in 2010, 2012 and 2014, and the Rangers in 2023.

Schumaker, 44, is viewed as a rising star in the managerial ranks after his first two seasons, with the Miami Marlins.

Miami made the playoffs in 2023 and Schumaker was named National League Manager of the Year. But when the Marlins’ ownership effectively pushed out Kim Ng, the GM who hired Schumaker, he asked the team to void a 2025 option year on his contract, and he left the Marlins after the 2024 season.

Continue Reading

Sports

Shildt gets extension after Padres’ playoff return

Published

on

By

Shildt gets extension after Padres' playoff return

One year into his tenure with the Padres, Mike Shildt has been rewarded with a two-year contract extension that ties the manager to San Diego through 2027.

The Padres announced the agreement Wednesday with the 56-year-old manager after they went 93-69, finishing five games behind the eventual World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League West and claiming the top NL wild card.

“I am honored to continue leading this team toward Peter Seidler’s vision of bringing a World Series championship to San Diego,” Shildt said in a statement. “In collaboration with our players and coaching staff, we are committed to building on our success, serving our community and the City of San Diego, and delivering a winning team to our incredible and deserving fan base.”

San Diego swept a two-game wild-card series against the Atlanta Braves then took a 2-1 lead on the Dodgers in the best-of-five NL Division Series. Los Angeles bounced back to win the final two games 8-0 and 2-0.

The Padres tied for first in the majors with a .263 batting average and ranked sixth with a .745 OPS. Their 3.86 team ERA rated 12th, and their pitching staff’s 1,453 strikeouts came in sixth.

Shildt previously managed the Cardinals from 2018 to 2021, logging a 252-199 regular-season record and guiding St. Louis into the postseason in three of his four seasons. He was voted the NL Manager of the Year in 2019.

“As Mike demonstrated this year, he has an unwavering commitment to winning and a unique set of skills that got our group to perform at a high level,” Padres president of baseball operations and general manager A.J. Preller said in a statement. “He possesses a true love for this team and the game of baseball, and I am thrilled to continue to work together with Mike to bring a championship to the City of San Diego.”

Field Level Media contributed to this report.

Continue Reading

Sports

Bottom 10: Clemson and its fans thrown for a loss

Published

on

By

Bottom 10: Clemson and its fans thrown for a loss

Inspirational thought of the week:

Do you love me?
Do you wanna be my friend?
And if you do
Well then don’t be afraid to take me by the hand
If you want to
I think this is how love goes
Check yes or no
— “Check Yes or No,” George Strait

Here at Bottom 10 Headquarters, located among the giant concrete reinforcement pillars installed under the Indiana football offices to support Curt Cignetti’s self-confidence, we are still trying to process the ceaseless series of sea change/Earth change/mindset change/sleep-cycle change events that were thrust upon us over the course of only a few days’ time.

We had Halloween, turning the clocks back an hour, the release of a new Liam Neeson/Ron Perlman mob movie and a Week 10 slate that saw a gaggle of ranked teams pushed and/or upset by unranked teams, not to mention Pur-don’t and Northworstern going into OT.

And oh yeah, dummy me. I forgot the biggest event of them all. The one that was unfurling just as we were compiling these rankings Tuesday evening, Nov. 5, 2024. I am, of course, speaking of the #MACtion doubleheader of Boiling Green at Centralized Michigan and My Hammy of Ohio at Baller State. Oh, and the eve of “The Golden Bachelorette: The Men Tell All.”

With apologies to Joan Vassos, Jesse Palmer, Matt James, Tyler Cameron, Cleisthenes and Steve Harvey, here’s the post-Week 10 Bottom 10 rankings.


The good news is that the Golden (plated) Flashes, aka America’s last winless FBS team, did not lose their 18th straight game. The bad news is that it’s only because they didn’t play. Now they kick off Week 11 early with the first of four straight midweek games to end the season. It starts with a visit from fellow Ohioans Ohio, followed by a trip to fellow Ohioans My Hammy of Ohio, a visit from fellow Ohioans Akronmonious and then a trip to Buffalo, which isn’t in Ohio, but I’m pretty sure Ohio eats more Buffalo wings than any other state, so it feels like it is.


Brett Favre Funding U also managed to escape its open date without a loss ahead of hosting Marshall this weekend. The Olden Eagles are already eyeing their potential Pillow Fight of the Year of the Century in their season finale to Bottom 10 Waiting Lister Troy Bolton State. Actually, they’re already eyeing the weekend after that, when the season is finally over.


Speaking of the Waiting List, that’s where the Minors were just two weeks ago, but after back-to-back Pillow Fight losses to Fa-la-la-la-la La-la-la-Tech and Meh-dle Tennessee, they have jumped up off the bench outside and burst into the front door like me when the buffet hostess finally says, “McGee, party of one!” Now they will play in unprecedented Pillow Fight Three-peat against … yeah, like that hostess, we’re going to make you wait a minute.


Our old friends the Minuetmen also spent part of this fall on the Waiting List, but they answered the call of duty by following up their non-FBS win over Jack Wagner by getting housed by another Waiting List member, a fellow 2-7 squad out of the S-E-C, Miss Sus Hippie State. Now the Mess plays last week’s Coveted Fifth Spot winner Liberty. It’s always a weird headspace for a group of Revolutionary War soldiers to try to defeat Liberty.


The Tigers tumble down The Hill from the fancy-schmancy Coaches Poll top 10 into the Coveted Fifth Spot after losing to #goacc mid-packer Louisville. We were on the fence about whether to put Death Valley or Happy Valley into this slot, but our minds were made up after downing a bottle of refreshing water that had been winged at our heads from the Clemson student section.


I can hear the lobby conversation now. “Hey, Clemson, did y’all really just lose to Louisville and land in the Coveted Fifth Spot?” “Hey, FSU, did y’all really just lose by 24 points to North Carolina and is the only team you’ve beaten really Cal?” Then they both grab up their briefcases and head into the courtroom to explain why they are too good for the ACC.


The Buttermakers lost the B1G Bottom 10 Bowl presented by Rust-eze, falling to Northworstern in overtime. Now they finish the year with three of four games against top 10 teams in Ohio State, Penn State and Indiana. In related news, sources tell Bottom 10 JortsCenter that Purdue’s legendary engineering department is trying to invent one of those Tony Stark time machine thingies so they can fast forward to winter.


The New Owls have flown back into these standings after following up their first-ever win as an FBS program with their seventh-ever loss as an FBS program. Now they hit the road for their first-ever Pillow Fight of the Week, a matchup with border rival UTEPid. Told you we’d get to it.


If the Bottom 10 were a series “Game of Thrones” memes, this is where we’d see a photo of Boromir talking and giant white letters that read “ONE DOES NOT SIMPLY GET SMOKED 59-21 BY ONE-WIN UAB AND NOT END UP IN THE BOTTOM 10.” OK, sure, let’s go on and do it …


My OG Bottom 10 champs are back! The Panthers keep racking up moral victories. Their only actual victories came back-to-back in September over Chattanooga and Vanderbilt. So, if you’re scoring at home, and we are, Georgia State beat Vandy, who beat Bama, who has been ranked No. 1 and who beat Georgia, who has been ranked No. 1 and who beat Texas, who has been ranked No. 1. I almost printed this paragraph out on Georgia State stationery and nailed it to the door of the College Football Playoff selection committee meeting room at the Gaylord Texan, like Martin Luther at the Castle Church.

Waiting List: FA (not I) U, Akronmonious, Meh-dle Tennessee, WhyOMGing?, You A Bee?, Whew Mexico State, Temple of Doom, Utaw State, Charlotte 3-and-6ers, assistant coaches impersonating volcanos.

Continue Reading

Trending