Fort Collins, Colorado – The Sugar Bears faced a tough matchup against the Oregon Ducks, falling in straight sets (0-3) with scores of 12-25, 11-25, and 17-25.
In the opening set, the Sugar Bears struggled to find their rhythm, as the Ducks capitalized on strong serving and efficient attacking to take a commanding 25-12 victory.
Set two saw similar challenges for the Sugar Bears, with the Ducks’ defense proving difficult to break. Oregon extended their lead and claimed the set 25-11.
The Sugar Bears showed resilience in the third set, improving their play and pushing the Ducks in several long rallies. Despite the effort, the Ducks maintained control and sealed the match with a 25-17 win.
With this result, the Sugar Bears drop to 1-5 on the season. They’ll look to bounce back in their next match against UTSA on September 13th at 10 a.m.
LAS VEGAS–Competitive eater Joey Chestnut didn’t just beat his opponent on Monday. He also beat his own record.
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Chestnut, who lives in Westfield, Indiana beat Takeru Kobayashi in Netflix’s “Unfinished Beef” Labor Day showdown at the Hyper X Arena in Las Vegas. Chestnut ate 83 hot dogs, which beats his own world record of 76 that he set at the 2021 Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest. Kobayashi ate 67 hot dogs.
“I’ve been trying to hit 80 hot dogs for years. Without Kobayashi, I was never able to do it. He drives me. We weren’t always nice to each other, but I love what he can do. We push each other to be our best,” Chestnut said on stage after the win.
“I feel like I did everything I could,” Kobayashi responded via an interpreter.
Chestnut was banned from the Nathan’s competition this year over his partnership deal with Impossible Foods, forfeiting the “Mustard Belt” to Patrick Bertoletti.
In this event, competitors were not allowed to dunk or pour water on the hot dogs. They also weren’t allowed to separate the beef franks from their buns. Penalties could also be levied for excess crumbs and regurgitation.
Joey Chestnut beat his longtime nemesis Takeru Kobayashi by gobbling down a record 83 hot dogs and buns to Kobayashi’s 66 on Sunday, during Netflix’s live Las Vegas special Chestnut vs. Kobayashi: Unfinished Beef.
There was also a side of personal drama hanging over the match-up: The co-hosts of the live event were comic actor Rob Riggle and Nikki Garcia — days after the husband of the latter, Dancing with the Stars pro Artem Chigvintsev, was arrested for domestic violence.
There was no mention of the situation on-air, but Garcia wasn’t wearing her wedding ring.
Chestnut and Kobiyashi used to go head-to-head during Nathan’s annual hot dog eating contest every July 4 — with Joey finally beating Kobayashi in 2007.
However, a contract dispute between Kobayashi and Major League Eating saw him banned from the competition since 2010, clearing the way for Chestnut to dominate virtually unchallenged since.
In June, MLE banned Chestnut from the July 4 contest due to his decision to endorse vegan hot dogs instead of Nathan’s.
NEW YORK — Coco Gauff was not aware that she’d lost five consecutive matches against opponents ranked in the top 50. She was not sure exactly how many points in a row she’d dropped — 11, it turns out — to give away the first set against Elina Svitolina in the US Open’s third round on Friday.
Here, then, is what was entirely clear to Gauff at that moment: “I needed a reset.” Before the second set, the 20-year-old from Florida went to the bathroom, changed part of her outfit and splashed water on her face. Then Gauff went back on court and extended the defense of her first Grand Slam title by turning things around to beat the 27th-seeded Svitolina 3-6, 6-3, 6-3.
“Felt like a new person coming out,” the third-seeded Gauff said. “I just didn’t want to leave the court with any regrets.”
After making mistake after mistake early on at Arthur Ashe Stadium, Gauff managed to reel off nine of 11 games in one stretch and won again despite losing the opening set, something she did three times en route to claiming the 2023 trophy at Flushing Meadows, including in the final against Aryna Sabalenka.
“It was in my mind today. It gave me a lot of confidence,” Gauff said, “just because it felt like déjà vu a little bit.”
On Sunday, Gauff will face No. 13 Emma Navarro, one of her teammates at the Paris Olympics, for a berth in the quarterfinals. Navarro eliminated Gauff in the fourth round at Wimbledon.
This comeback might be just what Gauff needs to move past a recent slump that saw her win just five of her previous nine matches.
Such a contrast to a year ago, when Gauff won 18 of 19, and 12 in a row, along the way to two tuneup titles on hard courts and then the championship at the US Open that made her the first U.S. teenager to triumph at Flushing Meadows since Serena Williams in 1999.
By the conclusion of one set against Svitolina, it seemed as if another loss might be in the offing. Gauff’s totals were 16 unforced errors — nine on backhands — and just seven winners. She put only 45% of her first serves in. She went 0-for-3 on break points. She allowed Svitolina to claim 19 of the 28 points that lasted more than four strokes.
All of those numbers got better across the last two sets as Gauff tried to be more aggressive with her forehands and be more careful with her backhands. And something else changed, at the behest of her coaches: Gauff got the partisan crowd more involved.
Svitolina said afterward she was bothered by an ankle injury picked up last week
“I feel like she started to go [for] more a little bit. But to be fair, I didn’t play the way that I wanted to play. … Then she started to be more alive,” Svitolina, a three-time Slam semifinalist, said. “And, of course, the crowd was behind her.”
Everything began to change for Gauff on Friday after 1 hour, 10 minutes, when she broke to lead 4-2 in the second set, smacking a cross-court forehand winner. She celebrated with a yell of “Come on!” and raised her left hand to wiggle her fingers and ask the spectators to get louder.
“My team was kind of like telling me that [the fans] were on the edge of their seats,” Gauff explained. “So I said, ‘OK, I need to erupt so you guys can erupt.'”
Soon that set belonged to Gauff, who closed it with a 94 mph ace, shook a fist and shouted.
In the third, with UConn women’s basketball stars Paige Bueckers and Azzi Fudd sitting in her guest box at Ashe, Gauff broke right away, then held to go up 2-0 with the help of one 38-stroke point that she took when Svitolina sent a backhand wide.
Soon it was 5-1 for Gauff, whose only late wobble came when she served for the match at 5-2. She wasted three match points and got broken there. But Gauff broke right back to close things out.
“I’m glad that I had that match,” Gauff said, “because I think it just makes me match-tough and gets me ready, probably, for future challenges.”
Since making her Grand Slam debut in 2019, Gauff has won 12 major matches after dropping the opening set, second only to Ons Jabeur (13) in that span.
Gauff also became the sixth American woman to win 60 major matches before her 21st birthday, joining Serena Williams, Mary Joe Fernandez, Chris Evert, Venus Williams and Tracy Austin.
ESPN Stats & Information and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The fretting over Arsenal’s squad depth was supposed to end when the Premier League’s summer transfer window closed on Friday.
Raheem Sterling‘s last-gasp arrival on loan from Chelsea had many Gunners supporters pitching up at Emirates Stadium on Saturday enthused by the options manager Mikel Arteta has at his disposal. Yet they left the ground after Saturday’s 1-1 draw with Brighton & Hove Albion concerned about a midfield area that suddenly looks light ahead of the biggest week of the season by some distance.
First, there is an international break in which to draw breath and regain some of the composure that Arsenal temporarily lost here following Declan Rice‘s 50th-minute red card. But then comes a seven-day period in which they travel to Tottenham Hotspur for the north London derby, Italy for a Champions League opener against last season’s Europa League winners Atalanta and then to Premier League champions Manchester City.
Right now, the indications are that new €32.5 million signing Mikel Merino will miss all three matches after suffering a fractured shoulder in his first training session. Rice is now suspended against Spurs after a controversial dismissal, the first of his 245-game league career.
After a strong tackle on Joël Veltman just before half-time, the pair tangled again shortly after the restart. As Veltman went to kick the ball — a moving ball — to restart play following a free kick in his favour, Rice nudged it away and Veltman, who had already started swinging his right leg, made contact with Rice instead of the ball.
The Premier League later clarified Rice had “delayed the restart,” something he had technically done but in a manner not consistently punished; Brighton’s João Pedro booted the ball away after it ran out in the first half with no sanction from referee Chris Kavanagh. Arteta also cited another first-half moment and claimed Veltman should have in fact been sent off for kicking Rice.
“I was amazed,” Arteta said postmatch. “Amazed, amazed, amazed because of how inconsistent decisions can be.
“In the first half, there are two incidents and nothing happens. Then, in a non-critical area, the ball hits Declan [on the back of his leg], he turns around, he doesn’t see the player coming and he touches the ball.
“By law, he can make that call, but then by law he needs to make the next call, which is red card so we play 10 versus 10. This is what amazed me. At this level it’s amazing. [Declan] obviously had a reaction that his back was to the ball, that they’re not in the middle of the park, trying to counter or anything.
“Anyway, I repeat myself; by law if you want to do it you have to do it, but you have to do it in the first half and play 10 against 10. That’s it. Very simple.”
Brighton took advantage within eight minutes. João Pedro turned home the rebound after David Raya saved Yankuba Minteh‘s shot, cancelling out Kai Havertz‘s well-taken 38th-minute opener, lofted over Brighton goalkeeper Bart Verbruggen.
Fuelled by a sense of injustice, Arsenal reorganised and after a short spell in which they seemed flummoxed by how to reorganise with 10 men, Havertz and Bukayo Saka had glorious chances to score, but both were denied by Verbruggen. Brighton inevitably controlled possession and went closest through substitute Yasin Ayari in between those Havertz and Saka chances but had to settle for a point.
“We reacted to what we had to do playing at home with 10 men,” Arteta said. “We didn’t want to be so deep defending like this, but we read the game and we played the game that we had to play and we should have got rewarded.”
There was at least some good news afterwards in that defender Jurriën Timber did not suffer a serious injury and was instead substituted late on with cramp. Timber has been cited as a possible option in midfield given his physicality and quality on the ball. It will likely be something Arteta considers for the challenges ahead, although Jorginho, Thomas Partey and Martin Ødegaard are the most obvious fits to start against Spurs as things stand.
The international break will shape their approach and also give Sterling a chance to sharpen his game ahead of the trip across the capital. Not selected for England by interim coach Lee Carsley, Sterling will instead work at Arsenal’s London Colney base and reacquaint himself with Arteta, with whom he developed a strong relationship during three years working together at Manchester City.
“We have to see him, speak to him [about] what he’s been doing and how he’s feeling about it and try to find quick wins to get him up to speed as quickly as possible and for him to understand what we are looking for from him in the dynamics of the team,” Arteta said of Sterling. “We will use that time to do that and get him involved as soon as possible.”
And what of coping without Rice or Merino? “This is what happens,” Arteta replied. “We have to adapt to that context. That’s why we have other players that can fulfill that [role] and [I can] give that opportunity to somebody else.”
NUEVA YORK (AP) — La racha de 15 victorias de Carlos Alcaraz en los Grand Slams quedó desbaratada la noche del jueves con una deslucida derrota 6-1, 7-5, 6-4 ante Botic van de Zandschulp, el número 74 del mundo, en la segunda ronda del Abierto de Estados Unidos.
El verano de Alcaraz había sido fulgurante: consagraciones en el Abierto de Francia y luego Wimbledon en julio, más una medalla de plata en los Juegos Olímpicos de París.
Con 21 años, el español ya había acumulado cuatro títulos de las grandes citas. Tras haberse coronado en Nueva York en 2022, era el gran favorito para añadir otro trofeo a su colección.
Pero no nunca pudo carburar ante van de Zandschulp, un neerlandés de 28 años.
“Ha sido una gran noche para mí”, dijo van de Zandschulp. “He defendido bien… si quieres ganar a uno de estos jugadores, tienes que mantener la calma”.
Alcaraz estuvo años luz de su mejor versión, cometiendo errores de todo tipo.
Después de una doble falta para quedar dos sets abajo, un déficit que nunca ha podido revertir, el tercer cabeza de serie cargó su raquetero y se encaminó al vestuario confundido ante la situación.
