Mar 6, 2022 4 min read

IUP wins PSAC title

The Indiana (Pa.) Crimson Hawks defeated the Millersville Marauders in the 2022 Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference Championship Tournament Final, 63-52, en route to earning its third consecutive PSAC Men’s Basketball Championship.

IUP is the first team to win three-straight conference titles in men’s basketball since Cheyney won five-in-a-row from 1976 to 1980.

For the Crimson Hawks, they took advantage early in the first half never looking back. It was a defensive showcase holding Millersville to shooting just 25% (6-of-24) from the field in the first period.

Overall, it was a low-scoring affair halfway through, with IUP leading, 35-18. Ethan Porterfield led all scorers prior to the second half tallying 11 points.

In the NBA

Khris Middleton and Jrue Holiday made sure the Milwaukee Bucks withstood Giannis Antetokounmpo’s foul trouble and got through arguably the toughest three-game stretch of their schedule unscathed.

Middleton scored a season-high 44 points, Holiday had 24 and the Bucks rallied to beat the short-handed Phoenix Suns 132-122 on Sunday for their fourth consecutive victory.

• The challenge to Jayson Tatum against a Brooklyn lineup that featured a rare appearance from both Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving: “Take the alpha approach.”

“Be the best guy on the court each night,” Celtics coach Ime Udoka said he told Tatum before Tatum scored a season-high 54 points to lead Boston to a 126-120 victory over the uncommonly intact Nets. “He takes pride in the matchup going against high-level opponents.”

Durant played in his second game since mid-January and scored 37 for the Nets, becoming the 23rd player in NBA history to reach 25,000 points. Irving joined him for just the fourth time all season, scoring 19 in his first game in three weeks and his first in Boston since he was pelted with a water bottle during the playoffs last year.

In the NHL

Jason Robertson had his second hat trick of the weekend and the Dallas Stars beat the Minnesota Wild 6-3 on Sunday.

Robertson is up to 29 goals on the season, seven of which have come in the last three games. He’s the first NHL player to record back-to-back hat tricks since Washington’s Alex Ovechkin in January 2020.

Joe Pavelski and Jamie Benn also scored for Dallas, which has won four in a row and seven of the last nine. Riley Tufte added his first NHL goal, and Jake Oettenger had 32 saves.

A long list of injuries prevented Andreas Athanasiou from making an offensive impact for the Los Angeles Kings for much of this season.

On Sunday, in his first game back after missing five nursing an undisclosed ailment, Athanasiou put on display what he’s capable of by scoring twice in a 3-0 win over the Buffalo Sabres.

The seventh-year forward, who had a career-best 30 goals three seasons ago with Detroit, opened the scoring with his 100th career goal off a 2-on-1 break with 3:05 remaining in the second period. Athanasiou then sealed the Kings’ seventh win in nine games by scoring the first of L.A.’s two empty-net goals in the final minute.

Dougie Hamilton scored in overtime and rookie Nico Daws made 19 saves and the New Jersey Devils edged the St. Louis Blues 3-2 on Sunday.

Hamilton scored his ninth goal of the season at the 1:12 of the extra session with a high shot to beat Blues netminder Ville Husso. Pavel Zacha and Jack Hughes assisted on the winning goal.

“I was just trying to see where the puck was going,” Hamilton said. “Pav made a great pass and I just put it in.?

The Devils snapped a two-game losing streak while the Blues lost their third straight New York-area game this week, having also fallen to the Rangers and Islanders.