Jul 17, 2023 4 min read

In college baseball

Head coach Randy Mazey, who lifted West Virginia into the national conversation and to heights it had never before seen, will make the 2024 season the final one of his career with the job going to his top assistant, Steve Sabins, in 2025.

Mazey, 57, has coached at WVU for 11 years, being brought in by then athletic director Oliver Luck as the Mountaineers moved from the Big East to the Big 12 with the idea of moving into a new stadium, Mon County Ballpark, in the middle of the 2015 season, which gave the program a new enthusiasm and interest.

Under Mazey, the Mountaineers have gone 336-250 while making NCAA Regional appearances in 2017, 2019 and 2023. The 2019 regional was the first to take place in Morgantown since 1955.

In the NFL

The New York Jets made it official Monday: Their first training camp with new quarterback Aaron Rodgers is getting the “Hard Knocks” treatment.

The team announced its featured role in the long-running HBO and NFL Films show, which offers a behind-the-scenes look at preseason work for an NFL team. The premiere for the 18th edition of the show is Aug. 8.

Rodgers’ arrival in New York after 18 stellar seasons with Green Bay certainly made the Jets an appealing subject for the show.

In basketball

The NCAA announced Monday it is creating another women’s college basketball tournament that it will operate like the men’s NIT as a second option for 32 teams that do not make the NCAA Tournament.

The Women’s Basketball Invitation Tournament, which will be first held this season, brings the men’s and women’s NCAA postseason opportunities to an equal number. An NCAA-operated second option for women was one of the key focuses of an external gender equity report on the NCAA.

Women’s teams that didn’t make the NCAA Tournament in the past had the opportunity to play in an independently operated WNIT – with a 64-team field – in which teams bid to host games and paid most of their own travel expenses.

Playing in that tournament could cost a school tens of thousands of dollars if they advanced far enough.

In golf

The chill Aussie vibe of Cameron Smith gave way to more emotion than he expected Monday while taking part in one of many royal and ancient traditions at the British Open.

As the defending champion, he had to return the claret jug.

“I was actually holding back some tears. A bit of a moment, I guess, that crept up on me,” Smith said. “It wasn’t hard to hand it back. I wasn’t like, ‘Not letting it go.’ But it was a moment that I guess you don’t think about, and then all of a sudden it’s there. And you want it back.”

Getting the jug back might be as difficult as getting back his parking spot at the TPC Sawgrass.

Smith lost that privilege that goes to The Players Championship winner when he chose to leave the PGA Tour for Saudi-funded LIV Golf.

It’s all part of a long year that Smith feels went by so quickly.

In baseball

The Washington Nationals placed reliever Hunter Harvey on the 15-day injured list Monday with a right elbow strain.

The move was made retroactive to Sunday. Washington also reinstated starter Patrick Corbin from the paternity list, optioned right-hander Joan Adon to Triple-A Rochester and recalled lefty Joe La Sorsa from its top farm club.

The 24-year-old Harvey was sent back to Washington for an MRI after earning his ninth save in a 7-5 win Friday at St. Louis.