THURSDAY SPORTS: Clemson releases 2014 football schedule
The Clemson Tigers released its 2014 football schedule on Wednesday. The Tigers will open the season on August 30 at Georgia, before heading to defending National Champion Florida State on September 20. The Tigers will welcome to Death Valley this season: South Carolina State, North Carolina, NC State, Louisville, Syracuse, Georgia State, and South Carolina. They will face road games against Boston College, Wake Forest, and Georgia Tech in addition to UGA and FSU.
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There were three football coaches introduced to their new schools on Wednesday. Seneca introduced Gene Cathcart from Greenwood, while Anderson District 5 accounced former Myrtle Beach, Lexington, and Chapin coach Scott Earley as head coach at Westide. Bruce Ollis from Polk County, North Carolina will head the program at T.L. Hanna.
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South Carolina (7-11, 0-5 SEC) suffered a 97-76 loss on the road in SEC play at Georgia (10-7, 4-1 SEC) on Wednesday night. Freshman guard Sindarius Thornwell scored a season high 26 points to lead four Gamecocks in double figures in the contest.
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In the NBA Wednesday, Paul Millsap had 24 points, Jeff Teague added 23 and the Atlanta Hawks hung on to beat the Orlando Magic 112-109. Elsewhere, Al Jefferson had 24 points and 10 rebounds to lead the Charlotte Bobcats to their first win over the LA Clippers in their last seven tries.
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China’s Li Na and Dominika Cibulkova of Slovakia will play each other for the women’s Australian Open championship after winning their semifinal matches on Thursday. Fourth-seeded Li defeated 30th-seeded Canadian Eugenie Bouchard 6-2, 6-4, and 20th-seeded Cibulkova — who’ll be playing in her first Grand Slam final — upset Poland’s fifth-seeded Agnieszka Radawanska 6-1, 6-2.
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The New York Yankees agreed Wednesday to a $155 million, seven-year deal with Japanese pitcher Masahiro Tanaka, beating out teams including the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Chicago Cubs and White Sox, the Los Angeles Dodgers, and the Houston Astros for the 25-year-old right-hander. Tanaka’s deal is the highest for an international free agent and the fifth-largest for any pitcher, behind the Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw, the Detroit Tigers’ Justin Verlander, the Seattle Mariners’ Felix Hernandez and Yankees teammate CC Sabathia.
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Former Dallas Cowboys defensive tackle Josh Brent was convicted of intoxication manslaughter Wednesday in the December 2012 car crash death of his teammate and close friend, Jerry Brown, after a night of partying with other Cowboys players. Brent faces a possible sentence of up to 20 years in prison, but could also not face any jail time. Prosecutors say Brent was drunk when he crashed his car on a suburban Dallas highway, killing Brown, who was a linebacker on the Cowboys practice squad.
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One of the weirdest and least-known Olympic sports is curling, in which a competitor pushes a round stone with a handle across the ice and then his teammates use brooms to clear the path in front of it. But this unusual sport made headlines in Vancouver in 2010, not for the competition itself, but for the diamond-printed pants the Norwegian team members were wearing in their nation’s colors, instead of curling’s standard black uniform. A Facebook page was even set up — “The Norwegian Olympic Curling Team’s Pants” — that got some 695,000 followers. With the Sochi Olympics coming up next month, the Norwegian team is back with more funky pants, this time with several patterns that will be unveiled throughout the Games. One they revealed this week has a zig-zagging chevron print.