THURSDAY SPORTS: Shaw ‘Golden Arm’ finalist; Ranked teams in action Thursday; Dolphin players defend Incognito

South Carolina senior quarterback Connor Shaw has been named one of 10 finalists for the 2013 Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award. Shaw, a 6-1, 209-pound senior from Flowery Branch, Ga., has completed 62.9 percent (122-for-194) of his passes this season for 1,655 yards with 18 touchdowns and just one interception.

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A couple of big college football games on the Thursday night lineup. First, #5 Baylor will take on #12 Oklahoma. The Sooners are the first ranked opponent for the Bears this season. That will be followed by #2 Oregon on the road at #6 Stanford. Stanford will retire the jersey of former quarterback John Elway at halftime.

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Several Miami Dolphins players defended guard Richie Incognito Wednesday against the allegations that he bullied tackle Jonathan Martin, who left the team last week amid the claims of harassment and reportedly sought treatment for emotional distress. The NFL has suspended Incognito and is investigating, but Dolphins players were overwhelmingly supportive of him Wednesday after practice. Quarterback Ryan Tannehill told reporters, “The whole thing, it’s kind of mind-blowing to me. . . . It’s tough for me, because you can’t help a situation that you didn’t know existed — that no one on this team knew existed.” Tannehill was one of several players who said Martin and Incognito were close, stating, “If you had asked Jon Martin a week before who his best friend on the team was, he would have said Richie Incognito. The first guy to stand up for Jonathan when anything went down on the field, any kind of tussle, Richie was the first guy there. When they wanted to hang out outside of football, who was together? Richie and Jonathan.” And despite Incognito’s reputation as a dirty player, Tannehill praised him, called him, quote, “the best teammate that I could ask for.”

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Linebacker Sean Weatherspoon is back at work for the Atlanta Falcons. Weatherspoon has been out with a foot injury since week 2. He practiced for the first time Wednesday, but will still miss this weeks game against Seattle.

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The Furman men’s basketball team will tip off its 2013-14 regular season and the head coach Niko Medved era at Furman on Friday night when it hosts NCAA Division III Sewanee in a 7:30 p.m. game on YP Court at Timmons Arena. The season opener marks the first of three straight home games to begin the regular season for the Paladins who will host 2013 CIT participant Gardner-Webb on November 12, and 2013 NCAA Sweet Sixteen participant Florida Gulf Coast on November 15.

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The Clemson Tigers will tip off the season Friday night at Littlejohn Coliseum, hosting Stetson. Tip time is 7:00 PM. It’s the earliest date to open regular season in Clemson history. The previous earliest was Nov. 10, 2006 when the Tigers opened the season against Arkansas State.

______________________________________________________________________________In the NBA Wednesday, Gerald Henderson broke out of his shooting slump with a season-high 23 points, and the Charlotte Bobcats win again, defeating the Toronto Raptors 92-90.

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A rocket carrying the Olympic flame was launched into space Thursday morning ahead of the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, next February. The Soyuz rocket was launched by Russia after three astronauts, one Russian, one American and one Japanese, carried the lit torch onboard. The torch will be taken to the International Space Station, where it won’t be burned for safety reasons, and then be taken outside on a first-ever spacewalk. The Olympic torch also flew into space in 1996 on the space shuttle Atlantis ahead of the Atlanta Summer Olympics, but it wasn’t taken on a spacewalk. The Sochi torch will return to Earth with three astronauts coming home from the space station next Monday.