Undefeated South Carolina remained the unanimous No. 1 while Washington — also undefeated — entered the Associated Press Top 25 women's college basketball poll for the first time since 2017. The Gamecocks improved to 10-0 with a 99-29 demolition of Presbyterian on Saturday. The entire top 10 remains unchanged from the previous week — UCLA (9-0), North Carolina State (11-0), Iowa (11-1) and Texas (11-0) round out the top five, followed by Southern California (8-0), LSU (11-1), Colorado (9-1), Stanford (9-1) and Baylor (9-0). Washington (11-0) debuts at No. 23 after a 64-32 win over Saint Mary's, its first appearance in the Top 25 since the final poll in the 2016-17 season. TCU (11-0) also made its 2023-24 debut at No. 25. Miami and UNLV dropped out of the poll. The res…

The NHL general managers are having their annual meetings this week and for the second year in a row they are discussing rule changes to decrease the number of games that are resolved by a shootout. The particular ideas they're tossing around—centered around adopting a 3-on-3 overtime—stand a very good chance of working. Since the 2005-2006 season when the NHL got rid of regular season ties by adding the shootout, roughly 2 out of every 5 overtime games ended with a sudden-death goal in overtime. The winners of the remaining 60 percent of games were decided by the shootout, which is a huge amount of games to end in such an unsatisfying fashion. A couple seasons ago, the NHL decreased the value of shootout wins by decreasing their impact as a tiebreaker in the standings. Prio…