In Brief
UNLV
Men's tennis loses to Aztecs
in MWC Championships opener
The UNLV men's tennis team lost to San Diego State 4-3 in the first round of the Mountain West Conference Championships on Wednesday in Fort Collins, Colo.
UNLV took two of three doubles matches to go up 1-0, and the Rebels quickly got singles wins from Mehdi Bouras (No. 1) and Alex Bull (No. 5) to go up 3-0. But the Aztecs won the remaining four singles matches, including three that stretched to three sets.
San Diego State clinched it when Javier Pulgar beat UNLV freshman Tamas Batyi 6-4, 6-7 (1), 7-5 at No. 2.
Bouras, who earlier in the day was named the MWC men's player of the year, still could get an individual bid to the NCAA Championships next month in Palo Alto, Calif.
Bouras, ranked 71st in singles and 42nd in doubles, went 21-11 in singles this year, including 5-1 against league foes. He was 17-5 in doubles.
Batyi joined Bouras in singles on the All-MWC team, and Bouras and partner Johannes Markel also made the squad in doubles.
Also: UNLV's Lucia Batta was named MWC women's tennis freshman of the year after going 24-11 at the No. 1 slot, including 4-4 in conference play. Fellow freshman Aleksandra Josifoska also made the All-MWC squad after going 23-4 (7-1 MWC), including 18-2 at the No. 2 singles slot.
UNLV also placed two doubles teams on the all-conference unit: Josifoska and Nives Pavlovic, and Batta and Anna Maskaljun.
The top-seeded Rebels open the MWC Championships today in Fort Collins, Colo., against Colorado State.
UNLV will host the 2012 Mountain West Conference baseball tournament. The event, set for May 24 to 27, will be a four-team, double-elimination tournament at Wilson Stadium.
SOCCER
Barcelona tops Real Madrid
in Champions League semifinal
Lionel Messi lit up an ill-tempered Champions League semifinal in Madrid with two goals in the final 15 minutes to give Barcelona a 2-0 victory over 10-man Real Madrid in the first game of a home-and-home, total-goals series.
Messi guided substitute Ibrahim Afellay's cross through the legs of Madrid goalkeeper Iker Casillas to open the scoring in the 76th minute.
With three minutes to play, the elusive Argentina forward brilliantly ghosted past three defenders before clipping the ball past Casillas for his 52nd goal of the season and 11th in the Champions League.
Barcelona dominated throughout but only managed to break through after Pepe was red-carded and sent off in the 61st minute. Madrid coach Jose Mourinho was sent to the stands for protesting the decision, which left Madrid playing with 10 against Barcelona for the fourth straight game.
The second leg of the series is Tuesday in Barcelona.
Also: Clint Dempsey broke Fulham's career goals record in English Premier League play by netting twice in a 3-0 victory over Bolton.
The American midfielder hooked the ball into the net after 15 minutes and tapped in another three minutes into the second half to take his tally since joining Fulham in 2007 to 33 goals.
MISCELLANEOUS
Boston Marathon officials
concede world-record quest
Geoffrey Mutai's time of 2 hours, 3 minutes, 2 seconds in last week's Boston Marathon does not qualify for the world record, race officials conceded, even as they sought to develop new rules that would better account for the difficulty of the hilly course.
"We understand and appreciate the role of the IAAF in maintaining standards that were established to protect the integrity of the sport," Boston Athletic Association executive director Tom Grilk said. "We all know that we witnessed one of the great days in running history at the 2011 Boston Marathon."
Mutai won the 115th edition of the Boston race April 18 with a substantial tailwind, and Moses Mosop was four seconds behind as both shattered Haile Gebrselassie's world record of 2:03:59. Ryan Hall's time of 2:04:58 was the fastest ever for an American.
But IAAF and USA Track and Field rules say the Boston course is ineligible for world or American records because it is too straight and too downhill.
Grilk had said he would apply to have the records certified anyway, which would have forced the governing bodies to reject an unprecedented performance on the world's signature marathon course. But after meeting with an IAAF official, who was not identified in the B.A.A. announcement, race officials decided not to file the paperwork.
Instead, the B.A.A. said, it will ask scientists and medical experts in Boston for help in determining whether other characteristics of the traditional 26.2-mile course from Hopkinton to Copley Square might mitigate the course's point-to-point layout and elevation drop.
Also: Louisville basketball coach Rick Pitino will not lead Puerto Rico's national team, citing scheduling conflicts in announcing his change of plans.
Pitino had agreed in December to coach Puerto Rico in a pre-Olympic qualifying tournament late this summer and had hoped to have his Louisville team play the Puerto Rican national team as part of a foreign trip. But the NCAA shot down that proposal because Puerto Rico is a Commonwealth of the United States and is not considered a foreign country under NCAA rules.
Pitino's announcement came a day after Kentucky coach John Calipari said he was considering an offer to coach the Dominican Republic national team in the same tournament.
Standout jockey Calvin Borel finally has a Kentucky Derby mount aboard Twice the Appeal.
Borel has won three of the last four Derbys, including last year's triumph aboard Super Saver. But he nearly missed this year's race after Elite Alex failed to secure enough graded stakes earnings to earn a spot in the Run for the Roses.
Patrick Chan of Canada set a record to take the lead in the men's short program at the world figure skating championships in Moscow. Chan scored 93.02 points for his jazzy routine, beating Evgeni Plushenko's old mark of 91.30 set at the 2010 European championships in Tallinn, Estonia.
None of the U.S. men was in the top 10. Richard Dornbush, who won the junior Grand Prix final in December, was 11th with 70.54 points.
