In Brief

LOCAL COLLEGES

Bayardi's two three-run shots
pace Rebels past Sacred Heart

Brandon Bayardi hit a pair of three-run homers as the UNLV baseball team stopped a three-game losing streak with a nonconference sweep of Sacred Heart at Wilson Stadium, 9-2 and 8-6.

Bayardi's first blast came in the sixth inning of the opener, with the Rebels ahead 6-2. He hit his second home run in the fifth inning of the second game, helping UNLV (21-12) overcome a 4-1 deficit.

Joe Robinson (4-3) pitched a complete game for the Rebels in the first game, and Zack Hartman (3-0) won the second with 1 2/3 innings of relief.

Also: Amanda Oliveto scattered five hits and a walk as the UNLV softball team beat New Mexico for the 13th straight time, winning 3-1 in a Mountain West Conference game in Albuquerque.

Jaexie Balilea tripled home a run in the fourth inning and Stefany Valentino followed with an RBI single as the Rebels (20-13, 2-0 MWC) overcame a 2-1 deficit.

Oliveto improved to 17-5.

The UNLV men's golf team shot rounds of 12-over-par 296 and 2-under 282 to stand in seventh place after the first day of the 13-team Arizona State Thunderbird Invitational in Tempe, Ariz.

The Rebels' total of 10-over 578 trails leader Southern California (10-under 558) by 20 strokes.

Derek Ernst and Kevin Penner each shot par 142 and were tied for 15th, trailing leader Nick Delio of Cal State Northridge at 5-under 137.

The UNLV women's tennis team edged Texas Christian 4-3 in Albuquerque, N.M., to remain unbeaten in Mountain West Conference play.

UNLV (15-4, 4-0 MWC) swept the three doubles matches for the first point, then split the six singles matches. Adrienn Hidvegi and Anna Maskaljun earned straight-set victories at No. 4 and No. 6 singles.

TCU rallied with three wins to tie the match, but Aleksandra Josifoska clinched the win with an 0-6, 7-5, 6-2 victory over Gaby Mastromarino at No. 2 singles.

The UNLV men's tennis team snapped a three-match skid, beating Utah 5-1 at the Fertitta Tennis Complex.

The Rebels went up 1-0 by taking all three doubles matches, then won four of six in singles play. Mehdi Bouras paced UNLV (13-9, 2-2 MWC) with a 6-4, 6-1 win over Benito Suriano at No. 1 singles.

UNLV boxer Brett Rather successfully defended his national heavyweight title, scoring a second-round knockout of Andre Shinda of Army at the National Collegiate Boxing Association championships in West Point, N.Y.

Fellow UNLV fighter Jerome Foster won at 132 pounds, beating Army's Langston Foster.

Top-ranked Salt Lake Community College swept the College of Southern Nevada baseball team 10-6 and 4-3 in Scenic West Athletic Conference action at Morse Stadium.

In the opener, CSN (21-19, 10-14 SWAC) scored four runs in the first, including a Jordan Stewart three-run double. Salt Lake scored the next six runs before the Coyotes tied the score on Tyler Blair's two-run, sixth-inning single.

But the Bruins countered with four in the seventh.

In the second game, CSN took a 3-2 lead on three fourth-inning runs, with Dalton Gust's suicide squeeze plating the go-ahead run. Salt Lake responded with a run in the fifth and one in the sixth.

Matt Dunbar pitched the distance for the Coyotes, yielding six hits and three walks while striking out 12.

TENNIS

Top-ranked Wozniacki to meet
Vesnina in Family Circle final

Top-ranked Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark moved into the finals of the Family Circle Cup in Charleston, S.C., with a 6-4, 6-4 victory over Jelena Jankovic of Serbia.

Wozniacki broke Jankovic's serve five times, including in the final game of the match. She'll play in today's championship against Russia's Elena Vesnina, who defeated China's Peng Shuai 7-6 (4), 6-3 in the second semifinal.

Also: Japanese star Kei Nishikori held off Uruguay's Pablo Cuevas 6-3, 7-5 in the U.S. Men's Clay Court Championships in Houston to reach the second final of his ATP career.

Nishikori, the winner in 2008 at Delray Beach, will face American Ryan Sweeting today. Sweeting, a wild-card entry, advanced to his first ATP final with a 7-6 (3) 6-3 victory over Croatia's Ivo Karlovic.

Irina-Camelia Begu of Romania upset Svetlana Kuznetsova of Russia 3-6, 7-6 (3) and will play in her first tour final today against top-seeded Victoria Azarenka at the Andalucian Tennis Experience in Marbella, Spain.

Azarenka, of Belarus, overpowered eighth-seeded Sara Errani of Italy 6-2, 6-1 in the other semifinal.

Spain's Pablo Andujar upset top-seeded countryman Albert Montanes 6-4, 6-4 to reach today's Grand Prix Hassan II final in Casablanca, Morocco, and stay on course for his first career title.

Andujar will play fifth-seeded Potito Starace of Italy. Starace beat No. 8 Victor Hanescu of Romania, 6-1, 6-7 (3), 7-6 (2).

MISCELLANEOUS

Minnesota Duluth claims first
NCAA hockey championship

Kyle Schmidt scored 3:22 into overtime to lift Minnesota Duluth to a 3-2 victory over Michigan in the NCAA hockey championship game in St. Paul, Minn., the first national title for the Bulldogs.

Travis Oleksuk pulled Wolverines goalie Shawn Hunwick to the side and, from behind the net, fed Schmidt for a blink-of-the-eye tap-in.

Oleksuk and Max Tardy had second-period goals for Minnesota Duluth (26-10-6), which hadn't played for the championship since losing in four overtimes to Bowling Green in 1984.

Ben Winnett and Jeff Rohrkemper scored for Michigan (29-11-4), which fell to 9-3 in title games.

Also: The Ottawa Senators fired coach Cory Clouston and two assistants after the team failed to qualify for the playoffs for the second time in three seasons.

Clouston and assistant coaches Greg Carvel and Brad Lauerwas were fired after Ottawa lost 3-1 to the Bruins in its regular-season finale in Boston.

The 41-year-old Clouston, hired in February 2009, was 95-83-20 with the Senators and led them to the playoffs last season. Ottawa fell in six games to Pittsburgh in the first round and took a big step back this season, finishing near the bottom of the Eastern Conference with a 32-40-10 record.

Suspended Notre Dame wide receiver Michael Floyd cleared the first hurdle in his bid to return to the team when a disciplinary panel allowed him to stay at the school.

Coach Brian Kelly suspended the star wideout March 21, the day after he was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving.

Michael Phelps won his third event at the Michigan Grand Prix in Ann Arbor, beating Ryan Lochte in the 100 backstroke in a pool record 54.15 seconds.

The victory came after Phelps struggled in the 200 butterfly, finishing fourth in 1:57.79.

Jeffrey Moreland of Reno and Rachel Cieleslewicz of Park City, Utah, claimed the men's and women's titles of the XTERRA Lake Las Vegas desert half-marathon.

Moreland, 33, finished the 13.2-mile run in 1 hour, 23 minutes, 17 seconds, more than two minutes ahead of runner-up Andy Ames of Boulder, Colo. The 31-year-old Cieslewicz, who took last year's race, won in 1:36:19, beating Tracy Joslin of Waitsfield, Vt., by 1 minute, 19 seconds.

Other winners: Michael Obryan, Alexandria, Va., and Ashley Martin, Henderson, in the 10-kilometer race in 43:47 and 50:09; and Randy Kirschbaum, Grand Junction, Colo., and Jessica Levaux, Las Vegas, in the 5-kilometer race in 25:01 and 25:28.

Forward Herculez Gomez, a Las Vegas High School graduate, entered as a second-half substitute and scored his first two goals of the Clausura season in Pachuca's 3-0 win over Chiapas in Mexican League play in Mexico City.