Sports shorts
Basketball
Cal U Alumni Day
The 9th annual Cal U Basketball Alumni Day will be held on Saturday, Feb. 2. The women’s alumnae game will begin at 1 p.m. with the men’s game to follow at 2 p.m. An alumni reception will be held at 3:30 p.m. in Hamer Hall with the varsity women’s and men’s basketball teams hosting PSAC-West rival Indiana (Pa.) at 5 and 7 p.m., respectively.
WVU women win
NEW YORK (AP) – Olayinka Sanni scored 22 points and grabbed 15 rebounds to help No. 14 West Virginia beat St. John’s 68-44 on Saturday.
LaQuita Owens added 15 points and six rebounds for the Mountaineers (14-3, 4-1 Big East).
Leading 44-38 with 15:04 left in the second half, West Virginia went on a 24-6 run to close out the game. The Mountaineers turned up their defense, holding St. John’s without a field goal for over 8 minutes. McLean finally broke the drought with a layup at 6:58. By that point, the Red Storm were down 53-40.
Meg Bulger answered with a 3-pointer to put the game away.
Football
Vulcans finish 4th
The California University of Pa. football team had unprecedented success in 2007, and the final polls reflected the remarkable season. The Vulcans finished fourth in the D2football.com final media poll, trailing only Grand Valley, Northwest Missouri and Valdosta State.
Valdosta State, the 2007 national champion, upset the Vulcans in the semifinals.
Boxing
Chagaev retains title
DUESSELDORF, Germany (AP) – Ruslan Chagaev wore down Matt Skelton over 12 rounds Saturday night, winning a unanimous decision to retain his WBA heavyweight championship.
Chagaev (24-0, 17 KOs), an Uzbek fighter making his first title defense, weathered Skelton’s strong start and gradually took control from the fourth round with a strong left hand. He posted a one-sided win over Skelton (21-2), the 40-year-old British Commonwealth champion who took up boxing less than six years ago after a career as a kickboxer.
Skelton tired after three strong rounds and was reduced to tying up Chagaev, who caught him with combinations when he had room.
“This wasn’t really fighting,” Chagaev said. “You have to have some distance to fight.”
Two judges scored the fight 117-111, and the third favored Chagaev 117-110. Skelton failed to become the fifth British fighter to earn a major heavyweight title.
“I know what the odds were against me,” Skelton said. “I wanted it so much. Unfortunately I didn’t make the pinnacle of the mountain.”
Chagaev, a two-time amateur champion, was 24 pounds lighter than Skelton, but already had proved he could beat bigger men. He won the WBA title in April by beating 7-foot Russian Nikolai Valuev, the biggest and heaviest champion in boxing history.