Roundup: Pac-12 soccer season kicks off

The women’s soccer season begins in earnest this weekend (don’t forget to check out defending champs USC and UC Davis on our airwaves at 3 p.m. PT), and Washington women’s soccer opens the 2017 season Friday against Michigan, and here’s a writeup courtesy of GoHuskies.com. The Dawgs are coming off a 7-12-1 2016 campaign.

Graham Hays of espnW writes this feature story on UCLA women’s soccer freshman Ashley Sanchez, who was largely considered the No. 1 recruit in her class. She has done a lot of traveling over the last year to play for different U.S. youth national teams (U-17, U-20, U-23).

Here’s video of Oregon State men’s basketball coach Wayne Tinkle letting everyone know his players and staff are OK in Barcelona after a van drove into pedestrians at Las Ramblas Thursday, killing at least 13 and injuring more than 100, according to CNN (ABC News with the video).

Hoops Hype has the story of O.J. Mayo working out to get in shape for a potential NBA comeback in 2018-19. Mayo was suspended for two years by the league for violating the NBA’s anti-drug program. According to Bryan Kalbrosky, the author of this article, Ovinton J’Anthony has lost 20 pounds in the last five weeks working out with a professional trainer.

Writing for the Daily Camera, John Henderson recaps the Colorado men’s basketball team’s 70-56 victory over Dream Team Italy in Rome. Freshman McKinley Wright was impressive with 12 points on 5-of-6 shooting.

The Arizona men's basketball team was also in Barcelona at the time of the attack, staying at a hotel four blocks away from the incident. Everyone is safe and the Wildcats cancelled their third exhibition game in response (Arizona Daily Star).

Utah football announced its captains for the 2017 season on Thursday – QB Troy Williams, OL Salesi Uhatafe, DTs Lowell Lotulelei and Filipo Mokofisi, P Mitch Wishnowsky and special teams player Christian Drews (The Salt Lake Tribune).

Ryan Thorburn of The Register Guard whips up a Cal football season preview, focusing on first-year head coach Justin Wilcox, who apparently is a Game of Thrones fan (I’m almost done with the second season; yes, I know I have some catching up to do).

This is what head coach Willie Taggart wants to see from Oregon in its second scrimmage Sunday evening, per Andrew Greif. The Ducks open the 2017 gridiron campaign against Southern Utah on Sept. 2.

Theo Lawson writes about the versatility of Washington State inside receiver Kyle Sweet, who also is the team’s top option at punter (he was also a quarterback in high school).

Palo Alto Online looks at how Brittany McPhee performed for the USA U23 national team at the U24 Four Nations Tournament in Tokyo (the Americans went undefeated). The Cardinal senior averaged 9.3 points and 4.0 rebounds in about 16 minutes per game.

Take a look at James Harden doing the #DriveByDunkChallenge, courtesy of Yahoo Sports. More like the #BoatByDunkChallenge here.