State champs in Columbiana

COLUMBIANA — Defending Division VI state champion Woodsfield Monroe Central will play at Columbiana tonight in an OVAC Class 3A boys basketball semfinal.

Monroe Central is 14-3 with losses in two of their last three games (66-60 to Wheeling Central and 63-54 to Caldwell). The Seminoles have lost six games the past two seasons, four against Wheeling Central, the defending West Virginia Class AA state champion which is unbeaten this season.

Today’s junior varsity game will start at 6 p.m., followed by the varsity game at approximately 7:30 p.m.

Watson suits dismisses

HOUSTON (AP) — The final two of nearly 30 civil lawsuits that Cleveland Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson had faced from women accusing him of sexual misconduct have been dismissed, according to court records.

The dismissal of these two lawsuits clears Watson of legal problems he had been facing since 2021 after 27 women came forward and accused him in court filings in Texas of exposing himself, touching them with his genitals or kissing them against their will, mostly during massage appointments.

Some of the women alleged Watson, 30, forced them to perform oral sex and one woman accused him of sexually assaulting her.

The dismissals come as both lawsuits had been set to go to trial in the next few weeks. The accusations against Watson were made when he played for the Houston Texans.

It is believed that Watson has no other lawsuits pending in connection with the sexual misconduct allegations.

One of the lawsuits that was dismissed on Friday has been settled, said Tony Buzbee, the attorney for the woman who had filed it. Buzbee declined to comment further, citing confidentiality of the settlement agreement. Buzbee’s client alleged Watson touched her with his penis multiple times during a massage session.

It was not immediately known if the other dismissed lawsuit had also been settled. Anissah Nguyen, an attorney for the woman who filed the lawsuit, didn’t immediately respond to an email or call seeking comment. Nguyen’s client had accused Watson of pressuring her to perform oral sex during a massage.

Watson’s attorneys declined to comment.

Vonn’s injury is severe

CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy (AP) — Lindsey Vonn sustained a “complex tibia fracture that is currently stable but will require multiple surgeries to fix properly” after her devastating crash in the Olympic downhill, the skier said in a social media post late Monday.

Vonn posted on Instagram about her left leg injuries following her fall in Sunday’s race.

“While yesterday did not end the way I had hoped, and despite the intense physical pain it caused, I have no regrets,” Vonn said.

Nine days before Sunday’s crash, the 41-year-old Vonn ruptured the ACL in her left knee. It is an injury that sidelines pro athletes for months, but ski racers have on occasion competed that way. She appeared stable in two downhill training runs at the Milan Cortina Games.

Onlookers on social media wondered if Vonn’s ruptured ACL could have played a factor in her crash near the top of the Olympia delle Tofana course, where she has a World Cup record 12 wins. That maybe, on a healthy left knee, she would not have clipped a gate and been able to stave off a crash.

“Yesterday my Olympic dream did not finish the way I dreamt it would,” Vonn said. “It wasn’t a story book ending or a fairy tail, it was just life. I dared to dream and had worked so hard to achieve it. Because in Downhill ski racing the difference between a strategic line and a catastrophic injury can be as small as 5 inches.

“I was simply 5 inches too tight on my line when my right arm hooked inside of the gate, twisting me and resulted in my crash. My ACL and past injuries had nothing to do with my crash whatsoever.”

Vonn’s father said Monday that the American superstar will no longer race if he has any influence over her decision.

“She’s 41 years old and this is the end of her career,” Alan Kildow said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “There will be no more ski races for Lindsey Vonn, as long as I have anything to say about it.”

When she arrived in Cortina last week, Vonn said she had consulted with her team of physicians and trainers before deciding to move ahead with racing. The International Ski and Snowboard Federation does not check on the injury statuses of athletes.

“I firmly believe that this has to be decided by the individual athlete,” FIS president Johan Eliasch said Monday in Bormio. “And in her case, she certainly knows her injuries on her body better than anybody else. And if you look around here today with all the athletes, the athletes yesterday, every single athlete has a small injury of some kind.

“What is also important for people to understand, that the accident that she had yesterday, she was incredibly unlucky. It was a one in a 1,000,” Eliasch added. “She got too close to the gate, and she got stuck when she was in the air in the gate and started rotating. No one can recover from that, unless you do a 360. … This is something which is part of ski racing. It’s a dangerous sport.”

The Italian hospital in Treviso where Vonn was being treated said late Sunday she had undergone surgery to repair a broken left leg. The U.S. Ski Team has said only that Vonn “sustained an injury, but is in stable condition and in good hands with a team of American and Italian physicians.”

Curry will skip All-Star Game

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Stephen Curry will sit out the All-Star Game in Los Angeles because of his troublesome right knee that sidelined the Golden State Warriors star for a fourth straight game Monday night against Memphis.

Coach Steve Kerr announced before the game that Curry also wouldn’t play Wednesday at home against San Antonio and then would sit out the All-Star Game on Sunday in hopes of a return for the Warriors after the break.

“He’s doing well,” Kerr said. “It’s really kind of a day-to-day thing, so it’s hard to predict for sure whether he’ll be playing in that first game after the break but that’s definitely the hope, and if he is, if he can get through everything this week, then that puts him on pace to be playing.”

Golden State’s first game after the break is Feb. 19 against Boston at Chase Center.

Curry, who will turn 38 on March 14, exited early from a 131-124 home loss to the Detroit Pistons on Jan. 30 with the sore knee that Kerr said had been bothering him over the previous week. He then had an MRI exam.

Curry missed his 15th game overall this season, with the Warriors going 5-9 over the initial 14 — three with an illness, five with a left quadriceps contusion, one with a sore right ankle, one with a sprained left ankle, one with inflammation in his right knee and now four with the patellofemoral pain syndrome.

The Warriors are also missing Curry’s backcourt mate, Jimmy Butler, who underwent surgery Monday for a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee sustained against his former Miami team on Jan. 19.

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AP NBA: https://apnews.com/NBA