My Sports News Digest

The 2012 IIHF Women’s World Championship began Saturday in Burlington, Vt. Julie Chu from the United States team and Canadian team member Meghan Agosta blogged for NHL.com about their experiences during the tournament.

Next to the Olympics, the world championship is one of the biggest tournaments in women’s ice hockey.

In the last few years, Canada has fallen short in the gold-medal game at the world championships and this year was the year to break that streak. Having a rough start to the tournament, our team needed to change a few things to even have a chance at gold again. With the help of a sports psychologist, and the preparation of the coaching staff, Canada got back on track after a tough beating from the United States.

After climbing the ladder throughout the tournament, Canada was ready to face Team USA in the finals. Having goals set by head coach Dan Church, our team knew what we needed to do to be successful once the buzzer went. Leading 3-1 in the second period, things were looking great, but then Canada got into some penalty trouble and Team USA took advantage of it.

Heading into the third period, the score was tied at 3-3. The United States scored early in the third with the go-ahead goal. Battle after battle and chance after chance, the United States took a penalty with three minutes left in the game. I tied it up to send the game into overtime.

In OT, the U.S. gave Canada an odd-man rush. Tessa Bonhomme went hard to the net and with a pass from me and Caroline Ouellette scored. Canada wins! Wow, what a feeling. The losing streak was finally over!

After the game, Team Canada was asked to be honored at the Ottawa Senators game Monday, April 16. Ottawa will be hosting the 2013 World Championship, and what a great way to promote next year’s games. Dan Church, Gillian Apps, Courtney Birchard, Caroline Ouellette and myself represented the team as a part of the ceremonial puck drop. The building was packed and it was a sea of red and white. The atmosphere in the building was unbelievable, and there is no doubt that Ottawa will put on a show come 2013.

Team Canada would like to thank Eugene Melnyk, and the whole Ottawa Senators organization, for this great opportunity. The city of Ottawa is first-class, and there is no doubt that the 2013 World Championship will be the best of the best.

MySportNews іѕ a sports news digest publication that compiles real time, on demand sports news, articles, аnd resources. This article was distributed by Syndicated Sports news wire and aggregation service, For more NHL news see: Agosta: Canada soaking up gold medal victory.

MySportNews іѕ a sports news digest publication that compiles real time, on demand sports news, articles, аnd resources. This article was distributed by Syndicated Sports news wire and aggregation service, For more golf news see: Oosthuizen Recovers With a Victory.

MySportNews іѕ a sports news digest publication that compiles real time, on demand sports news, articles, аnd resources. This article was distributed by Syndicated Sports news wire and aggregation service, For more golf news see: Oosthuizen Recovers With a Victory.

CBSSports.com wire reports
March 8, 2012

NEW YORK — Yancy Gates and his 260 pounds rumbled up and down the floor for 46 minutes in another multiple-OT classic at the Big East tournament.

The Cincinnati senior was still such a force in the second overtime Thursday that the Georgetown defense swarmed to him on the Bearcats’ final possession, freeing Cashmere Wright to hit the winning shot in a 72-70 quarterfinal victory over the 13th-ranked Hoyas.

Gates scored 23 points in his back-and-forth big man duel with Henry Sims, including two baskets in the last two minutes of regulation as fourth-seeded Cincinnati rallied from an 11-point deficit with less than 8 ½ minutes left.

“This is my last shot at it, so you don’t want to just play one game and go home right away,” Gates said. “I’ll never play in the Garden in the Big East tournament again, so just trying to push and fight and stay here as long as possible.”

Wright banked in a runner with 7.6 seconds to go.

“It was all set by Yancy,” he said. “They were respecting him so much – like when he ducked in, seemed like the whole team just sucked into him, so the hole just opened up wide open, and I just took it upon myself to try to win the game for my team.”

Georgetown’s Otto Porter sent the game to overtime when his jumper bounced in with 3.6 seconds remaining in regulation.

Sims, who had 22 points and 15 rebounds, hit a layup at the buzzer to force a second OT for the Hoyas (23-8). Well out of his range, Sims missed a potential winning 3-pointer at the close of the final period.

“I’d much rather have that shot at the end,” he said.

The Bearcats (23-9) face second-ranked Syracuse in Friday’s semifinals.

Cincinnati won despite missing 19 of 21 3-point attempts. Dion Dixon, who scored 22 points in a Cincy road win in the teams’ first meeting, was 4 of 17 from the field, 0 of 6 from behind the arc and 5 of 9 from the foul line.

“Today was a great example of the character of our team,” coach Mick Cronin said. “So I couldn’t be more proud of these guys right now, to go 2 for 21 from 3 against Georgetown and win the game is unthinkable, to be honest with you.”

The teams tied with South Florida for fourth place during the regular season, with the Bearcats winning the tiebreaker to earn a double bye in the Big East tournament for the first time since joining the conference for the 2005-06 season.

After a timeout with 1:56 left in regulation, Cincinnati got the ball inside to Gates, who scored over Sims to pull Cincinnati within a point. Then when Wright missed a drive with 38 seconds remaining, Gates put it back for a 53-52 lead.

“His best basketball is way ahead of him still as he continues to develop his body and become an adult,” Cronin said. “He’s been called upon to do a lot, too much, in rebuilding our program, before he was ready to do it. It was really unfair. He’s been through a lot.

“So for me, two things: I’m happy for him, but also as a coach, it’s great when you know you’ve got a horse and you get him the ball and he’s delivering.”

Dixon made the front end of a one-and-one with 25.9 seconds to go but missed the second. The fifth-seeded Hoyas chose not to call a timeout, and with the clock winding down, Sims found Porter open for a short jumper.

The Bearcats tried a long pass to Gates, who couldn’t corral the ball at the foul line. The 6-foot-9 senior chased it down and was able to launch an off-balance 3-point attempt just before the buzzer, but completely missed the rim.

Dixon again made just one of two free throws with 19.7 seconds left in the first OT to put Cincinnati up 62-60.

After a timeout, the Hoyas couldn’t get their offense going as the clock dwindled. The 6-10, 245-pound Sims found himself with the ball at the top of the key, so the big guy put it on the floor. With long stride after long stride, he barreled toward the basket as the seconds ticked away, releasing a layup just before the buzzer to send the game to a second OT.

“We both were caught up on getting tough baskets down the stretch for our team,” Gates said, “so it was just a good battle between two big men, two seniors, too, trying to stay in New York for a day longer.”

Notes

• This was the first multiple-overtime game at the Big East tournament since Syracuse beat UConn in six OTs in the 2009 quarterfinals.
• The game had seven ties and 18 lead changes.
• The Orange beat the Bearcats 60-53 in Cincinnati on Jan. 23 in the teams’ lone meeting this season.

MySportNews іѕ a sports news digest publication that compiles real time, on demand sports news, articles, аnd resources. This article was distributed by Syndicated Sports news wire and aggregation service, For more college basketball news see: Wright, Gates lift Cincy to 2OT victory vs. Hoyas.

NEW YORK - The sound blared out of the Blackhawks dressing room. Flo-rida’s “Good Feeling” reverberated out into the halls.

Indeed it was.

The start was better than Chicago could have scripted Thursday at Madison Square Garden. A penalty shot, a one-timer through the biggest screen on the ice, and a pair of breakaways. The Hawks went 4-for-4 in less than 10 minutes, including 3-for-3 in exactly four.

Losing streak over, emphatically.

“It’s nice to have some music in the locker room,” Patrick Kane told NHL.com shortly after the Blackhawks finished off a 4-2 win over the Rangers to snap their 0-8-1 slide. “It’s a good feeling right now. The best part is we get it over and we get to play Columbus on Saturday. That’s the best part about hockey, you get to keep playing.”

The Blackhawks arrived in New York very early Wednesday morning fresh off what they felt was their best performance since their overtime loss to Vancouver on Jan. 31. Oh sure, they lost the game in Nashville, never even led actually, but they were past heartache and feeling sorry for themselves and into the mode of taking positives out of what was essentially nothing more than their ninth straight loss.

But, the fact remains that they arrived in New York as the sixth-place team in the Western Conference, three and a half weeks removed from being No. 1. They arrived having to answer questions about their goaltending, team defense and missed opportunities.

They did by saying it wasn’t about any of that anymore — it was about banding together, talking it out, dealing with the frustration as a team. It was about them and their belief that they could win again, that they were good enough despite whatever most everybody on the outside was saying.

They finally proved it Thursday at Madison Square Garden against the unlikeliest of teams — the normally stingy, gritty, physical and tight Rangers.

Good feeling indeed.

“It wasn’t pretty…but the big thing is we got two points,” said captain Jonathan Toews, who got the Hawks going with a penalty-shot goal 65 seconds into the game. “We know we can win. We know we can score goals. That confidence and boost of energy it gives you to know all the hard work is going toward something, it’s a good feeling and we need to use it and build off that, not just expect each other to keep playing that way.”

It took Chicago three and a half weeks to get a three-goal lead; it happened in exactly four minutes Thursday.

Toews’ kept it simple on his penalty shot, a result of Dan Girardi closing his hand on the puck in the crease, and blasted a forehanded shot through Martin Biron. He knew how important the moment was before the official put the puck down in front of him.

“I try not to think about it in the moment, but it’s a huge situation for us,” Toews said. “We come out of a couple of games when we played really well and we just couldn’t score, and if I don’t score on that one the feeling on the bench, and maybe myself, will be, ‘What do we have to do to score?’ It’s nice to get that one on the first shift and we follow it up with four or five good shifts after that.”

Sixty-two seconds later, Marian Hossa went from one wing to the other to set up defenseman Nick Leddy for a one-timer that he sent through a screening John Scott. Patrick Sharp quickly scored on a breakaway set up by Toews and Marian Hossa added a breakaway goal with 10:22 left in the first period to give Chicago its first four-goal lead since its 6-2 win over Buffalo on Jan. 18.

“You’re up 4-0 in the first 10 minutes; you can’t get any better than that,” Kane said. “Everyone got confidence out of it and was pretty excited. Everyone was pumped up for this game to prove ourselves, not only to win a game, but to show we can beat one of the best teams in the League. It shows this team has potential, too.”

The smile on coach Joel Quenneville’s face as he left the bench was the snapshot picture to take away from Thursday’s win.

“Ya think,” Quenneville answered when asked if he can finally breathe a sigh of relief. “Haven’t had too many regular season wins that felt as good as that.”

Of course, as Toews said, it wasn’t pretty. The Rangers wound up getting two of the goals back. They nearly had a third, but the official blew his whistle before Ryan Callahan poked the puck into the net.

Chicago went to the penalty box eight times, including a needless double-minor by John Scott not long after the Hawks took a 3-0 lead. But they calmly dealt with it, killing off all seven of the Rangers’ power plays, allowing only five shots on goal in the process.

Twenty seconds after Scott left the box, Hossa scored on a breakaway.

“It seemed like we were in shooting lanes, we had good sticks, lots of energy, we were battling to get loose pucks,” maligned goalie Corey Crawford told NHL.com after making 22 saves for his first win in nearly a month. “That definitely was one of the differences in the game, being able to shut down their power play. I don’t remember too many tough saves I had to make on the PK. That was a great game for our PK.”

Crawford, though, received the championship belt that goes to the Blackhawks player of the game after a win.

“I forgot we had one,” he joked.

Yup, a good feeling indeed. Well, at least for a little while.

They’re off to Columbus for a Saturday matinee.

“What we went through, there is always something to visit with this, knowing you never want to come back here again,” Quenneville said. “There is progress, but we are just thinking about the next game, building off of today’s win.”

Follow Dan Rosen on Twitter at: @drosennhl

MySportNews іѕ a sports news digest publication that compiles real time, on demand sports news, articles, аnd resources. This article was distributed by Syndicated Sports news wire and aggregation service, For more NHL news see: Hawks feeling good after skid-snapping victory.

NEWARK, N.J. - One bounce can change the fortunes of a hockey team. On Tuesday night, it turned a sure victory for the New York Rangers into one of their more frustrating losses of the season.

Devils defenseman Andy Greene launched a slap shot from center ice with goaltender Martin Brodeur on the bench for an extra attacker in the final minute. The puck rimmed around the glass and ricocheted to the slot, where it came to rest on the stick of a wide-open David Clarkson, who buried the tying goal for the Devils with 47.6 seconds remaining.

After a wild five-minute overtime, Ilya Kovalchuk scored the only goal in a shootout to send the Rangers to a 4-3 loss in front of a sell-out crowd at Prudential Center. A goal from Michael Del Zotto put the Rangers ahead 3-2 with 3:59, but one bounce marred a solid overall performance in New York’s first game out of the All-Star break.

“It was a bad bounce,” Rangers coach John Tortorella said. “We were in total control. I thought we were doing really well with our situational play after we got the lead back 3-2. We got a bad bounce.

“I liked our game. Second period, I thought we lost a bit of our forechecking. All in all, I thought everybody contributed. I thought we played a pretty good game. We were a few seconds away and a bad bounce away from winning another hockey game.”

The shootout loss kept the Rangers one point ahead of the Boston Bruins for the top spot in the East. Considering the circumstances — first game after a week of mostly stagnation, backup Martin Biron spelling starter Henrik Lundqvist for a night, only being denied a second point due to an unfortunate carom — the Rangers could find a lot of silver linings in this loss.

In the immediate aftermath, however, it was hard for the players to do so.

“I don’t know. I don’t think it’s easier to swallow,” said defenseman Dan Girardi, who was on the ice for Clarkson’s goal. “Any loss is tough. It’s a tough break. I thought we handled ourselves well after that and just laughed it off. It’s a bad bounce, but we have to go try to win in overtime. We just came up a little short.”

The tying goal was born out of a play that happens all the time during the course of a hockey game.

With the puck near the left boards at center ice, Greene fired a slap shot about halfway up the glass. As the puck was making a right turn and whistling around the net, it hit a glass support and bounced into the slot. Clarkson settled it and fired it through the legs of a stunned Biron, who had played a fine game up until that point.

Rangers defenseman Ryan McDonagh was also on the ice at the time of the goal, but Girardi said there’s no way to defend a bounce like that.

“I don’t think you’d change anything because Mac has to go get the puck on the boards and I’m skating back trying to get back to the front,” a flabbergasted Girardi said. “That’s just … we do that every time. The ‘D’ do that every time. We can’t just skate to the middle of the ice and then the rim goes by you. Those bounces happen and it’s just unfortunate it happened in the last minute.”

“There’s nothing you can do,” Tortorella agreed. “It’s not like we had a breakdown or anything like that. It’s a rim, it goes off the stanchion. We don’t want to accept it, but again, you hope one will go your way somewhere later in the year. We can’t do anything about that.”

Biron, who took just his third loss in 12 starts this season, said there’s no solace to be taken in a loss as unlucky as this one.

“It’s probably as frustrating as ever,” Biron countered, “because you feel like you had a good game and you were about to limit their chances down the stretch. I mean, they got a bounce. If it’s something you create or you make mistakes, but this is frustrating. It’s a bad bounce, it happens at times.”

Follow Dave Lozo on Twitter: @DaveLozo

MySportNews іѕ a sports news digest publication that compiles real time, on demand sports news, articles, аnd resources. This article was distributed by Syndicated Sports news wire and aggregation service, For more NHL news see: Unlucky bounce costs Rangers a victory.

BRISBANE, Australia

Five-time champion Serena Williams is in doubt for the Australian Open after injuring her left ankle and withdrawing from the Brisbane International on Wednesday.

In her first tournament since losing the U.S. Open final in September, Williams was serving for the match with a 6-2, 5-3 lead against Bojana Jovanovski of Serbia when she twisted her ankle and crashed heavily to the court.

The 13-time Grand Slam winner lay near the baseline for several minutes while getting medical attention. She was helped to a courtside chair and had the ankle re-taped before resuming the second-round match and losing the next point to surrender a service break to Jovanovski.

Williams limped through the next game, wincing in pain after at least two points, before securing a 6-2, 6-4 win to advance to the Brisbane quarterfinals in her first trip Down Under since winning the 2010 Australian Open title.

She withdrew from the Brisbane tournament later Wednesday after having medical scans which “confirmed that I have a left ankle sprain (and) that I probably shouldn’t play on.”

“I’m going to take a couple of days off – not too many – and see how I feel,” Williams said in a statement. “I’m still hopeful of playing the Australian Open.”

After hobbling into a post-match news conference with her ankle heavily strapped, the 30-year-old Williams initially said she was “anticipating it’ll be OK.”

“I’m always thinking I can play on, but at the same time I don’t want to stress it out right now,” Williams said.

Her scheduled quarterfinal rival, Daniela Hantuchova of Slovakia, advances directly to the semifinals.

The Australian Open starts on Jan. 16 in Melbourne. Williams missed the 2011 Australian Open while she was recovering from two operations on her foot and blood clots in her lungs that kept her sidelined for about a year after the 2010 Wimbledon tournament.

She won two tournaments heading into the U.S. Open in August but, after losing the final to Sam Stosur, Williams didn’t play another tournament last year due to injuries.

Williams said her first thought when she sprawled to the court near the baseline on Wednesday was “not again.”

“That’s what I felt,” she said. “I was like, ‘No way.”‘

Williams usually wears a protective guard on her left ankle, but took it off during the second set because it was irritating another minor injury on her foot.

Stosur is already out after losing to Iveta Benesova 6-4, 6-2 in the preceding match on center court, extending a run of never advancing beyond the second round at her home tournament.

It was the 28-year-old Benesova’s fourth win over a top-10 player.

The No. 54-ranked Czech had never taken a set off Stosur in four previous matches but now finds herself in a quarterfinal match against Australian Open champion Kim Clijsters.

“Hopefully it was just a bad day and I will bounce back next week and the week after,” Stosur said of her Australian Open preparations. “I don’t want to dwell on it.

“It’s not the ideal start but I am not going to panic and think it’s all lost.”

Also, sixth-seeded Jelena Jankovic of Serbia beat Nina Bratchikova of Russia 6-3, 6-2 and Kaia Kanepi of Estonia ousted seventh-seeded Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova of Russia 6-0, 6-3.

On the men’s side, second-seeded Gilles Simon of France beat Australian teenager James Duckworth 6-3, 7-5, third-seeded Alexandr Dolgopolov of Ukraine beat Igor Andreev of Russia 6-7 (3), 7-6 (9), 6-2, sixth-seeded Radek Stepanek of Czech Republic had a 7-6 (3), 6-2 win over Jarkko Nieminen of Finland and No. 8 Bernard Tomic of Australia trounced Tatsuma Ito of Japan 6-1, 6-2.

Marcos Baghdatis of Cyprus beat fifth-seeded Kei Nishikori of Japan 6-3, 6-4 to set up a quarterfinal match against either top-seeded Andy Murray or Gilles Muller.

MySportNews іѕ a sports news digest publication that compiles real time, on demand sports news, articles, аnd resources. This article was distributed by Syndicated Sports news wire and aggregation service, For more tennis news see: Serena injures ankle in Brisbane victory.

a runner passes a giant billboard advertising the Qatar bid for the FIFA soccer World Cup 2022 in Doha, Qatar. A year after Qatar became the first Arab country to win the right to host the World Cup, the tiny but wealthy Persian Gulf nation is immersed in efforts to make history again by bringing the Olympics to the Middle East in 2020.

DOHA, Qatar – A year after Qatar became the first Arab country to win the right to host the World Cup, the tiny but wealthy Persian Gulf nation is immersed in efforts to make more history by bringing the Olympics to the Middle East in 2020.

Flush with billions of dollars from oil and gas sales, Qatar hopes to build on its surprise victory in winning the right to host the 2022 World Cup. Stuck between powerful Mideast rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran, Qatar also aims to capitalize on its role as a peacemaker after a year of enormous political upheaval in the region.

It was a tough year for Qatar, a small Muslim nation that has gained influence in international diplomacy and sports over the past decade. The country has never qualified for the World Cup and was criticized for spending lavishly to defeat countries such as the United States and Australia for the 2022 bid. Skeptics were particularly harsh after the downfall of Qatar’s top soccer official and former Asian federation president, Mohammed bin Hammam.

Just months after bin Hammam helped his country clinch the World Cup, FIFA banned him from soccer for life for allegedly paying bribes in his unsuccessful campaign against Sepp Blatter to become the organisation’s president.

In interviews with The Associated Press, Qatari sports officials said the country has moved on from the World Cup controversy and is fully focused on the Olympics.

“The World Cup file is closed,” said Sheik Saoud bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, the secretary general of Qatar’s Olympic Committee. “We are thinking ahead and planning for the future, bidding for Olympic Games and maybe other events.”

Over the past decade, Qatar has been targeting sports as a vehicle to showcase its global aspirations. Doha successfully hosted major sporting events such as the Asian Games in 2006 and annual tennis tournaments featuring many of the world’s top-ranked players. This year alone, the capital hosted Asia’s continental soccer tournament in January and the opening Diamond League track meet in May.

Doha is vying for the 2020 Olympics with Baku, Azerbaijan; Istanbul, Turkey; Tokyo; Madrid and Rome. The candidate cities must submit their plans for the games to the International Olympic Committee by February. The IOC executive board will meet in May to decide whether to keep all candidates or reduce the list. The IOC will select the host city in September 2013.

The meeting in May is key for Doha. The Gulf city was eliminated early from the campaign for the 2016 Olympics after the IOC board rejected Doha’s request to stage the games outside the preferred July-August time slot, saying it would conflict with the international sporting calendar.

It was the soaring summer heat that quelled Qatar’s first Olympic campaign four years ago. Since then, the desert country where temperatures can reach 122 degrees in June and July won the right to host the 2022 World Cup based on a plan to cool the stadiums with innovative design and air-conditioning systems.

Soccer officials such as UEFA President Michel Platini have since indicated they’d be happy to reschedule European league schedules to allow the World Cup in Qatar to be played in the winter.

During several meetings with the IOC to see if the board would be able to accommodate Doha’s request to stage the games later in the year, Saoud said his city received a nod to hosting the Olympics between Sept. 20 and Oct. 20 if it submits the bid.

“We’ve learnt from the previous bid,” said Saoud, who is a member Qatar’s ruling Al Thani family. “We wanted to show that we are a strong, reliable partner. We are in love with sports and we want to work together to bring the Olympics to Doha and share our passion with the region.”

The message the 2020 officials are trying to get across is not much different from the one they used four years ago.

In Doha, everybody from the conflict-prone region can get along and the city can show the world a Middle East different than they perceive it to be. However, bid officials said the similarities to the previous bid for the 2016 Games end there.

“We are in a much stronger position than we were four years ago,” said Noora al-Mannai, the CEO of the Doha 2020 bid.

Major infrastructure projects have been completed in the recent years and sporting venues have been upgraded. The airport has been expanded and more hotels have been built. Doha’s road network has grown to ease crippling traffic around the capital and a national-wide metro system that will be able to carry 45,000 commuters an hour by 2020 was commissioned earlier this year.

Qatar also has hosted talks to ease conflicts around the region, including in Lebanon and Sudan’s Darfur region, and in the 1990s broke ranks with Gulf neighbors and allowed an Israeli trade office to open in Doha.

Last month, the Gulf nation staged a 21st-century spin on pingpong diplomacy to raise the emirate’s profile by promoting peace between rival nations through a one-day table tennis tournament, pairing rival nations such as North Korea and South Korea.

And over the past year of the Arab Spring, Qatar contributed war planes to NATO airstrikes in Gadhafi-ruled Libya, tried to negotiate an exit for Yemen’s protest-battered president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, and has taken the lead in Arab countries pressuring Syria’s Bashar Assad.

Qatar also has toned down the Gulf way of bragging about what it can do with its vast resources. It has infused its ambitions with a dose of modesty. It even appears to be learning how to be a better loser after losing the bid for 2017 track worlds last month to London.

“We will win some, lose other, but we’ll learn from both,” Saoud said.

With a population of only 300,000 and substantial oil and gas reserves, Qatar has one of the highest per-capita incomes in the world. It is set to be wealthy for a long time and can easily outspend all of its rivals in the bidding process for any sporting event.

But important lessons have been learned from both, the failed Olympic bid in 2008 and the successful World Cup campaign last year. Also, the IOC has shortened the international campaign phase of the bid process for the 2020 contest in an effort to cut spending. The six cities will only be able to start international lobbying nine months before the vote instead of previous 16 months.

“Yes, we have money and it’s good to have it, but it all depends how we spend it,” al-Mannai said. “We choose to invest our money into making Qatar the leader of positive change.

“We believe that bringing the Olympics to the region is a big part of that effort.”

2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

MySportNews іѕ a sports news digest publication that compiles real time, on demand sports news, articles, аnd resources. This article was distributed by Syndicated Sports news wire and aggregation service, For more Olympic sports news see: Qatar eyes 2020 Games after World Cup victory.