Henry Slade’s return to the Exeter side could make the difference they need to end their losing streak, says boss Rob Baxter.

The Chiefs have equalled their club-record run of five successive Premiership losses after Friday’s defeat at Newcastle and sit bottom of the table.

Slade, who had shoulder surgery over the summer, has been given permission by England to play in Exeter’s game with Harlequins on Sunday before next week’s Test with New Zealand.

“No single player is a cure-all to everything and you don’t suddenly put one player in and win every game,” Baxter told BBC Sport.

“But I think without doubt when you see how we lost a couple of games this season, I’m particularly talking about our two home games, you do kind of think it wouldn’t have taken much more – just authority or calmness on the field – for those to have been, not comfortable, but they could have easily turned our way.

“So, when you look at it that way, that obviously puts a big difference on the perspective of the season.

“Would we have gone to Newcastle and played better with some points on the board? Almost certainly, so you could say there’s a big ripple effect there and that’s probably where we are as a group really.”

The UFC 308 press conference features the entire main card from Saturday’s pay-per-view.

UFC featherweight champion Ilia Topuria, former UFC champions Max Holloway and Robert Whittaker, Khamzat Chimaev are some of the stars that will answer questions from the media Thursday morning.

The UFC 308 press conference is expected to begin at 8:30 a.m. ET.

Mercedes thinks that its rollercoaster United States Grand Prix form was triggered by a set-up that ‘flirted’ with the ground too much.

The German manufacturer was left scratching its head at the end of the Austin weekend as it struggled to understand why it had been so competitive in sprint qualifying, with both cars in contention for pole, and then struggled so much the rest of the weekend.

Adding to its woes were identical spins that George Russell and Lewis Hamilton suffered at Turn 19, one in qualifying and one in the race, which fuelled questions over whether an upgrade fitted to the W15 had trigged some unexpected problems.

It has left team boss Toto Wolff convinced that its pre-summer form – when it won three races out of four – is now long gone and the squad is once again adrift of McLaren, Ferrari and Red Bull.

“We’re back to underdog status,” said Wolff. “We are not back to the pre-summer situation. It’s not about coming into the weekend and thinking we’re going to win this.

“It’s more going into the weekend and thinking at the moment we’re the fourth team on the road.”

George Russell, Mercedes W15

Photo by: Andreas Beil

While the team is still working on understanding its car better, James Allison thinks that there is a simple explanation for what happened in Austin – and it revolves more around its set-up choices than anything else.

Speaking in Mercedes’ regular post-race debrief about what had gone wrong between Friday and the rest of the weekend, he said: “That is the million-dollar question.

“Not only did George nearly secure the pole in that [sprint pole] session, but Lewis also nearly smashed it utterly out the park. He was way ahead of any of the times until he got a bit tangled up with [Franco] Colapinto.

“Why that did not materialise in the rest of the weekend, is the key question for us. My guess is that we were flirting a bit too closely with the ground.

“These cars like running low and you generally pick up lap time as you can get the car nearer to the ground. But, push it too far and the car starts behaving in an unpleasant fashion.

“If you just hit a bump wrong, it will unseat the car, make the rear end come out on you and just deliver a level of performance that when it is good, it is great.

“But if you just hit a bump at the wrong moment or a crosswind at the wrong time, then you get punished for it. My guess is that we were just pushing our luck a little bit too much in terms of how near to the ground we got, how stiff we ran it.”

While Hamilton suggested after his early race exit that the team needed to question whether or not to continue with the latest upgrade package, Allison says there are no doubts it is a step forward.

And, while acknowledging that the spins suffered by Hamilton and Russell were unusual, he does not think they were triggered by new parts.

“All the things we measured suggested that the upgrade package was behaving as we would expect,” he said. “The downforce was there.

“We did not see prior to the spins anything breaking down on the flow structures under the car. There is every reason to think the updates were good and we will enjoy that for the remainder of the year.

“The spikiness that we saw that pitched us into the barriers on an unusual number of occasions was because we had the car too low, too stiff, and had the handling degrade unacceptably as a result.”

A RICH RICCI and Willie Mullins horse dubbed ‘the next superstar’ is among the most popular Cheltenham Festival ante-post bets, according to research by Oddschecker.

Willy De Houelle has been all the rage with punters and obliterated from 33s to as short as 5-1 favourite for the Triumph.

1

But he doesn’t hold top spot in the list of the ten most popular horses backed throughout the summer.

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Oddschecker took close note of the cash coming in from June to October.

And they calculated how much, as a percentage, of all bets placed on a particular race belonged to the most popular horses.

Here are their findings.

1 Constitution Hill – Champion Hurdle

7-4 fav

Will he or won’t he? Will Nicky Henderson’s stable star return as the all-conquering, unbeaten superstar hurdler – or won’t he?

According to bets placed throughout the summer and, on the back of Hendo’s glowing reports from Seven Barrows, punters are of the view he just might.

It won’t be easy, thought – and he could meet the awesome Mullins duo of State Man and Lossiemouth at the March feature.

But, for now, Constitution Hill accounts for 78 per cent of all bets placed on the Champion Hurdle market with Oddschecker.

2 Willy De Houelle – Triumph Hurdle

5-1 fav

Undoubtedly the talking horse of the summer months, this French recruit has been smashed since news got out he was under the ownership of Ricci.

An Oddschecker number-cruncher said: “Willy De Houelle is being dubbed the next superstar by many pundits in the sport.

“A surge of bets around late August saw this horse’s price slashed from 33-1 to the 8-1 favourite for the Triumph Hurdle.

“Since August 20, this three-year-old has taken 59 per cent of all bets placed on the Triumph Hurdle winner market.”

3 Ballyburn – Arkle Novices’ Chase

7-4 fav

Huge questions hover over the future of last year’s Ballymore winner.

He looks the horse to be on wherever he goes… and at the moment people think it might be the Arkle over two miles.

Mullins has so many options with this awesome hurdler, who looks to have an engine and bags of stamina.

He’s responsible for half of all bets placed on the Grade 1 Novice Chase – although they could prove useless if Mullins decides to step him up to three miles and a spot in the Brown Advisory.

Of course, he could always go for the Champion Hurdle…

Ballyburn is as short as 7-4 in places for the Arkle.

4 Teahupoo – Stayers’ Hurdle

5-2 fav

Already any money placed on Gordon Elliott’s defending champ looks shrewd – especially with the news his stablemate Irish Point is out for the season.

Labelled a banker by many already at this stage, 67 per cent of all bets on the Stayers have been on Teahupoo.

Expect that numnber to grow and grow with not much else good enough to take him on.

5 Salvator Mundi – Supreme Novices’ Hurdle

10-1

Lightly-raced, trained by Mullins, essentially a second-season novice and last seen winning by 62 lengths at Tipperary – it’s easy to see why Salvator Mundi is popular for the Festival opener.

He failed to shine in the Triumph but it looks like the patient approach could pay off with this son of No Risk At All.

Salvator Mundi is responsible for 35 per cent of all bets on the Supreme.

The remainder of the top ten…

Galopin Des Champs – 7-2f Gold Cup
Ballyburn – 6-1f Brown Advisory
Lossiemouth – 5-2f Mares’ Hurdle
Lossiemouth – 7-2 Champion Hurdle
Gaelic Warrior – 5-1 Champion Chase

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John Fanta

College Basketball Broadcaster and Reporter

Dan Hurley rolled into Madison Square Garden on Wednesday, fresh off the “Good Morning America” set in Times Square, as his car wash of media responsibilities continued throughout the day.

That’s life on college basketball’s mountaintop when you’re the king of the sport, having won 12 consecutive NCAA Tournament games by a combined 260 points and back-to-back national championships. 

But Hurley, donning a sharp gray suit with a fresh haircut, black leather shoes, and a pair of socks that read “Certified Pain in the Ass,” wasn’t shying away from what a media scrum of dozens and dozens of reporters desired to know: 

What about a three-peat? 

“It’s the elephant in the room,” Hurley said of the feat, which only John Wooden and his legendary UCLA teams accomplished when winning seven in a row from 1967-73. “You can’t hide from this opportunity. If we don’t win three in a row, what are people going to say? That you suck as a coach because you could only win two in a row? But we realize the magnitude of this. You have to be a champion at UConn to be remembered and celebrated.” 

Hurley is far from satisfied with the success his program has had over the past two seasons. In fact, when listening to Hurley and his players talk, it becomes abundantly clear that his approach heading into a new season has only intensified.

“If he has changed, he’s gotten a little crazier,” Huskies point guard Hassan Diarra said of Hurley.

Fellow starter and preseason All-Big East selection Alex Karaban pointed to Hurley’s intensity and desire to win reaching a new peak this offseason.

“Hurley wants another championship so badly, but he’s coaching us the same as he always has,” Karaban said. “The intensity has always been there. Now, it’s just leveling up.” 

At this time last season, the Huskies were picked to finish third in the Big East Preseason Coaches’ Poll, behind both Marquette and Creighton. The program responded by coasting to the conference regular-season and tournament crowns. Big East coaches were not going to make the same mistake two years in a row, as UConn was a unanimous pick to finish first in this year’s poll, receiving all possible 10 first-place votes and 100 points from the league’s head coaches, who were not permitted to vote for their own teams.

It could be easy for Hurley to get caught up in all the preseason hype. But instead, he was looking out for his players on Wednesday, as he was fired up about Karaban not being recognized as an Associated Press Preseason First-Team All-American.

“Alex does a s—ty job of drawing attention to himself,” Hurley said of his junior star, who has played a key role in the Huskies’ 68-11 record the last two seasons and will be looked at as the team’s leader heading into this year. “Maybe if he did more TikToks, he’d have solidified his All-American status. We value the wrong things in sports. We don’t value champions, but maybe that’s a societal issue.” 

Karaban plans to use his exclusion from the first-team All-America team as a source of motivation.

“My entire career, I’ve been snubbed throughout everything,” said Karaban, who averaged 13.3 points and 5.1 rebounds per game last year. “But at the same time, I want to continue to prove everybody wrong, and that’s what’s gonna happen this year.”

It plays right into what Hurley refers to as a “pathological, sick and obsessive” hunger to win a third consecutive crown. 

But Hurley isn’t going to find much motivational material from other Big East programs this season, as the mutual respect among fellow coaches for UConn’s program couldn’t be higher. And how could it be after the Huskies’ 75-60 win over Purdue last April capped a run of six tournament victories by an average of over 23 points per game? 

“I think they’re so far above us right now, that’s not a goal of ours,” St. John’s head coach Rick Pitino said of UConn. “Comparing programs is not what gets you to where you want to be.” 

While those comparisons from the outside world in the rivalry-rich Big East aren’t going to go away, one thing was for certain on Wednesday: UConn is on top of the Big East, and the college basketball world.

Just as his socks said, Hurley enjoys running a program that’s been a total “pain in the ass” to every one of the Huskies’ opponents over the past two seasons.

That’s why Hurley is back in Storrs, Conneticut for another year – to embark on golden history.

John Fanta is a national college basketball broadcaster and writer for FOX Sports. He covers the sport in a variety of capacities, from calling games on FS1 to serving as lead host on the BIG EAST Digital Network to providing commentary on The Field of 68 Media Network. Follow him at @John_Fanta.

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Boulter is looking to finish a season where she has won two WTA titles with a flourish and has reached her first quarter-final since Eastbourne in June.

The clinical victory over Okamura sets up an intriguing clash with Canadian wildcard Bianca Andreescu.

Andreescu, 24, won the 2019 US Open as a teenager but has been plagued by injury problems since.

“Bianca is an incredible fighter, won a Grand Slam and is playing some good tennis,” said Boulter, who has no ranking points to defend and could move back into the top 30 this week.

“It’s a free swing for me at the end of the year and I have nothing to lose.”

Boulter is seeded ninth at the WTA 500 event in the Japanese capital, with China’s Zheng Qinwen, Russian Daria Kasatkina, Diana Shnaider and Canada’s Leylah Fernandez left in the draw as higher-ranked players.