Huffman Sports Wire News Break · ALL · Reporting · Published · Huffman Sports Wire News Desk
NBA: Oklahoma City pays its guard, Golden State counts its injuries, and opening night is one sleep away
Oklahoma City locked in another piece of its starting five on Monday, as guard Cason Wallace agreed to a five-year extension worth 139 million dollars with the Thunder. Wallace is 22 years old and was a Second Team All-Defense selection last season, when he averaged 8.6 points, 2.6 assists and 1.9 steals per game and led the league with 150 total steals. The deal keeps all five Oklahoma City starters under contract for multiple years, and it lands one day before the Thunder open the season at San Antonio on Tuesday night.
Phoenix made a smaller extension move of its own, as center Oso Ighodaro agreed to a three-year extension worth 29 million dollars that keeps him with the Suns through 2031. Ighodaro played all 82 games for Phoenix last season and now gets a larger role to grow into this season. Roster cutdown day brought harder news elsewhere, as New York waived veteran guard Bruce Brown and gave its final roster spot to big man James Wiseman, while Philadelphia kept 7-foot-6 center Tacko Fall on a two-way contract to open the season.
Golden State starts the year with the most crowded training room in the league, and the afternoon update did little to clear it. Stephen Curry tweaked his ankle during a public practice on Sunday and limped to the locker room, and head coach Steve Kerr downplayed the injury afterward and said Curry is fine ahead of the Wednesday opener against the Los Angeles Lakers. Jimmy Butler and Moses Moody are both expected to remain out until around January after serious knee injuries late last season, with Moody slightly ahead of Butler in his rehabilitation, and Kristaps Porzingis remains sidelined indefinitely with no timeline for a return. Opening night still arrives Tuesday with a tripleheader on NBC and Peacock, starting with Boston at Detroit at 3 ET, followed by Philadelphia at New York at 7 ET and Oklahoma City at San Antonio at 9:30 ET. The contracts are signed and the excuses are gone, because starting Tuesday the standings are real and nobody gets to hide behind preseason anymore.
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MLB: Tampa Bay gets its first pennant chance at home, and Cleveland answers with a bullpen game
The American League Championship Series returns to St. Petersburg on Monday night with Tampa Bay leading Cleveland 3-2 and one win away from the World Series. Game 6 is scheduled for Monday at Tropicana Field at 8:08 ET on TBS and truTV, with streaming on HBO Max. A Tampa Bay win sends the Rays to the World Series for the third time in franchise history and the first time since 2020, and it sets up a matchup with Milwaukee, which already swept Los Angeles in the National League Championship Series. A Cleveland win forces a deciding Game 7 on Tuesday in St. Petersburg.
Tampa Bay turns to right-hander Freddy Peralta, who carries a 1-0 record and a 0.79 earned run average into the start. Peralta won Game 2 and pitched in relief in Game 4, and he has thrown 6 2/3 scoreless innings in this series with six strikeouts. Cleveland managed just two runs across 12 1/3 combined innings against Nick Martinez and Drew Rasmussen in the last two games, and the Guardians now need their offense and their bullpen to save the season on the same night.
Cleveland will open Game 6 with reliever Shawn Armstrong, according to reports on Monday, in what shapes up as a bullpen game with the season on the line. Armstrong also opened Game 4 and threw a scoreless and hitless inning with one strikeout, and he has not allowed a run in 7.2 innings this postseason while striking out six and allowing just two hits. Ace Gavin Williams is unavailable for Game 6 after earning the win in Game 3, and Williams would return to play for a potential Game 7 if Cleveland survives. Tampa Bay has the starter, the lead and the home crowd, and Cleveland has a bullpen, a prayer and absolutely no tomorrow if either one runs dry.
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NFL: Indianapolis fires its general manager, Philadelphia loses its quarterback for the season, and Monday night closes Week 6
Indianapolis made the first major leadership change of the season on Monday, as the Colts fired general manager Chris Ballard one day after a 26-20 home loss to the previously winless Tennessee Titans. Ballard had held the job since January 2017, and Indianapolis reached the playoffs only twice during his tenure, with those appearances coming in the 2018 season and the 2020 season. The Colts fell to 2-4 after Tennessee rallied from a 13-0 halftime deficit, and Indianapolis has lost two straight games heading into Week 7. Head coach Shane Steichen remains in place for now, and Steichen confirmed after the Tennessee game that Daniel Jones remains the starting quarterback despite throwing two interceptions in the loss and recording nine total turnovers this season.
Philadelphia received the harder news on Monday, as quarterback Jalen Hurts will miss the rest of the season after further imaging found multiple blood clots in his lungs. The updated diagnosis is deep vein thrombosis as well as bilateral pulmonary emboli, which means clots were found in both lungs, and the treatment timeline is reported at three months or longer while Hurts takes blood thinners and cannot take part in contact activities. Hurts is 28 years old, he is clinically stable with no significant functional limitations, and the outlook shared by the team and his agent is a full recovery with no long-term effects expected. Tanner McKee started in place of Hurts on Sunday and threw for 215 yards and one touchdown in a 25-14 loss to Carolina, and McKee remains the starter for a 2-4 Philadelphia team that has lost four straight games.
Week 6 closes Monday night with Washington at San Francisco at 8:15 ET on ESPN and ABC from Levi's Stadium. San Francisco enters at 5-0 as one of the last unbeaten teams in the league, and Washington enters at 1-3-1 and would move to 2-3-1 with a win. Washington ruled out running back Jacory Croskey-Merritt with a groin injury, quarterback Marcus Mariota with a knee injury, linebacker Javontae Jean-Baptiste with a pectoral injury and defensive end Charles Omenihu with groin and ankle injuries, while receiver Terry McLaurin is set to play and receiver Stefon Diggs is listed as questionable with a hamstring injury. San Francisco will play without defensive end Nick Bosa and without receiver Deebo Samuel with a hamstring injury, and receiver Mike Evans is listed as questionable. One unbeaten record, one desperate road team and one very loud Monday night in Santa Clara is a pretty good way to end a wild week.
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NCAAF: The new poll settles, and Week 8 turns the chaos into two ranked showdowns
The dust from the wildest Saturday in poll history settled into a new Associated Press Top 25 on Monday, with Miami at first, BYU at second, Ohio State at third, Notre Dame at fourth and Georgia at fifth. Georgia slipped from first to fifth after a 27-24 loss to Auburn, and the rest of the top ten is Indiana at sixth, Ole Miss at seventh, Texas Tech at eighth, UCLA at ninth and Utah at tenth. Tennessee sits eleventh, Kentucky sits twelfth, Alabama sits thirteenth, Houston sits fourteenth and Texas sits nineteenth, while Florida entered the poll at twentieth and Arizona entered at twenty-fifth. Mississippi State and Oklahoma State dropped out of the poll after their losses.
Week 8 gives the sport a calmer slate on paper, with two games between ranked teams and no matchup between top ten teams. The headline game is seventh-ranked Ole Miss at nineteenth-ranked Texas on Saturday at 7:30 ET on ABC in Austin, where Texas is 4-2 after a second straight loss and Ole Miss is 5-1 after a 31-3 win over Missouri. Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian said after the Florida loss that everything would be evaluated, including play calling and the quarterback position, and that evaluation now runs straight into a ranked opponent at home.
The other ranked matchup sends fourteenth-ranked Houston to tenth-ranked Utah on Saturday at 9:15 ET on ESPN in Salt Lake City. Houston is 6-1 after holding off Oklahoma State 35-32, and quarterback Conner Weigman threw for 343 yards and five touchdowns in that win. Utah is 6-0 and faces a ranked team for the first time this season, with Big 12 title and playoff implications attached to the result. The rest of Saturday still carries weight, starting with LSU at Auburn at 12 ET on ABC, Indiana at Michigan at 12 ET on FOX and Texas A&M at Alabama at 3:30 ET on ABC, plus USC at Wisconsin at 7:30 ET on NBC. After a Saturday that broke a 90-year pattern, a quieter Week 8 on paper feels less like a breather and more like a trap waiting for somebody ranked.
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CBB: Florida starts first in the coaches poll, and North Carolina starts outside it
Florida will start the season at first in the USA TODAY Sports preseason coaches poll, the first time the Gators have opened at the top of that poll since the 2006-07 season. The Gators built the ranking around a veteran frontcourt led by Thomas Haugh, Alex Condon and Rueben Chinyelu, and they are chasing a second championship in three years. Duke starts second after receiving eight first-place votes and finishing just six poll points behind Florida, and Illinois starts third after receiving two first-place votes and earning its highest preseason ranking since 2001. Arizona starts fourth and Connecticut rounds out the top five.
The rest of the top ten shows the depth across the major conferences, with Michigan State at sixth, Texas at seventh, Houston at eighth, Tennessee at ninth and Virginia at tenth, followed by Louisville at eleventh. Gonzaga starts twelfth ahead of its first season in the Pac-12, and St. John's starts fourteenth as one of only two Big East teams in the poll alongside Connecticut. Defending champion Michigan starts twentieth after the departure of head coach Dusty May to the NBA.
The conference count tells the wider story before a single game counts, as seven SEC teams made the poll, followed by six teams from the Big 12, five from the Big Ten and four from the ACC. North Carolina missed the preseason poll entirely, and that is the first time the Tar Heels have not been in the preseason rankings since 2005. Florida gets the target, Duke gets the motivation and North Carolina gets the bulletin board material, which is exactly how October is supposed to feel.
That's the Afternoon Edition. Five sports, zero filler. See you tonight.
Sources: - [NBC Sports](https://www.nbcsports.com/nba/news/2026-27-nba-news-injury-updates-oct-19-ben-simmons-tears-achilles-stephen-curry-tweaks-ankle) - [NBC Sports](https://www.nbcsports.com/nba/news/thunder-reportedly-lock-up-guard-cason-wallace-with-five-year-139-million-extension) - [Bleacher Report](https://bleacherreport.com/articles/25513131-new-warriors-rumors-jimmy-butler-moses-moodys-injury-rehab-and-timeline-return) - [Reuters](https://www.reuters.com/sports/baseball/freddy-peralta-rays-look-finish-off-guardians-reach-world-series--flm-2026-10-19/) - [Sportsnet](https://www.sportsnet.ca/mlb/article/report-guardians-shawn-armstrong-to-open-game-6-of-alcs/) - [USA Today](https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/playoffs/2026/10/19/guardians-rays-watch-score-highlights-odds-game-6-alcs-channel--live/92324291007/) - [Reuters](https://www.reuters.com/sports/colts-fire-gm-chris-ballard-after-loss-titans--flm-2026-10-19/) - [ESPN](https://www.espn.ph/nfl/story/_/id/50218378/eagles-jalen-hurts-season-due-blood-clots-lungs) - [USA Today](https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/eagles/2026/10/19/jalen-hurts-blood-clot-out-prognosis-eagles/92328362007/) - [NBC Sports](https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profootballtalk/rumor-mill/news/shane-steichen-on-daniel-jones-job-hes-our-starting-quarterback) - [Commanders Wire](https://commanderswire.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/commanders/2026/10/18/commanders-rule-four-injured-players-out-49ers-monday-night/92302632007/) - [NBC Sports](https://www.nbcsports.com/betting/nfl/news/49ers-vs-commanders-odds-expert-picks-team-and-player-news-betting-trends-and-stats) - [Dawg Sports](https://www.dawgsports.com/college-football/39312/2026-college-football-polls-week-8) - [On3](https://www.on3.com/news/top-10-games-for-week-8-of-the-college-football-season/) - [FBSchedules](https://fbschedules.com/college-football-schedule-tv-selections-for-october-24-2026/) - [USA Today](https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaab/2026/10/19/college-basketball-rankings-preseason-poll-top-25-florida-duke/92324113007/)
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