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UPI NewsTrack Sports

Petkovic, Pennetta score Sony Open wins

MIAMI, March 19 (UPI) -- Germany's Andrea Petkovic and Flavia Pennetta of Italy logged victories Tuesday on the opening day of the Sony Open in Miami.

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Petkovic, a former world No. 10, needed just 58 minutes to breeze past Serbia's Bojana Jovanovski in Day 1's headliner, 6-3, 6-1.

Her next opponent on the hard courts of Crandon Park will be 10th-seeded Frenchwoman Marion Bartoli.

Pennetta, meanwhile, also had little trouble in her first-round match, dispatching Swede Johanna Larsson 6-4, 6-1. She now goes on to face top-seeded American star Serena Williams.

Also corralling opening-day victories were France's Kristina Mladenovic, 42-year-old Japanese Kimiko Date-Krumm, countrywoman Ayumi Morita and Taiwan's Su-Wei Hsieh.

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China's Peng Shuai, Romanian Irina-Camelia Begu, Kiki Bertens of the Netherlands and Croat Ajla Tomljanovic also advanced Tuesday.


Quarterback Kiel leaves Notre Dame

SOUTH BEND, Ind., March 19 (UPI) -- Five-star quarterback prospect Gunner Kiel has left the University of Notre Dame, Coach Brian Kelly confirmed Tuesday.

Kiel, one of the most highly recruited high school signal-callers in the nation last year, rejected Indiana and then Louisiana State in favor of Notre Dame where he sat out the Fighting Irish's run to the national championship game as a redshirt.

He will now transfer to another, as-yet-undetermined college, Kelly said.

The move comes after sophomore Everett Golson has seemingly locked up Notre Dame's starting quarterback job for the next three seasons.

"I don't know that I'm surprised," the coach told reporters. "We had kind of created an opportunity for him to compete in the spring. So maybe a little surprised from that standpoint, because he was actually told he'd be given the opportunity to compete."


UMKC hires Kareem Richardson as coach

KANSAS CITY, Mo., March 19 (UPI) -- Louisville assistant coach Kareem Richardson has been hired to be the men's basketball coach at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, the school said Tuesday.

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Richardson, 38, has been an assistant coach for 16 seasons. He's currently an assistant at Louisville and will stay with the Cardinals through the NCAA Tournament. Louisville is the No. 1 overall seed for the tournament.

Among his previous positions is a one-season stint as the top assistant at UMKC (2007-08).

"Being at the University of Louisville and working under future Hall of Fame Coach [Rick] Pitino, it had to take a special situation for me to leave," Richardson said in a release, "But I know the vision that [UMKC Chancellor] Leo Morton and Tim Hall have for the program makes UMKC a special situation."

In addition to UMKC and Louisville, Richardson, who played at Evansville, has coached at Xavier, Drake, Evansville, Indiana State, Wright State and Indianapolis.

Richardson replaces Matt Brown, who was fired last week after six seasons as coach at UMKC. The Kangaroos were 8-24 this past season and 64-122 in Brown's tenure.

UMKC is leaving the Summit League for the Western Athletic Conference next season.


Vols send 102 letters to football recruit

MONROE, Ga., March 19 (UPI) -- A Georgia high school football standout said he found 105 letters in his mailbox Monday, each a recruiting pitch from the University of Tennessee.

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Stanton Truitt, a Monroe, Ga., wide receiver and defensive back, displayed his stack of orange envelopes from Volunteers' coach Butch Jones on his Twitter page, and already has an offer from Tennessee to play in 2014, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Tuesday.

The tactic has a precedent. Alabama coach Nick Saban mailed 105 letters in one day to another Georgia recruit last year, the newspaper said, noting Tennessee's director of recruiting is J.R. Sandlin, who was on Alabama's staff last year.

Truitt has not yet committed himself to any school.

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