Player admits fixing soccer games in Italy

Former Atalanta captain Cristiano Doni acknowledged fixing Serie B soccer games in Italy involving his team, according to reports, and said his club knew nothing about his actions.

Doni was among 16 people arrested across Italy on Monday in an investigation into match-fixing and illegal betting on games.

After five days of solitary confinement, Doni was permitted to meet with his lawyer Friday and was then questioned by prosecutors.

“Yes, I knew about the fix for Atalanta-Piacenza. I gave my approval and I bet,” Doni is quoted as saying by Gazzetta dello Sport in its Saturday editions. “I also tried to do the same thing for the match with Ascoli. But they were all personal initiatives, I’m not part of any organization. … The club didn’t know anything.”

Atalanta beat Piacenza, 3-0, and the Ascoli-Atalanta match finished 1-1.

In June, 16 people were arrested as part of the first wave of the inquiry, and Doni was then put under investigation.

Doni said at the time he was innocent, but in August he was banned from soccer for 31/2 years by the Italian soccer federation. Atalanta, promoted to Serie A for this season, was penalized six points.

The latest arrests come five years after another major match-fixing scandal — restricted to club and referee officials but not players — resulted in Juventus’ relegation to Serie B for a season, plus point penalties for Lazio, AC Milan, Fiorentina and Reggina in Serie A.

ETC.

Conlin faces new accusations

Another woman has accused Bill Conlin, a former Philadelphia Daily News columnist, of sexually abusing her when she was a child.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported the allegations, brought by a woman who said Conlin assaulted her at the beach in Margate, N.J., when she was 11 years old. The abuse is alleged to have occurred in the 1960s, fully a decade before Conlin, 77, is accused of assaulting six other victims. They gave their accounts last week.

The woman who came forward Saturday asked not to be identified and said she was speaking out because reading the stories of others who say Conlin molested them gave her courage.

Conlin, a winner of the Baseball Writers Assn. of America’s highest honor, the J.G. Taylor Spink Award, retired from the Daily News on Tuesday just hours before the Inquirer published a story online about allegations against Conlin by three women and a man.

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The International Ski Federation canceled the World Cup competition scheduled for Jan. 1 at Munich, Germany, because of warm weather.

FIS said the event has been called off “due to lack of snow, too warm temperatures, rain and no positive weather forecast.”

It said the event will not be made up.

The 16 top female and 16 top male athletes in the overall World Cup rankings were set to compete in the city’s Olympic Park venue.

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Joston Thomas and the Hawaii men’s basketball team handed No. 14 Xavier yet another post-brawl loss late Friday night, relegating the reeling Musketeers to the seventh-place game in the Diamond Head Classic at Honolulu.

Thomas made a layup from the baseline with 0.8 of a second left in overtime, giving Hawaii an 84-82 comeback victory that sent the Musketeers to their third consecutive loss since a bench-clearing brawl Dec. 10 against Cincinnati.

Thomas finished with a career-high 24 points on eight-of-11 shooting and had nine rebounds. Vander Joaquim added 20 points for Hawaii (6-5).

Tu Holloway led Xavier (8-3) with 26 points.

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Virginia men’s basketball Coach Tony Bennett said redshirt freshman forward James Johnson is planning to transfer.

Johnson is the fourth member of Bennett’s first recruiting class to leave the program in the last year, joining Billy Baron, Will Regan and KT Harrell, who announced his intention to transfer on Friday. Of that first class, only Joe Harris and Akil Mitchell remain at Virginia.

The departures come with the Cavaliers (10-1) off to their best start since the 2000-01 season and riding an eight-game winning streak.

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The Memphis Grizzlies traded guard Greivis Vasquez to the New Orleans Hornets for guard/forward Quincy Pondexter in a move designed to boost their depth with Darrell Arthur out for the season. The Grizzlies announced earlier Sunday that they signed Dante Cunningham after Charlotte failed to match an offer.

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The Oklahoma City Thunder waived guard Nate Robinson, who was a midseason acquisition from the Boston Celtics last season and appeared in four games for the Thunder. Robinson averaged 3.3 points and 1.5 assists in 7.5 minutes per game with Oklahoma City.