HIGH SCHOOLS
The Sidwell Friends girls’
basketball team caps a
30-0 season with a
national title in Florida. D12PRO FOOTBALL
Ron Rivera talked about an
aggressive remake of the
Commanders’ roster. It has
been anything but. D10CANDACE BUCKNER
On Fan Appreciation Night,
a long view of the Wizards
shows there’s not all that
much to appreciate. D8ON THE NBA
The Lakers will be home
watching the playoffs,
giving LeBron James
plenty to think about. D7KLMNO
SPORTS
SUNDAY, APRIL 10 , 2022. WASHINGTONPOST.COM/SPORTS M2 D
JONATHAN NEWTON/THE WASHINGTON POST
Nationals starter Joan Adon gave up a fifth-inning grand slam to the Mets’ Pete Alonso on Saturday.BY JESSE DOUGHERTYThere was nothing Joan Adon
could do from where he stood. The
pitch was thrown. The ball was in
its high-arcing flight over Nation-
als Park. When it landed, in the
first row of seats behind the leftfield wall, Adon, a rookie starter
for the Washington Nationals, just
moved his eyes from the damage
to the grass around the mound.
It was this hit — Pete Alonso’s
first career grand slam — that shot
the New York Mets to a 5-0 win
over Adon and the Nationals on
Saturday night. For four innings,
Adon held his own, limiting the
Mets despite some hard contact
and his fastball not missing many
swings. But in the fifth, the 23-year-old righty wobbled, spoiling
his second major league outing
(and only sixth appearance above
high Class A).
James McCann led off with a
sharp single to left. Brandon Nim-
mo followed with a walk, Starling
Marte flew out, and Adon walked
Francisco Lindor in a full count.
SEE NATIONALS ON D5Nats have no answer for Alonso, Mets
METS 5,
NATIONALS 0BY ROMAN STUBBSpittsburgh — Separated by just
six points in the Metropolitan
Division standings with less than
a month remaining in the regular
season, the Washington Capitals
and Pittsburgh Penguins didn’t
take long to flash playoff-caliber
urgency Saturday afternoon. The
rivals traded goals just 61 seconds
into the game, setting the tone for
another late-season contest full
of electric scoring, acrobatic goal-
tending and after-the-whistle
squabbling.
But for all of their recent
struggles in D.C., the Capitals,
who entered the day with the
league’s best points percentage
on the road, again proved resil-
ient in a hostile environment.
Tom Wilson scored the game-
winning goal with just over eight
minutes remaining, and Wash-
ington added two late empty-net
goals for a 6-3 win that pulled it
within four points of Pittsburgh
— with two games in hand — for
SEE CAPITALS ON D8
Caps top
Pittsburgh,
remain hot
on the road
CAPITALS 6,
PENGUINS 3BY KENT BABB IN GREENSBORO, N.C.H
is teammates are on the driving range, taking their first
swings an hour before the tournament starts. But the
only freshman on North Carolina A&T’s men’s golf team
isn’t quite ready. He’s lying on the pavement in the
parking lot, trying to loosen his 36-year-old hips. ¶ J.R. Smith rises
slowly and starts forward, leaning into a blistering wind. His dark
twists peek from beneath a pompom beanie, and he straps a glove
onto one of his tattooed hands. Considering who Smith is and that
he once celebrated the Cleveland Cavaliers’ NBA championship by
refusing to wear a shirt for multiple days, through multiple cities, it
would seem important to report that, in a hoodie and windbreaker,
he is fully clothed. Of the 56 golfers who will tee it up at the Aggie
Invitational these next two days, Smith also is the only one playing
golf in A ir Jordans not long after playing golf with A ir Jordan.
SEE HBCU ON D4Golfing while Black
25 years after Woods’s historic win, the sport remains overwhelmingly White. HBCUs are trying to change that.
PHOTOS BY CORNELL WATSON FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
J.R. Smith, who helped the Cavaliers and L akers win NBA t itles,
walked on to the golf team at North Carolina A&T, an HBCU
program. “Even me, when I go to the golf courses, people still look
at me like: ‘What are you doing here,’ ” Smith said.MASTERS
Augusta National, third round
TO PAR1Scottie Scheffler -92Cameron Smith -6
3Sungjae Im -4T4 Shane Lowry -2
Charl Schwartzel -2NOTABLEST6 Justin Thomas -1
T9 Rory McIlroy +1T9 Collin Morikawa +1
T41 Tiger Woods +7Today’s TV: 2 p.m., CBSBY CHUCK CULPEPPERaugusta, ga. — The 86th Mas-
ters got woolly just before sun-
down Saturday when the domi-
nant guy suddenly drove into the
woods on No. 18 and went bur-
rowing in there ball-hunting, al-
most as if he needed a pith helmet
and a pick ax and a canteen and a
little cooler with some of those
pimento cheese sandwiches.
Two-day front-runner Scottie
Scheffler hiked and ducked amid
the branches, found the ball gig-
gling from the twigs and straw,
reached in with his gloved left
hand, picked up the little bastard
and observed it as if it were some
adorable turtle.
The Masters had itself a Mas-
ters right then. A gaping Scheffler
lead that already had sagged from
six to four could shrink to two or
one and portend hubbub for Sun-
day.
“Obviously, I didn’t hit a very
good tee shot,” the 25-year-old
Texan deadpanned. “We saw the
guy with the flag, always finds the
balls, kind of panicking.”
Yet Scheffler did something
from there he has been doing here
and in his surge to the fore over
the past 55 days into Saturday. He
recovered like somebody with an
imperturbable mind. He took the
drop in the straw outside the
hostile foliage and whacked a
beaut from 255 yards almost di-
rectly at the pin. It carried
through the green, but when
SEE MASTERS ON D3Sche±er
leads by
three at
Masters
BY SAM FORTIER
AND JAKE LOURIMThe shocking death of quarter-
back Dwayne Haskins in South
Florida on Saturday morning
prompted an outpouring of grief
among the NFL community and
other pro athletes. Coaches re-
leased statements, friends shared
tributes, and social media feeds
flooded with old pictures of
Haskins, 24, and emoji of broken
hearts and doves.
The Bullis School in Potomac,
Md., where Haskins became a
high school star, posted a com-
munity bulletin that began, “It is
with profound sadness... ,” and
Patrick Cilento, who coached
Haskins there from 2013 to 2016,
said in an interview that Haskins
was a “great kid, great person. It’s
just devastating. Devastating.”
“Tough to grasp,” he added.
“It’s just a sad, sad day.”The disbelief that Haskins
could be gone at such a young age
was shared by football’s biggest
names and Haskins’s closest
friends. Kansas City quarterback
Patrick Mahomes tweeted,
“Prayers man.. .” and Var Turner,
the passer’s former personal pho-
tographer, wrote, “I wish y’all
were able to see the man behind
the athlete... [who] gave genu-
ine love to any and everyone.”
“Since we was kids, you was
always a real one,” NBA star
Karl-Anthony Towns tweeted,
with a picture of he and Haskins
together as children; they both
grew up in New Jersey. “Rest up
brother, til we meet again.”
Haskins, who would have
turned 25 on May 3, was training
in Boca Raton, Fla., with Steelers
SEE HASKINS ON D10Haskins’s death at 24
elicits shock, sadness
Bruins at Capitals
Today, 1:30 p.m., TNT
Mets at Nationals
Today, 1:35 p.m., MASNHaskins dead at 24: F ormer
Washington QB hit by truck. A1Haskins dead at 24: F ormer
Washington QB hit by truck. A1Woods struggles: H is 78 includes
four three-putts and a four-putt. D2