Montreal GM talks about role in facilitating Karlsson trade, and Jeff Petry + Casey DeSmith

While fans across the country were on edge watching upset after upset unfold Saturday, Houston Chronicle sports columnist Kirk Bohls and other members of The Associated Press college football poll voting panel were thinking ahead to how they would sort out and arrange the teams they would put on their ballots Sunday.

“In my 46 years of voting in the poll, this was probably the most difficult by far,” Bohls, the longest-tenured voter, wrote in an email. “It was so hard to determine how much to ‘penalize’ the Top 25 teams that lost, especially to unranked teams, but also tough to figure out how much to ‘reward’ those teams who pulled off the upset.”

In the aftermath of six Top 25 teams losing to unranked teams over the weekend, Texas was the overwhelming choice to return to No. 1 after a week’s absence.

The biggest questions for voters: how far to drop Alabama, last week’s top-ranked team, for losing to three-touchdown-underdog Vanderbilt, and should the Crimson Tide still be ahead of a Georgia team they beat a week earlier?

Alabama landed at No. 7, the biggest demotion in 14 years for a team voted off the top perch, and Georgia remained No. 5.

Voters had Alabama as high as No. 3 and as low as No. 13 and Georgia anywhere from Nos. 3 to 10.

Georgia was ahead of Alabama on 39 ballots. On the 22 where Alabama was ranked ahead of the Bulldogs, all had the Crimson Tide only one spot higher.

“It’s usually pretty simple for me: the team that wins the head-to-head matchup will be higher ranked as long as their overall records are similar,” said Bob Asmussen of the Champaign-Urbana (Illinois) News-Gazette, who had Alabama sixth and Georgia seventh. “Yes, Georgia beat Clemson, but it also barely beat Kentucky. Alabama has not had a close call besides its loss to Vanderbilt.”

Emily Leiker of Syracuse.com/The Post-Standard in New York said she made about five revisions to her ballot as she watched Miami’s comeback against California in the wee hours Sunday. This was after she had spent the day watching games on the plane while traveling home from Syracuse’s overtime win at then-No. 25 UNLV on Friday.

“So I let myself sleep on what I’d put together and then made a handful of smaller adjustments, mostly in the midsection, this morning,” she said. “Certainly the craziest week I’ve had to rank, though I’ve only been doing this for a little over a year.”

She ended up ranking Georgia ahead of Alabama. “Halfway through the season, a lot more comes into play than just the weekly head-to-head results,” she said.

Bohls showed Vanderbilt and Arkansas some love, and he wasn’t alone. The Commodores appeared on eight ballots and the Razorbacks on six. Neither cracked the Top 25.

“My ballots always remain fluid and not wedded to the previous poll,” Bohls said. “Consequently, I do not mind making drastic changes from week to week. But weeks like this, I don’t relish sorting out the winners and losers.”

Checking in on five of the Top 25:

No. 1 Texas

It’s Red River Rivalry week, and the Longhorns and No. 18 Oklahoma are coming off open dates. The Longhorns are entering the teeth of their schedule. After the Sooners in Dallas, they host Georgia and travel to giant-slayer Vanderbilt. Quinn Ewers is back from an abdominal injury and took snaps with the No. 1 offense at practice last week.

No. 4 Penn State

The Nittany Lions will play their first regular-season game on the West Coast since 1991 when they face Southern California in their Big Ten road opener. These two teams played a classic the last time they met, the 52-49 USC win on a field goal as time ran out in the 2017 Rose Bowl. Penn State was without leading rusher Nick Singleton because of injury against UCLA.

No. 9 Mississippi

Jaxson Dart had his worst game of the season in a 27-3 win at South Carolina. Of course, it was fun watching Lane Kiffin harken William “Refrigerator” Perry by having 325-pound nose tackle JJ Pegues run for a couple 1-yard touchdowns. But the Rebels’ schedule ratchets up now, and they could use their offense to do the same.

No. 14 BYU

Somehow, some way the Cougars have opened with five straight wins, and now the team picked 13th out of 16 teams in the Big 12 preseason poll are poised to become serious contenders in the conference. The defense has 10 takeaways, allows just under 16 points per game and is the team’s identity. The Cougars could be favored in their next three games — home against Arizona and Oklahoma State and on the road against UCF.

No. 25 SMU

The ACC newcomer has won three straight and followed up its surprisingly, at the time, easy win over Florida State with a 34-27 victory at previously ranked Louisville. Miami transfer RB Brashard Smith and WR RJ Maryland are great complements to QB Kevin Jennings, who is growing by the week and coming off his best game (394 yards of total offense).

Extra points

Alabama’s loss at Vanderbilt marked only the fifth time a No. 1-ranked team lost on the road to an unranked opponent since at least 1985. … No. 6 Miami has its highest ranking since it was No. 2 on Nov. 19, 2017. … No. 11 Iowa State is 5-0 for the first time since 1980, and a win at West Virginia this week would make the Cyclones 6-0 for the first time since 1938.

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Fans threw baseballs in the direction of San Diego left fielder Jurickson Profar and then tossed trash that caused a lengthy delay before the Padres beat the Los Angeles Dodgers 10-2 on Sunday night to even their NL Division Series at a game apiece.

Yu Darvish limited the Dodgers’ powerful offense to one run and three hits over seven innings and Fernando Tatis Jr. went deep twice as the Padres tied the postseason record of six homers.

David Peralta and Jackson Merrill each hit two-run homers, and a hobbled Xander Bogaerts and Kyle Higashioka had solo shots. At 21, Merrill became the youngest Padres player with a postseason homer.

“Six of them is a special treat for us,” Merrill said.

The delay in the middle of the seventh inning led to a 12-minute gap between pitches and occurred as two balls were thrown from the stands in the direction of Profar. He chased after one of them but a security officer got to it first. Trash was strewn on the warning track in right near the Padres bullpen.

“I feel like when it went over the line, when they started throwing stuff onto the field,” Tatis said. “I felt like that should not be happening in a big league game.”

There was continuous booing by the sellout crowd of 54,119 — the largest at Dodger Stadium this season.

“The bear’s been poked for a while. It’s been poked previous years, decades,” Merrill said. “We just finally got the firepower, we finally got the team to take it to them. They’re a good team. I love the way they play. They give us a battle every time. They don’t stop.”

Security rushed onto the field as Padres manager Mike Shildt and his team huddled in shallow left. They were joined by the umpiring crew. Security appeared to be trying to identify potential perpetrators in the crowd.

“We were looking for a higher security presence out in the left-field corner to ensure that that behavior didn’t continue,” crew chief Dan Bellino told a pool reporter, “and to make sure that if anybody did throw anything out on the field they would be identified immediately and removed from the stadium.”

The Dodgers did not immediately respond when asked whether there had been any arrests.

Manny Machado gathered his teammates in the dugout to boost them before the game resumed.

The Dodgers have lost four straight Game 2s and seven of their last eight playoff games.

The best-of-five series shifts to San Diego on Tuesday.

Dodgers starter Jack Flaherty hit Tatis with a pitch in the sixth inning, and Profar exchanged words with Dodgers catcher Will Smith.

“There’s too much of an important series just to be throwing at guys,” Tatis said. “When he hit me, he just gave me more energy. My boys gave me more energy.”

The Dodgers thought they’d tied it in the bottom of the first. Mookie Betts hit a deep fly to the corner and left field umpire Adrian Johnson circled his arm signaling a home run.

But Profar battled the outstretched arms of fans, reeling in the ball on the webbing of his glove. He barely reacted to his spectacular grab, hopping away backward as he stared at the astonished fans.

“That was hilarious,” Merrill said of Profar trolling the fans. “He’s having fun. He was playing like a little kid and I love that.”

Later, there were verbal exchanges between fans and Profar.

The Dodgers lost first baseman Freddie Freeman, who left after five innings with discomfort in his sprained right ankle. He struck out and flied out in two at-bats. Freeman got hurt on Sept. 26 and has fought to be healthy enough to make the playoffs.

Just like in Game 1, the Padres took a quick 3-0 lead. Tatis went deep in the first off Flaherty and former Dodger Peralta added a two-out, two-run shot in the second.

Darvish struck out three and walked two against his former team. He shut down fellow Japanese Shohei Ohtani, who struck out and grounded out twice against his friend.

“I was trying to see how he reacted to some of the pitches that I was throwing,” Darvish said through an interpreter. “On top of that, I was trying to keep him off-balance by holding a little bit longer. I think it worked pretty well.”

Ohtani finished 0 for 4 with another strikeout. Mookie Betts was hitless for a sixth consecutive playoff game.

Pitching not far from where he grew up in Burbank, Flaherty gave up four runs and five hits in 5 1/3 innings, becoming the first Dodgers starter to reach the sixth inning of a postseason game since Max Scherzer in 2021.

Max Muncy homered for the Dodgers in the ninth.

UP NEXT

RHP Walker Buehler will start for Dodgers in Game 3 and RHP Michael King will go for the Padres. King was dominant against Atlanta in the NL Wild Card Series, striking out 12 in seven scoreless innings. King faced the Dodgers four times this season, tossing 12 innings of shutout ball in two of the outings while getting hit hard in the other two.

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AP MLB:

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Kevin Yu made a 15-foot birdie on the 18th hole for a 5-under 67, and he birdied it again from six feet in a playoff to beat Beau Hossler and win the Sanderson Farms Championship on Sunday for his first PGA Tour title.

Yu was nearly forgotten for most of a final round that appeared to be a duel between Hossler and Keith Mitchell until the 26-year-old from Taiwan made a birdie to tie them for the lead.

Hossler pulled his drive on the 18th in regulation behind a tree, had to pitch out and hit his third shot to four feet to save par. Mitchell had a 35-foot birdie putt to win it and it grazed the left edge of the cup. But he missed the four-foot comebacker for par, shot 70 and missed the playoff.

Mitchell tied for third with former U.S. Open champion Lucas Glover, who played the last six holes in 5-under par — including pitching in for eagle on the par-4 15th — for a 66.

Hossler again was left off the tee on the 18th in the playoff. Yu hit first and sent his approach to six feet right of the hole. Hossler had to punch below the trees, and it turned too much and went into a front bunker. He blasted out to two feet to secure par.

Yu hit his winning putt, a victory that sends him to the Masters and the PGA Championship for the first time. He also will start his season at Kapalua for The Sentry, a gathering of PGA Tour winners in 2024.

“I’ve been dreaming this moment since I was 5,” Yu said. “This is the dream for all golfers, to win on the PGA Tour. I did it today. I’m thankful for my parents. Without them, I couldn’t have done that.”

Yu and Hossler, who shot a 68, finished at 23-under 265.

Mackenzie Hughes of Hamilton, Ont., finished in a three-way tie for eighth at 19 under. Roger Sloan of Calgary finished in a two-way tie for 61st at 9 under.

This was Hossler’s 200th start on the PGA Tour without ever winning — four of them as an amateur — and it was as close as any. He fell back with a pair of bogeys early on the back nine as he tried to keep pace with Mitchell, and he pulled into a share of the lead with a 20-foot birdie on the 17th hole.

But he never gave himself a good look on the 18th or in the playoff.

“Even though I didn’t have my best stuff on the back nine I grinded really hard,” Hossler said “Hit some really quality shots under the gun, and that’s all you can do. Obviously, Kevin played a beautiful hole in the playoff.”

Mitchell might have the most regrets in search of his first win in five years. He was two shots ahead with five to play when he failed to birdie the par-5 14th or the reachable par-4 15th. He still had a putt to win, and that’s where it all went wrong with a three-putt bogey.

“The first putt actually looked good off the face. Right when it missed, I kind of turned my head and didn’t watch the read on the way by,” Mitchell said. “I assumed it was breaking — guess it broke left. It was going to break right back up the hill.”

He played the four-foot par putt inside the left edge and it stayed out to the left.

“I hate that I finished with a three-putt,” Mitchell said. “Felt like I grinded all the way to the end and gave the first putt a really good chance.”

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AP golf:

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