Weekend full of injuries in college football leaves plenty of playoff contenders scrambling

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Weekend full of injuries in college football leaves plenty of playoff contenders scrambling

2024-10-15 09:44 Last Updated At：09:50

As the college football season reaches its midway point, plenty of playoff contenders suddenly find themselves dealing with season-ending injuries to notable players.

Notre Dame cornerback Benjamin Morrison, Tennessee linebacker Keenan Pili and Texas defensive back Derrick Williams are out for the rest of the season, their coaches announced Monday. Ohio State left tackle Josh Simmons also has an injury that puts his availability for the rest of the season in doubt.

All went down as part of a brutal weekend that included Florida quarterback Graham Mertz and Colorado State wide receiver Tory Horton suffering season-ending injuries and Utah quarterback Cam Rising hurting his lower leg severely enough to keep him for the rest of the season.

Mertz and Pili both got injured in No. 11 Tennessee’s 23-17 overtime victory over Florida. Pili’s ACL injury leaves the Volunteers without one of their team captains as they prepare to host No. 7 Alabama on Saturday.

Pili’s college career is over. He is 26 and transferred to Tennessee from BYU. He suffered a season-ending triceps injury to start the 2023 season and has used not one but two medical redshirts. Injuries limited him to just seven games in two seasons with the Vols.

“There’s nobody that represents Tennessee better than him," coach Josh Heupel said Monday. “He’s a great leader and will continue to be that inside of our building. Just heartbroken for him and his family. A guy that does absolutely everything right. Special player, but special person. He’s got a great future.”

Heupel said either Arion Carter or Jeremiah Telander will take over for Pili in wearing the in-helmet communication device on defense.

Morrison, who has a hip injury, arguably was the top player to go down for the season over the weekend. The second-team preseason Associated Press All-America selection had nine career interceptions and was regarded as a possible first-round draft pick.

“Obviously it’s a blow to our team,” Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman said. “You lose a captain, a great football player. You feel terrible for the kid because he gives football, he gives preparation everything he has. It’s just tough. But he’s a tough kid. He’s a tough individual. He’s been through this before, he’ll have surgery and get back to work to become the best version of Benjamin.”

Morrison is the latest notable Notre Dame defensive player to be lost for the season. No. 12 Notre Dame is ranked eighth in points allowed per game (11.7), 11th in yards allowed per game (270) and fourth in yards allowed per play (4.25), but the Fighting Irish already lost defensive linemen Jordan Botelho and Boubacar Traore to season-ending injuries.

The Irish now lose Morrison just three weeks after cornerback Jaden Mickey announced four games into the season that he was redshirting to preserve a year of eligibility as he prepares to transfer.

Morrison’s injury likely moves freshman cornerback Leonard Moore into a starting role alongside Christian Gray as Notre Dame prepares to face Georgia Tech in Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

Texas coach Steve Sarkisian announced Monday that Williams also would miss the rest of the season. Texas officials haven’t specified the nature of Williams’ injury.

Williams had picked off a pass in a victory at No. 24 Michigan last month, and he forced and recovered a fumble in the top-ranked Longhorns’ 34-3 rout of Oklahoma on Saturday. His injury comes as Texas gets ready to host No. 5 Georgia.

Fans of No. 4 Ohio State are still awaiting word on the severity of the injury to Simmons, who was carted off the field during the Buckeyes’ 32-31 loss at No. 2 Oregon. Coach Ryan Day sounded pessimistic in his postgame news conference Saturday.

“I’ll have to get the update on Simmons, but it doesn’t look great in terms of him being able to come back this season,” Day said. “That’s a big hit for us.”

The notable injuries weren’t restricted to top teams.

Mertz tore the ACL in his left knee after throwing a touchdown pass in Florida’s loss to Tennessee. Mertz, a Wisconsin transfer, has suffered a season-ending injury each of his two years at Florida. He broke his collarbone in a game against Missouri last November.

His latest injury makes freshman DJ Lagway the Gators’ starting quarterback.

Utah coach Kyle Whittingham announced Monday that Rising is out for the rest of the season after suffering a lower leg injury in a 27-19 loss to Arizona State on Friday that knocked the Utes out of the AP Top 25.

Rising, who is in his seventh season, already missed three games this season because of an injury to his throwing hand. He sat out the entire 2023 season with a knee injury.

Freshman Isaac Wilson, the younger brother of Denver Broncos quarterback Zach Wilson, will take Rising’s place. Utah went 2-1 in the three games Wilson started when Rising was out with the hand injury.

Colorado State coach Jay Norvell announced on social media that Horton would miss the rest of the season after getting hurt in a 31-24 victory over San Jose State. Norvell didn't specify the nature of Horton's injury.

Horton had 26 catches for 353 yards and one touchdown this season after recording back-to-back seasons with at least 1,100 yards receiving in 2022 and 2023. Horton, who played at Nevada from 2020-21 before transferring to Colorado State, was on the verge of setting the Mountain West Conference record for career receiving yardage.

Horton has 265 career catches for 3,615 yards. The MWC career record is owned by Rashard Higgins, who had 3,649 yards receiving for Colorado State from 2013-15.

AP Sports Writers Mark Long and Teresa M. Walker and AP freelance writer John Coon contributed to this report.

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Death toll in attack on Christmas market in Germany rises to 5, with more than 200 injured

2024-12-21 19:29 Last Updated At：19:30

MAGDEBURG, Germany (AP) — Germans on Saturday mourned both the victims and their shaken sense of security after a Saudi doctor intentionally drove into a Christmas market teeming with holiday shoppers, killing at least five people, including a small child, and injuring at least 200 others.

Authorities arrested a 50-year-old man at the site of the attack in Magdeburg on Friday evening and took him into custody for questioning. He has lived in Germany for nearly two decades, practicing medicine in Bernburg, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Magdeburg. officials said.

The governor of the surrounding state of Saxony-Anhalt, Reiner Haseloff, told reporters that the death toll rose from two to five and that more than 200 people in total were injured.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that nearly 40 of them "are so seriously injured that we must be very worried about them.”

Several German media outlets identified the suspect as Taleb A., withholding his last name in line with privacy laws, and reported that he was a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy.

Mourners lit candles and placed flowers outside a church near the market on the cold and gloomy day. Several people stopped and cried. A Berlin church choir whose members witnessed a previous Christmas market attack in 2016 sang Amazing Grace, a hymn about God's mercy, offering their prayers and solidarity with the victims.

There were still no answers Saturday as to what caused him to drive into a crowd in the eastern German city of Magdeburg.

Describing himself as a former Muslim, the suspect shared dozens of tweets and retweets daily focusing on anti-Islam themes, criticizing the religion and congratulating Muslims who left the faith.

He also accused German authorities of failing to do enough to combat what he said was the “Islamism of Europe.” Some described him as an activist who helped Saudi women flee their homeland. He has also voiced support for the far-right and anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

Recently, he seemed focused on his theory that German authorities have been targeting Saudi asylum seekers.

Prominent German terrorism expert Peter Neumann said he had yet to come across a suspect in an act of mass violence with that profile.

“After 25 years in this ‘business’ you think nothing could surprise you anymore. But a 50-year-old Saudi ex-Muslim who lives in East Germany, loves the AfD and wants to punish Germany for its tolerance towards Islamists — that really wasn’t on my radar, " Neumann, the director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence at King’s College London, wrote on X.

“As things stand, he is a lone perpetrator, so that as far as we know there is no further danger to the city,” Saxony-Anhalt’s governor, Reiner Haseloff, told reporters. “Every human life that has fallen victim to this attack is a terrible tragedy and one human life too many.”

The violence shocked Germany and the city, bringing its mayor to the verge of tears and marring a festive event that’s part of a centuries-old German tradition. It prompted several other German towns to cancel their weekend Christmas markets as a precaution and out of solidarity with Magdeburg’s loss. Berlin kept its markets open but has increased its police presence at them.

Germany has suffered a string of extremist attacks in recent years, including a knife attack that killed three people and wounded eight at a festival in the western city of Solingen in August.

Magdeburg is a city of about 240,000 people, west of Berlin, that serves as Saxony-Anhalt’s capital. Friday’s attack came eight years after an Islamic extremist drove a truck into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin, killing 13 people and injuring many others. The attacker was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.

Chancellor Scholz and Interior Minister Nancy Faeser traveled to Magdeburg on Saturday, and a memorial service is to take place in the city cathedral in the evening. Faeser ordered flags lowered to half-staff at federal buildings across the country.

Verified bystander footage distributed by the German news agency dpa showed the suspect’s arrest at a tram stop in the middle of the road. A nearby police officer pointing a handgun at the man shouted at him as he lay prone, his head arched up slightly. Other officers swarmed around the suspect and took him into custody.

Thi Linh Chi Nguyen, a 34-year-old manicurist from Vietnam whose salon is located in a mall across from the Christmas market, was on the phone during a break when she heard loud bangs and thought at first they were fireworks. She then saw a car drive through the market at high speed. People screamed and a child was thrown into the air by the car.

Shaking as she described the horror of what she witnessed, she recalled seeing the car bursting out of the market and turning right onto Ernst-Reuter-Allee street and then coming to a standstill at the tram stop where the suspect was arrested.

The number of injured people was overwhelming.

“My husband and I helped them for two hours. He ran back home and grabbed as many blankets as he could find because they didn’t have enough to cover the injured people. And it was so cold," she said.

The market itself was still cordoned off Saturday with red-and-white tape and police vans every 50 meters (about 54 yards). Police with machine pistols guarded every entry to the market.

Some thermal security blankets still lay on the street.

Christmas markets are a German holiday tradition cherished since the Middle Ages, now successfully exported to much of the Western world.

Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry condemned the attack on X.

Aboubakr reported from Cairo and Gera from Warsaw, Poland.