Paris Saint-Germain defender Achraf Hakimi has been charged with rape, the prosecutor’s department of Nanterre said Friday. 

The 24-year-old, who also plays for Morocco’s national team, was placed under judicial supervision and prohibited from contacting the alleged victim in the case, according to French newspaper Le Parisien, ESPN and multiple outlets.

Le Parisien first reported an investigation started when a 24-year-old told authorities she had been assaulted by Hakimi.

‘Achraf Hakimi strongly denies the accusations against him,’ according to a statement from Hakimi’s lawyer, Fanny Colin, who called Hakimi a ‘victim of racketeering’and said ‘being charged gives M. Hakimi the possibility to defend himself with a lot of rights, especially to have access to the case file.’

It is unclear if Hakimi will play for PSG in the Champions League Round of 16 match against Bayern Munich, scheduled for Wednesday, or in matches over the weekend.

Hakimi helped Morocco make World Cup history last year after the squad became the first African team to reach the semifinals.

Ingemar Stenmark’s record is safe for another day. 

In her first World Cup race in more than a month, Mikaela Shiffrin was fourth in a super-G in Kvitfjell, Norway, on Friday. The American finished just 0.16 seconds behind Austria’s Cornelia Huetter, who started five spots behind Shiffrin and knocked her off the podium with a fast finish. Shiffrin finished 0.04 out of third place. 

‘It’s just such a pleasure to ski on this hill. It’s very fun,’ she said. ‘It’s easy to be disappointed to not get on the podium but, on the other hand, I felt pretty good with my skiing. I’m happy but not totally satisfied and that’s an OK place to be.’

Shiffrin remains one victory shy of the Swedish legend’s all-time record of 86 World Cup victories. She won’t have to wait long for another crack at Stenmark’s record, though, with a downhill race in Kvitfjell on Saturday followed by another super-G on Sunday.

Shiffrin’s chances next weekend are even better, with a giant slalom and slalom in Are, Sweden. Of her 85 World Cup wins, 53 are in slalom and 19 are in giant slalom. 

‘There’s so much talk about the record and if it happens today or tomorrow or the next day. I kind of have the perspective that it might not even happen this season,’ Shiffrin said. ‘I’m trying to take every day step by step, pushing the right way, skiing the right way.’

Shiffrin has won 11 World Cup races this season, the fourth time in her career she’s reached double digits, to close in on Stenmark. She broke fellow American Lindsey Vonn’s record for World Cup victories by a female skier on Jan. 24 with her 83rd win.

Shiffrin got her 85th World Cup victory on Jan. 28, and was second in her first attempt at matching Stenmark the next day. The World Cup circuit then took a break for the world championships, where Shiffrin won the giant slalom as well as silvers in the slalom and super-G. 

As Selection Sunday in college basketball nears, you may hear commentators and bracketologists refer to NET rankings or quadrant wins as factors in at-large teams on the bubble and seeding when it comes to the NCAA Tournament. 

The NET rankings (NCAA Evaluation Tool) are used to look at a team’s record and résumé and replaced the somewhat unpopular RPI (Ratings Power Index) used for years as an evaluating measuring stick by the selection committee. 

This is the fifth season of the NET and would suggest teams fighting for their tournament lives would have a vested interest in the rating. The NCAA has said that the NET is not a deciding factor in whether a team makes the tournament.

What’s the difference between RPI and NET?

The RPI looked at three metrics: a team’s winning percentage, average opponent’s winning percentage, and average opponent’s opponent’s winning percentage. The NET factors in scoring margin, quality of wins and losses, net offensive and defensive efficiency, strength of schedule, game location, and, of course, game results. 

Follow every game: Latest NCAA Men’s College Basketball Scores and Schedules

The most important component of the NET is the team value index (TVI), rewarding teams for beating upper-echelon squads, which makes the entire system results-based. 

What are quadrant wins?

When you talk about quadrant wins, it is based on the NET ranking of the teams at the time of the game. Quad 1 wins have an impact on selecting teams for the tournament, and losses to Quad 3 and 4 teams could severely impact a team’s chances of making the field. 

The bottom line: beat good teams, especially on the road, and don’t lose to bad teams anywhere. 

Quadrant 1: Home 1-30, Neutral 1-50, Away 1-75

Quadrant 2: Home 31-75, Neutral 51-100, Away 76-135

Quadrant 3: Home 76-160, Neutral 101-200, Away 135-240

Quadrant 4: Home 161-353, Neutral 201-353, Away 241-353

For example, through March 2, top-ranked Houston had the top NET ranking in the country based on its 28-2 record and 12 wins against Quad 1 and 2 competition. 

College football has spent years studying ways to cut into the length of games, more recently reframing this quest as a matter of student-athlete health and safety — that trimming the length of games would also limit the number of plays, or ‘exposures,’ an athlete would face per game or over the course of an entire season.

This has become an increasingly important topic of conversation given future changes to the format of the College Football Playoff, which will expand in 2024 and could force one or more teams to play as many as 16 or 17 games in a given season. 

Rule changes proposed Friday represent the largest strides taken to date in terms of managing overall game time, including one proposal that could dramatically alter the way college football is played and bring gameplay more in line with the NFL model.

The changes were offered by the NCAA Football Rules Committee, which is co-chaired by Georgia coach Kirby Smart. Next, these proposals will be forwarded to the NCAA Playing Rules Oversight Panel, which will meet on April 20.

These proposals represent ‘a small step intended to reduce the overall game time and will give us some time to review the impact of the change,’ Smart said.

Running the clock after first down

Gameplay in college and the NFL could always be distinguished by one crucial difference: Clocks in NFL games would continue to run after first downs, while clocks on the college level would stop while referees reset the chains and spotted the ball to begin a new set of downs.

Under the rules committee’s proposal, the game clock will continue to run upon a first down with the exception of the final two minutes of the first and second half, when time will stop until the officiating crew spots the ball and restarts the clock.

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers led the NFL last season with 68.8 plays per game, a number that would have tied for 85th in the Football Bowl Subdivision. Twenty-four FBS teams averaged at least 75 plays per game in 2022.

And more plays has equaled longer college games. In real time, the average FBS game length last season was three hours and 27 minutes, up almost ten minutes from the average game time during the 2017 season.

The rules committee expects the change to eliminate seven or eight plays per game and trim overall game length by roughly seven minutes, said Steve Shaw, the national coordinator of officials for the NCAA.

‘Over a season, if you play 12 games, you can do the math on that,’ Shaw said. ‘You may not notice in a game. Over a season, it may make a difference.’

How the clock rule could change college football

While the rule change is expected to ‘modestly reduce the number of plays in the game,’ according to an NCAA statement, the impact could be drastically more profound.

The offensive revolution that has gripped college football in the past decade-plus is rooted in the concepts of speed and tempo — maximizing the clock to run as many plays as possible in as short a time as possible.

Running the clock after first downs will immediately lessen the number of plays in a given game, though the by-the-numbers impact won’t be proven until the first few weeks of the 2023 season. 

But even a slightly decreased number of snaps per game carries the potential of altering offensive philosophies and at least partially shifting the balance of power back toward defenses. 

Timeout and penalty adjustments

The committee proposed another two changes designed to clean up overall game flow.

In the first, teams would be barred from calling consecutive timeouts. This primarily occurs before potential field goals, as coaches call successive timeouts to ice the kicker.

In the second, penalties that occur at the ends of the first and third quarters would carry over and be enforced on the opening snap of the second and fourth quarters, respectively. Under the current rules, penalties occurring at the end of the first and third were played as part of an untimed down.

That rule won’t change on penalties that take place on the final play of either half. As under current rules, those plays would then immediately occur as an untimed down.

INDIANAPOLIS — A crystal ball in the middle of a craps table would be an apt analogy to visualize the combination of risk, foresight and luck when it comes to drafting a quarterback with the intention of him becoming a franchise player. 

‘That’s why this is both an art,’ said Carolina Panthers head coach Frank Reich, ‘and a science.’

Being clairvoyant is a bonus. 

‘I think you got to see the future,’ Indianapolis Colts head coach Shane Steichen said. ‘Sometimes, that’s probably one of the hardest jobs, is predict the future of these young guys.’ 

Every team wants the next Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen or Justin Herbert. The projection of their physical attributes, despite uneven play and lingering performance questions from college, was one of the driving factors in why their respective teams selected them inside of the top 10. And in the 2023 draft, a pair of prospects – Kentucky’s Will Levis and Florida’s Anthony Richardson – could be picked in a similar range based on the same belief that their talent can be molded to catalyze team success. Alabama’s Bryce Young and Ohio State’s C.J. Stroud also look bound for the top of the first round, but each enjoyed two prolific seasons as a starter, whereas Levis and Richardson’s college careers were decidedly more volatile.

Buffalo Bills general manager Brandon Beane traded up in the 2018 draft to select Allen seventh overall. Beyond the physical gifts Allen displayed at Wyoming, the Bills were equally invested in the mental component of the evaluation. 

‘I think if I was in the quarterback market I’d be wanting to know (more), I’d be wanting to talk to his coaches, I would be wanting to talk to his teammates,’ Beane said.

Like Allen, and even Mahomes, the game film reveals the rawness that make Levis and Richardson potential risks – or boons. 

Beane has watched both Richardson and Levis play live and has heard the comparisons between both prospects and Allen. His advice to interested teams? Get digging. 

‘What is his preparation?’ Beane said. ‘How bad does he want it? What is he like on game day? Is he building guys up? Does he take responsibility for his mistakes?’ 

For New York Giants general manager Joe Schoen, who was a Bills assistant GM while the team scouted Allen, the quarterback is in ‘a totally different stratosphere’ when it comes to evaluating. 

‘Because you have to evaluate the person, how they learn, their instincts, how they process information,’ Schoen said. ‘To me, that’s way more important. You can watch the film and see one thing, but the makeup of the kid, I think, is way more important. When it mirrors up, I think that’s when you have a good quarterback.’

What the Bills learned about Allen during their scouting process – which included a meeting at the Senior Bowl, a private workout in Laramie, Wyoming, and a visit to the Bills’ Orchard Park, New York, facilities – left the organization with a feeling that ‘we’ve got a young man who’s still ascending and who has the DNA,’ Beane said. A quarterback must be his own worst critic, and they knew Allen was self-aware of deficiencies.

‘He’s very smart. He’s a competitive guy,’ Beane said. ‘And he’s got that want-to, that give-a-(expletive) factor that is like, man, I’m going to do whatever it takes to win.

“I think if you’re in the quarterback market those are key qualities, beyond the physical attributes that that player possesses.” 

Kansas City Chiefs coach Andy Reid said evaluators tend to become hung up on arm strength. 

‘That’s one thing. But that’s not necessarily the most important thing,’ Reid said. ‘It’s how the player handles the game, from the feet to the head. You got to also be a leader on top of that.’ 

Herbert’s draft process was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, but Steichen – then in his first offseason as the Los Angeles Chargers offensive coordinator – said what stood out was the prospect’s passion, even over video calls. 

‘What I took away from that is that this is a guy that loves football and was a perfectionist and wanted to be right,’ Steichen said. 

On Wednesday, Reich publicly weighed the pros and cons of the team finding its future quarterback through the draft or via Derek Carr’s free agency. With Carr, he said, it’s a known commodity for someone he considers in his prime. And younger quarterbacks are given a shorter leash these days. 

“You don’t get as long of windows to prove yourself anymore,” he said. 

But Carr, 31, isn’t turning into the next Mahomes or Allen. 

“It’s the hardest position in sports to play … there are so many factors that go into quarterback play,” Reich said.

Drafting one, too. 

Follow Chris Bumbaca on Twitter @BOOMbaca.

Los Angeles Dodgers prospect Miguel Vargas, No. 3 in the organization, has yet to take a swing in eight plate appearances this spring.

Why such a drastic approach?

The second baseman has not been given the green light to swing the bat yet in a live game because of a hairline fracture in his right pinky he suffered in February, yet he is still in the lineup.

So why is he still in the lineup?

For experience and to build chemistry with Miguel Rojas, who is taking over shortstop for the injured Gavin Lux. 

“He’s walking more than he’s striking out,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said Wednesday when Vargas had more walks than strikeouts. “Teams haven’t got the memo yet.”

Vargas has four walks to go along with four strikeouts in his eight plate appearances, sporting a .500 on-base percentage.

Roberts has Mookie Betts, who has experience at playing second, penciled in Friday’s lineup, but hopes Vargas will be fully cleared to go on Saturday against the Kansas City Royals.

Andrey Rublev will defend his Dubai Tennis Championship title against Daniil Medvedev in an all-Russian final on Saturday. 

No. 6 Rublev beat No. 16 Alexander Zverev 6-3, 7-6 (9) in the semifinal match on Thursday to advance to his second consecutive final in Dubai. After winning the match, Rublev used the limelight to again call for peace amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

‘You cannot act like nothing is happening because it’s horrible. It’s crazy that so many just normal citizens are suffering and dying,’ Rublev, 25, told reporters. ‘The only thing I hope that soon there is going to be peace in every country. It doesn’t matter where.”

PLEA FOR PEACE: Russian tennis player Andrey Rublev says ‘peace, all we need’

Last year, Rublev wrote ‘No War Please’ on a TV camera lens after advancing to the Dubai Championships final shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine. He pleaded again in November, writing ‘Peace, Peace, Peace, All we need’ at the ATP Finals.

On Thursday, as the war passed the one-year mark, Rublev wrote, ‘Tsoi is alive,’ referring to the late Soviet singer Viktor Tsoi, who has become a symbol for change across Eastern Europe.

‘He was one artist from a past generation that had huge volume I think on USSR because his voice was really powerful,’ said Rublev. ‘That was not an easy time. The lyrics that he was writing gave a lot of hope to the people at that time. I just wrote it because I feel that now, at this time, is happening similar things.’

Rublev and Medvedev, along with all Russia and Belarus tennis players, aren’t allowed to compete under their country or flag as a result of the war. They were outright banned from participating in last year’s Wimbledon tournament. Rublev called it ‘tough.’

‘It’s hard to talk about it because even if you try to just play tennis or something, to stay practicing and stuff, you know it’s affecting you,’ Rublev added. 

He will compete in the final against No. 7 Medvedev. Rublev has won the two previous matches against Medvedev – ATP Final 6-7 (7), 6-3, 7-6 (7) and Western & Southern Open semifinal 2-6, 6-3, 6-3 – but Medvedev leads the all-time head-to-head 4-2. 

OPINION: Banning Russian players, including No. 2 Daniil Medvedev, from Wimbledon makes no sense

Novak Djokovic loses after making history

Medvedev took out No. 1 Novak Djokovic 6-4, 6-4 in the semifinal on Thursday to advance to the final. Medvedev, fresh off wins in Rotterdam and Doha, snapped  snapped Djokovic’s 20-match win streak and extended his own streak to 13.

‘When you play against Novak, you just have to play your best, kind of hope that he doesn’t play his best,’ Medvedev said. ‘I managed to play a higher level than him today. In the second set, I didn’t face one break point, but there were so many 30-30, deuce (games). I managed to keep composed.’

Djokovic made history earlier this week by spending his 378th week atop the men’s tennis rankings, surpassing Steffi Graf’s record for most weeks as world’s top-ranked player.

The NFL has been scrutinized for an alarming lack of diversity in coaching hires. Former NFL coach Wade Phillips, who is white, believes he isn’t coaching in the NFL for a different reason – age discrimination.

“I hate to say it but I think it’s age. It’s hard to beat my record as a coordinator so there’s got to be another reason,” Phillips, 75, said, per the New York Post. “But that’s ok. I’m glad to be doing what I’m doing.”

The former NFL head coach and long-time coordinator hasn’t coached in the NFL in any capacity since the 2019 season despite helping the Los Angeles Rams get to Super Bowl 53 as the team’s defensive coordinator.

Phillip has stops in Dallas, Buffalo and Denver as a head coach. He tallied an 82-64 record as an NFL head coach, but he’s known most for his success as a defensive coordinator.

“My niche in the NFL was defensive coordinator,” he said. “My record’s pretty good as head coach. It was fun being a head coach. I didn’t do terrible.”

Phillip is now the head coach of the XFL’s Houston Roughnecks. The 75-year-old has led the Roughnecks to a 2-0 start. His coaching career has come full circle in Houston. He played college football at Houston and began his coaching career as a graduate assistant at the university in 1969.

Georgia’s two-time national championship quarterback Stetson Bennett IV believes his college football program does not have a cultural problem. 

At least nine Georgia players have been arrested in the last 13-and-a-half months, according to the Athens Banner-Herald.

“No. Those were individual mistakes that those individuals are responsible for. Not a culture issue,” Stetson said Friday at the NFL scouting combine in Indianapolis.

Bennett, himself, was arrested earlier this year on a charge of public intoxication in Dallas.

And he was asked about his situation during his time with the media.

“It was a mistake that everybody is aware of. I understand why that can’t happen,” Bennett said. “I’ve talked to coaches about it and talked to GMs.”

More than anything, Bennett says, he disappointed his family.

“I’ve apologized to my family. That’s who I felt worst about. I felt like I let them down,” Bennett said.

“Even without all this, I’ve got an obligation. I’m the fourth. Can’t do that if your last name is Bennett, and I know better than that.”

A major storyline to come out of the combine this week has centered around Georgia defensive lineman Jalen Carter, who was issued an arrest warrant for misdemeanor charges of racing and reckless driving, stemming from a fatal crash that killed recruiting staffer Chandler LeCroy and offensive lineman Devin Willock on Jan. 15.

Carter left the combine on Wednesday, turned himself into jail and immediately posted bail late Wednesday night. By Thursday morning, Carter was back in Indianapolis to participate in interviews with NFL teams.