The morning following a history-making victory, Craig Smith’s voice was still quite hoarse, because it’s always quite hoarse. Utah State’s first-year head coach had plenty of reason to yell in the nervy 100-96 road win at Colorado State Tuesday night that clinched at the very least a share of the Mountain West Conference regular-season crown. And once Smith worked his way into the locker room, pandemonium set in for a group that was, frankly, given zero shot of this from outsiders back in the fall.

Good thing outsiders don’t rebound as well as anyone in the country or clamp down defensively. Just a few days after USU’s upset win over then No. 12-ranked Nevada 81-76 at the Spectrum in Logan, the Aggies survived another team’s best shot to improve to 25-6 and 15-3 in MWC play. They knew what was riding on the game, a guarantee of a conference title, and even more, a necessary win to further boost their postseason resume.

“Pressure is a privilege, so we welcome that, and quite frankly, we’ve been playing like that the entire year, ever since the first bracketology came out,” Smith told The Salt Lake Tribune. “We’ve been on that bubble or in that projected ‘in’ or projected ‘just out’ literally since the time that came out. We’ve had this privilege of having our name right there the last three months. That’s all our guys know.”

USU, winners of 14 out of its last 15, now has a week-long wait before the start of the 2019 MWC tournament in Las Vegas, Nev. They’ll either be the No. 1 or the No. 2 seed depending on Nevada’s regular-season finale at home against San Diego State Saturday night. A Nevada loss to SDSU makes USU the outright MWC champs. A Nevada win would give the Wolf Pack the No. 1 seed because, while USU and Nevada split their head-to-head matchups this year, the first tiebreaker is records against the next-best teams. The Wolf Pack swept Fresno State, while the Aggies split against the Bulldogs.

A quick refresher on how a team qualifies for the NCAA Tournament: automatic bids are awarded to teams that win conference tournaments. Every other program is considered an at-large bid from the tournament selection committee, which judges the merits of wins, losses, strength of opponents, etc. Which leads to the inevitable bubble chatter. College basketball analysts have been writing and forecasting for months what teams have “work to do” or are, by the metrics of what the committee looks at, locks for The Dance in a few weeks.

THESE GUYS!

🏆🏆🏆#AggiesAllTheWay pic.twitter.com/EY9TKq66h4

— USU Men's Hoops (@USUBasketball) March 6, 2019

Where does USU stand at the moment?

Some outlets have them in, convinced the win over Nevada and avoiding upset at Colorado State is enough. CBS Sports’ Jerry Palm has USU as a No. 9 seed placed in the Midwest side of the bracket in Columbus, Ohio. ESPN’s Joe Lunardi has USU also as a No. 9 seed in the South bracket in Columbia, S.C. John Gasaway of ESPN, however, has the Aggies still on the “work to do” side of things.

“USU really has only two remaining dangers,” Gasaway writes. “One is a shrinking bubble, and the other would be an ostentatiously early exit from the conference tournament in Las Vegas.”

Considering where the program has gone this year, from being chosen ninth in a preseason poll to potentially finishing first overall, some say it’s hard to imagine USU not already being a lock for what would be its first tournament appearance since 2011 — even before the ball tips in Sin City next week.

“Nobody in their right mind thought that Utah State would be anywhere near this position,” said analyst Jeff Goodman of WatchStadium.com. “I don’t see how the committee wouldn’t put them in. I’d be shocked, I think it would be a travesty if Utah State does not make the NCAA Tournament.”

After the win over Nevada, USU junior star guard Sam Merrill said he believes the Aggies are among the top 64 teams in the country. “I just hope they’re watching us,” Merrill said of the committee. Smith, obviously, shares that sentiment.

“We have a great resume, we took care of business, we have a share of the regular-season Mountain West title,” he said. “I think that speaks volumes.”

Some recent projections even had USU playing the West region — at Vivint Smart Home Arena. In Salt Lake City. After the scene at the Spectrum in Logan last weekend following the win over Nevada, it’s easy to get carried away thinking of the home-court advantage this potential No. 8 or No. 9 seed could have.

“That would be incredible,” said Smith, “but at the same time, we’d be excited to play anywhere in the country and represent Utah State and the state of Utah well.”

These Aggies have already taken that on this year. Clearly the best college basketball team in the state, the Aggies are among the youngest teams in the country, dressing six freshmen out of 12 players each night. They are also among the top defensive rebounding teams in the country, top defensive teams in the country, and are in the top 10 in assisted field goals made.

“They’ve exceeded expectations like no other team in the country, in my opinion,” Goodman said.

USU has simply found ways to do it, battling through a nearly three-week-long stretch in which a nasty flu bug decimated the team. The Aggies evolved week by week, mostly by sticking to the script Smith and his staff handed to them so many months ago.

“Our guys made history,” the coach said. “For the rest of our lives, the young men in our program will have a bond that will never be taken away.”

There are still games to be played. More people to surprise. All of which that will leave Smith with an even raspier voice.

Angela Peang and Michael Lee are Utahns in love. They’re cousins, too.

“My first cousin and I have been in love with each other our whole lives but we are prohibited from marrying in the state of Utah where we live,” Peang wrote in an online petition. “We believe that the law is outdated and it needs to be changed so that we can socially legitimize our love.”

Utah law allows marriages between cousins. The spouses just have to be age 55 and able to demonstrate to a state judge one of them is not able to procreate, the statute says. Or the cousins can wait until age 65 and get married without asking anyone else’s permission. Peang is 38 and Lee is 37.

Otherwise, Utah law labels marriages between first cousins to be “incestuous” and prohibited. Utah is one of multiple states that ban cousin marriage out of concerns about the gene pool.

Utah’s history with cousin marriage has received more scientific scrutiny than other places because of its connection to its predominant faith, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and its affinity for genealogy. In a 2011 article in the scientific journal Human Heredity, researchers examined Utah Latter-day Saint births between 1847 and 1945. Among unrelated parents, 13.2 percent of their children died before age 16, the researchers found.

The rate was 22 percent for children born to first cousins.

That doesn’t mean Utah’s cousins don’t find a way to marry. The Peang-Lee nuptials were held in Colorado, which allows first-cousin marriages.

Some Utahns also have gone to Nevada, which allows marriage between half-cousins. Those are cousins who have only one grandparent in common. The Utah Office of Vital Records and Statistics recognizes marriage licenses from other states, said Tom Hudachko, a spokesman for the Utah Department of Health.

None of that is good enough for Peang and Lee, CBS News reports. They have started a petition that seeks a change in Utah law.

The couple married Monday at the Mesa County Old Courthouse in Grand Junction, Colo.

Peang, from Eagle Mountain, told The Salt Lake Tribune that the reaction she’s received has “been mostly positive and supportive, and for those few negative things people have said, we respect their right to their own opinion and perspective.”

“This is a little known phenomenon that is suddenly coming to light and many people are naturally going to reject it at first,” she said. “One thing I want to emphasize is the touching stories I’ve received from people who are in similar romantic relationships with their cousins, how they’ve dealt with rejection in their own families and even that they have one or more very healthy children! The most important thing to us is to not let this sudden attention affect our immediate and extended families negatively. That would make us very sad.”

Tribune editor Matt Canham contributed to this report.

The Mormon Land newsletter is a weekly highlight reel of developments in and about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, whether heralded in headlines, preached from the pulpit or buzzed about on the back benches. Want this newsletter in your inbox? Subscribe here.

This week’s podcast: Ready, worthy and Able

Knowing who ordained whom to the priesthood in the church’s early days is seldom of interest to anyone beyond curious descendants and detail-obsessed researchers.

But a recent discovery solving the mystery surrounding the ordination of Elijah Able (sometimes spelled Abel), one of the most famous black converts in the faith’s fledgling years, excited historians and helped shed additional light on a religion with a tortuous track record on the issue of race.

W. Paul Reeve, professor of Mormon studies at the University of Utah and author of the award-winning book “Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness,” documented the discovery and discusses what it means and why it matters.

Listen here.

The price for Bryce

Welcome to the City of Brotherly Love, Brother Harper.

Bryce Harper became the highest-paid Latter-day Saint athlete ever after landing a 13-year deal with the Philadelphia Phillies worth $330 million — the fattest overall baseball contract of all time.

Net or gross — that amounts to a ton of tithing.

Tapping into all the Harper hoopla, Philly.com reports, an eastern Pennsylvania brewery plans to unveil a new beer called The Bryce Is Right to celebrate the star free-agent outfielder’s arrival from the rival Washington Nationals.

More gender strides

Good news, moms, you’re welcome to work in the temples — even if you still have little ones at home.

The governing First Presidency announced in a March 1 letter to Latter-day Saint leaders around the world that mothers with minor children now can be ordinance workers.

“Members should review their circumstances,” the letter states, “and avoid placing undue burdens on themselves or their families as they consider these service opportunities.”

The move represents yet another step on the journey toward greater gender equality in the faith’s most sacred places.

Earlier this year, the church unveiled sweeping changes to temple ceremonies, adopting more inclusive language and more equitable elements for women and men.

Last year, girls ages 12 to 18 began assisting with baptistry assignments in temples. And, in 2017, the church cleared the way for female and male divorcees and single adult men over age 30 to officiate in temple rituals. (Single women older than 30 already had been permitted to serve in that capacity.)

The March 1 temple change also eliminated the calling of veil worker. Those volunteers — all men — can instead become ordinance workers.

Full houses of the Lord

Anecdotal reports of dramatic jumps in temple attendance keep piling up in the wake of President Russell M. Nelson’s October challenge to boost temple worship and January’s revisions to ordinance language.

Here is a sampling from ldschurchgrowth.blogspot.com:

• “Dallas was still packed full on a midweek morning, when I used to be one of three to four brothers.”
• “I was at the Ogden temple last Saturday and had never seen the temple so busy.”
• “Idaho Falls has been slammed.”
• “St. Paul Minnesota Temple has been packed on Saturdays.”
• “San Diego Temple was exceptionally full last Saturday.”
• “A few weeks ago, I went to the St. George Temple on a Thursday morning and barely got into the next session.”
• “It is very difficult to get a weekday morning session at the Indianapolis Temple for any ordinance beside baptisms.”
• “[Mexico City] has likewise seen an uptick.”
• “Since November, I’ve been to the Ogden, Draper, Payson, and Manti temples and all have them have been packed even in snow.”
• “I can attest to seeing both Jordan River and Oquirrh Mountain temples [in South Jordan] keeping busy this year.”

Temple ticker

Portugal’s first Latter-day Saint temple will be dedicated in Lisbon on Sept. 15, the church announced.

The 24,000-square-foot edifice, serving 45,000 members in Portugal, will be open for public tours from Aug. 17-31.

Farther east, the newly remodeled Frankfurt Temple will be rededicated Oct. 20 after an open house from Sept. 13-28. In 1987, it became the second temple built in the current borders of Germany (nearly two years after the Freiberg Temple).

Across the Atlantic, new renderings were released of the interior of the planned temple in Pocatello.

A groundbreaking is set for March 16, a news release states, with completion expected in two to three years.

The three-story, 67,696-square-foot temple will be Idaho’s sixth. The others are in Boise, Idaho Falls, Meridian, Rexburg and Twin Falls.

News out of Africa

The church’s top-ranking female leaders met with Ghana’s first lady in launching a three-nation goodwill mission to West Africa.

Jean B. Bingham and Bonnie H. Cordon, general presidents of the Relief Society and Young Women, respectively, discussed the church’s humanitarian, education and family programs with Rebecca Naa Okaikor Akufo-Addo in Accra.

“I am so happy that you are here today,” Akufo-Addo, wife of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, said in a news release. “My main focus is for the women and children, especially for their health. … My vision is to empower women to take care of their families.”

The church has been booming in West Africa. Ghana is home to nearly 84,000 Latter-day Saints.

Bingham and Cordon then trekked to Nigeria, with its 177,000 members. There, they visited the Ministry of Women Affairs and Poverty Alleviation of the Government of Lagos State.

Next stop: the Ivory Coast (49,000 members).

Called to swerve, duck, run or hide

Latter-day Saint missionaries are hardly immune from accidents and assaults, danger and disease.

They get colds and cancer, mugged and molested, bitten by dogs and hit by cars, detained by unfriendly police and threatened by neighborhood gangs.

Not often, mind you, but bad things can and do happen.

To help its 65,000-plus “elders” and “sisters” stay safe, the church has produced a 12-part video series dubbed “The SafetyZone.”

The series covers, among other topics, pedestrian and bicycle safety, avoiding electrical wires, safe driving, appropriate behavior around children, crimes against missionaries (including physical and sexual harassment) and proper handling of food.

Reminiscent of Aaron Sorkin’s short-lived but critically acclaimed “Sports Night” series from the late 1990s, “The SafetyZone” resembles a sportscast — or newscast — with in-studio analysts who discuss missionary safety.

Despite the videos’ entertaining and sometimes humorous approach, each episode packs a “very prominent point ... that’s going to help you, that’s going to keep you safe,” S. Gifford Nielsen, a general authority Seventy, told a group of elders and sisters at the flagship Missionary Training Center in Provo.

Let the web names begin

The church continues to nick the nicknames “LDS” and “Mormon” from its operations.

This week, it shifted its web address from LDS.org to ChurchofJesusChrist.org. Mormon.org is now ComeuntoChrist.org.

Mobile apps are changing, too, with LDS Music becoming “Sacred Music.” Expect LDS Tools to undergo a renaming as well.

“This is a complex effort in numerous global languages and much work remains,” wrote the First Presidency in a letter to Latter-day Saint leaders throughout the world. “We encourage all to be patient and courteous as we work together to use and share the proper name of the church.”

A missionary tax

New Zealand’s version of the IRS has won a legal battle to tax donations to Latter-day Saint missionaries.

Stuff.com reports that Inland Revenue removed tax credits — totaling about $1.7 million — for donations by missionaries, their parents and grandparents toward mission work.

A high court ruled against the Utah-based faith, which plans to appeal the decision.

According to government filings, the church in New Zealand received $43 million in total donations in 2017, Stuff.com noted, with $106 million in total income and $322 million in assets.

Quote of the week

Mormon Land is a weekly newsletter written by David Noyce and Peggy Fletcher Stack. Subscribe here.

Video: From disaster response to the economy, President Trump gives himself and his administration high marks, most of the time.(Adriana Usero/The Washington Post)

Washington • It’s hard to find good help these days.

During his campaign, President Trump boasted that he would "surround myself only with the best." But by his own account, his administration attracts rather the opposite.

On Saturday, Trump publicly mocked former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, imitating his Southern accent: "The attorney general says, 'I'm gonna recuse mah-self.'"

In the same speech, Trump discredited departing Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein by saying the Trump-appointed official, whom the president accused last month of “planning a very illegal act,” had “never received a single vote.”

Last week, Trump said that soon-to-be-jailed Michael Cohen, once a "good person" and Trump's personal attorney, had not only turned out to be a "failed lawyer" and a liar but was, by testifying to Congress about Trump, also partially to blame for the breakdown of nuclear talks with North Korea.

Meanwhile, Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats may soon be replaced because he caused Trump "disappointment" by expressing (accurate) doubts that North Korea would cooperate with overtures to denuclearize, Trump confidant Christopher Ruddy told CNN. Coats may find himself in the unemployment line with Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who has at times incurred Trump's dissatisfaction over her work on the border.

The result of so much unhappiness with so many hires? After two years in the White House, Trump appears to be running not a country but a temp service.

He has found himself, for example, filling and refilling the roles of White House communications director six times, deputy national security adviser five times, national security adviser and health and human services secretary four times each, attorney general and White House chief of staff three times each and secretary of state, defense secretary and press secretary twice — among many other such moves, including the staffing of a rotating cast of defense lawyers.

Even "The Apprentice" didn't cycle through contestants this fast. The only constant: With few exceptions — chiefly daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner — everybody disappoints Trump.

Those vying to add "former" to their titles include U.S. Trade Representative Robert E. Lighthizer (he contradicted Trump's view that a "memorandum of understanding" doesn't "mean anything") and national security adviser John Bolton (who declined to embrace Trump's view that Kim Jong Un is trustworthy and that the North Korea summit was fruitful).

Now comes Ty Cobb, a former Trump lawyer, telling ABC News that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is an "American hero" and "I don't feel the investigation is a witch hunt." PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT!

If only Trump could hire a thousand Stephen Millers. Instead, he has suffered a turnover rate in senior jobs of 65 percent, according to the Brookings Institution. Twenty-nine percent of those positions have turned over multiple times. Then there are the six former Trump advisers either indicted or convicted.

It's a personnel problem of incalculable dimensions, but with a common denominator: Trump. Either he's a bad judge of talent, or nobody with talent wants to work for him, or he's a terrible boss — or all three.

"He is fundamentally disloyal," Cohen testified last week.

If only his appointees could be loyal and capable. Like Kim. Or Mohammed bin Salman. Or Vladimir Putin.

Instead, they leak his schedule to Axios, place anonymous quotes or an op-ed, and disparage him publicly before taking the job (acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney called him "a terrible human being"), on the job (Gary Cohn), on their way out (Jim Mattis, Nikki Haley) or after departing (Reince Priebus, Steve Bannon, Rex Tillerson, Omarosa Manigault Newman). At least 10 (including "gofer" Cliff Sims, "sick" James B. Comey and "deranged" Andrew McCabe) have written books.

Et tu, Mike Pompeo? The loyal secretary of state hired editorialist Mary Kissel, who had criticized Trump's "frightening ignorance."

Just about everybody lets down the boss. Trump complained that Mulvaney botched border-wall negotiations, Mattis botched Afghanistan, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome H. Powell botched the bull market — and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin screwed up by suggesting Powell for the job.

Trump blamed the Mueller probe on former White House counsel Donald McGahn, and he faulted acting attorney general Matthew G. Whitaker for failing to rein in the Cohen prosecution. But it doesn't end there.

During confirmation hearings for Whitaker's replacement, William P. Barr, Trump was reportedly startled to learn of Barr's close friendship with Mueller. Trump's third attorney general had better finish decorating his new office soon — before Trump's fourth attorney general inevitably shows up.

Follow Dana Milbank on Twitter, @Milbank.

New York • President Donald Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen filed a lawsuit Thursday claiming the Trump Organization broke a promise to pay his legal bills and owes at least $1.9 million to cover the cost of his defense.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday in New York state court, claims the Trump Organization stopped paying Cohen’s mounting legal fees after he began cooperating with federal prosecutors in their investigations related to Trump’s business dealings in Russia and attempts to silence women with embarrassing stories about his personal life. It alleges breach of contract and seeks damages on Cohen’s behalf.

Messages seeking comment have been left with the Trump Organization.

The lawsuit says the company stopped paying for his legal defense about two months after the FBI raided Cohen’s home and office.

Cohen has pleaded guilty to tax crimes, lying to Congress and campaign finance violations.

The lawsuit said that as part of his work for Trump, the company agreed to indemnify him for his company-related work. It said the Trump Organization initially lived up to that promise, footing the bill for more than $1.7 million in Cohen's legal fees.

Cohen hired the law firm McDermott Will & Emery in spring 2017 after it became clear he was a “person of interest” in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

That firm withdrew from his case late last spring after the Trump Organization stopped paying Cohen's bills, a withdrawal the lawsuit says "prejudiced" Cohen's ability to respond to the federal investigations.

In addition to the $1.9 million in legal fees Cohen is seeking, the lawsuit claims the Trump Organization should also pay the $1.9 million Cohen was ordered to forfeit "as part of his criminal sentence arising from conduct undertaken by Mr. Cohen in furtherance of and at the behest of the Trump Organization and its principals, directors, and officers."

Cohen was one of Trump's lawyers and closest advisers for a decade until their public split last summer.

After once bragging that he would "take a bullet" for the president, Cohen met with federal prosecutors in New York and with the office of special counsel Robert Mueller, telling them he had lied to Congress to protect Trump and paid off two women to keep them from speaking out about alleged affairs with Trump.

Cohen told Congress last week that Trump was a racist, a liar and a con man.

Trump, in turn, has assailed Cohen as a “rat” and a “serial liar.”

Eye On The Y is The Salt Lake Tribune’s weekly newsletter on BYU athletics. Subscribe here.

Legend has it that a famous professional golfer — I think it was Lee Trevino — was once asked why he made an 11 on a particularly gnarly golf hole.

“Because I missed the putt for a 10,” he replied.

That quote came to mind Tuesday when BYU football coach Kalani Sitake was asked why the Cougars have 10 quarterbacks on their spring football roster.

“Because we couldn’t have 20,” Sitake deadpanned.

Ironically, nine of those quarterbacks are practicing this week, wearing the green jerseys that signal they are off limits to contact, while the QB who is expected to take the first snap when BYU hosts rival Utah on Aug. 29 can only watch.

Sophomore Zach Wilson had offseason shoulder surgery and won’t be cleared to throw until this summer. In the first two practices, redshirt freshmen Baylor Romney and Jaren Hall and redshirt sophomore Joe Critchlow did all the throwing in the media viewing portions of the practices.

Passing game coordinator Aaron Roderick said those three are in a “wide-open” competition to be Wilson’s backup.

And the other six guys?

“Quarterbacks are usually the best athletes on their high school teams, and yeah, we just don’t want to go without,” Sitake said, after his quip about needing 20. “I will probably always have a good number of them. They are smart guys who can play other positions. There are some guys who have already asked me if they can play other positions, because they want to get on the field, and there are only so many reps to go around.”

By the way, Critchlow confirmed after his Monday interview that he recently married the granddaughter of Sen. Mitt Romney.

Along with a backup QB, the search for a running back is also underway in Provo.

Was TJ robbed?

The West Coast Conference announced its 2018-19 season individual award winners and all-conference men’s and women’s basketball teams on Tuesday, and a little bit of outrage followed locally.

That’s because BYU junior TJ Haws failed to make the 10-member All-WCC First Team, as voted upon by the coaches, who aren’t allowed to pick players from their own teams. It was the first year since BYU joined the WCC that the Cougars haven’t placed two players on the first team (Yoeli Childs was BYU’s lone first-teamer).

Ben Criddle of ESPN 960 made the case that Haws was robbed, and should have made the team over LMU’s James Batemon, a senior who was held scoreless when the Lions lost to BYU in Provo.

Haws and the rising Cougars probably don’t care. Having defeated San Diego 87-73 last Saturday at the half-full Marriott Center, they are busy preparing for the West Coast Conference tournament this weekend in Las Vegas.

Also, BYU coach Dave Rose announced Wednesday this addition to the Cougars’ 2019-20 roster.

BYU’s women’s basketball team is the No. 2 seed in its WCC tournament, and probably has more on the line in terms of more postseason competition, because the Cougars are on the NCAA Tournament bubble, according to several bracketologists.

The Provo Daily Herald’s Darnell Dickson, one of the state’s most underrated sportswriters, in my opinion, offered this primer on the WCC tournament.

Also, here’s an interesting piece from Dick Harmon of the Deseret News on a former Idaho basketball state championship team, with plenty of Utah ties.

Quotable

Here’s BYU offensive coordinator Jeff Grimes on the difference between spring practices this year and last year, when he and most of the offensive coaches were new:

“Well, I think the expectation is higher,” Grimes said. “The standard is higher, because last year, you are just starting from scratch and they didn’t know what the standard was. Our standard is higher. Our tolerance level as coaches is smaller, which might be the reason I lost my voice a little bit right now.

We are trying to not start at square one, but start right where we left off after the bowl game.”

Around campus

• Winners of six of its last seven games, BYU baseball will host Milwaukee for four games this weekend at Miller Park. The Cougars improved to 8-3 with a 5-1 victory over Utah Valley on Tuesday.

Senior righthander Jordan Wood (1-0, 2.60 ERA) will pitch in Thursday’s series opener against the Panthers (6-3).

• The BYU men’s tennis team earned the No. 22 spot in the latest ITA/Oracle Collegiate Tennis national rankings, the Cougars’ highest ranking in 34 years. Sean Hill is ranked No. 97 in the country in singles with an 11-1 record in 2019, and Hill and Jeffrey Hsu are ranked No. 37 in doubles, having gone 7-2 this year. BYU will face Boise State on Saturday.

• A squad of 10 BYU athletes will compete in the 2019 NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships in Birmingham, Ala., this weekend. Connor Mantz, Clayton Young, Connor McMillan, Andrea Stapleton-Johnson, Whittni Orton, Erica Birk-Jarvis, Lauren Ellsworth-Barnes, Brenna Porter and either Anna Camp-Bennett or Kate Hunter will make the trip.

• BYU’s No. 16-ranked women’s gymnastics team will compete at No. 11 Boise State on Thursday night at Taco Bell Arena in Boise, Idaho. The Cougars had their highest road score of the season last week, posting a 196.500 to win a tri-meet against George Washington and Maryland in Washington, D.C.

• BYU golfer Peter Kuest continues to make his case as one of the top golfers in the country. Kuest has won four tournaments during the 2018-19 collegiate golf season and is coming off an impressive victory at the John A. Burns Invitational in Lihue, Hawaii. He birdied the final host to post a 54-hole total of 206 and edge Walker Lee of Texas A&M. Kuest is among 28 golfers on the Ben Hogan Award watch list.

Critics often complain that the Utah Transit Authority shortchanged local bus service as it went $2 billion in debt to build new train systems. But the agency’s newly restructured board now is asking the public to help it make key decisions to improve bus service.

It launched an online survey Thursday and announced plans for public meetings to figure out how to balance two competing questions: should buses cover more geographic area, or focus instead on maximizing frequency.

“Should UTA have a bus network focusing on increasing ridership? This, of course, would entail fewer routes with greater frequency, which would serve more densely populated areas,” said UTA Board Chairman Carlton Christensen.

“The other question is: should UTA focus on coverage? This approach would reach more areas and people, but with less frequency and lower overall ridership,” he said. “Or is there an answer somewhere in between.”

To decide those questions — and how they fit into other overall transportation questions — UTA is partnering with the Utah Department of Transportation and two regional transportation planning agencies: the Wasatch Front Regional Council and the Mountainland Association of Governments

“I applaud what UTA is doing. Rather than going out and assuming what the public wants, they are asking,” said UDOT Planning Director Jeff Harris. “Planning can be messy and time consuming.... But to do it right, you have to take that time and it has to involve your stakeholders.”

UTA launched a new website — rideuta.com/Service-Choices — to explain questions it is facing and their consequences, with a online survey that takes about about five minutes to complete. It says it plans public meetings on the topic also.

“Bus service is a critical part of UTA’s equation,” Christensen said, noting about half of all UTA rides are split between buses and trains.

Shawn Seager, planning director for the Mountainland Association of Governments, said similar collaboration helped design the new Utah Valley Express bus rapid transit line in Provo and Orem in a way that quintupled bus ridership along the route — from 2,000 to 10,000 trips a day.

He said that was helped by service designed to be fast, frequent and free — helped in part by a federal grant that, for now, has offered free fares on that route.

“If we can kind of play off that model, I think we can do a lot more in Utah Valley,” he said.

Ted Knowlton, deputy director of the Wasatch Front Regional Council, said amid rapid population growth that has largely filled in the valleys, the ability to widen highways such as Interstate 15 is “starting to become prohibitively expensive.”

So, he added, “This is a perfect time for us to focus on how do we create a vibrant healthy bus network to go with our high-capacity transit routes. And this is really an opportunity for us to really take the pulse of the region.”

UDOT’s Harris, whose work usually focuses on highways, said, “We have to have a high-functioning system that includes light rail, commuter rail and the bus system” to pair with highways to handle expected growth.

The officials spoke in pouring, near-freezing rain at an outdoor news conference at UTA’s Salt Lake City Central Station. Looking at the rainstorm, Christensen said, “There are brighter days ahead here at UTA, and we look forward to hearing from you.”

Every week during Utah’s legislative session, The Salt Lake Tribune’s political reporters and columnists will chat about the hottest topics of the week. The following is a lightly edited transcript of their conversation.

Taylor Stevens (politics reporter): Welcome to this week’s Trib Caucus Slack chat, which convenes weekly during the 2019 legislative session. With just days left in the session, lawmakers have this week voted to formally call for a convention of states to propose, debate and potentially ratify amendments to the United States Constitution; are pushing through another bill related to the inland port, a massive distribution hub planned for Salt Lake City’s westernmost side; and are taking steps toward a new state flag.

But arguably the biggest news of the week is that LGBTQ advocates are fuming after a proposed ban on conversion therapy — a widely discredited practice that looks to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity — was dismantled on Tuesday. Bethany, how have they responded?

Bethany Rodgers (politics reporter): They’re furious.

Yesterday, Equality Utah’s executive director, Troy Williams, and Taryn Hiatt of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention resigned from the governor’s youth suicide prevention task force in protest.

Here is a copy of the letter of resignation that @TroyWilliamsUT is sending to @GovHerbert pic.twitter.com/W66mjxXD5X

— Bethany Rodgers (@BethRodgersSLT) March 6, 2019

Benjamin Wood (politics reporter): The bill’s sponsor has essentially suffocated his own bill.

Robert Gehrke (politics commentator): It was really a crushing defeat. The advocates spent SO much time working with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (formerly the Mormons), that they were kind of blindsided by the therapists out there who came out of the woodwork to defend conversion therapy and their ability to force the governor to do a complete 180.

Rodgers: Yeah, Troy Williams accused the governor of turning his back on LGBTQ teens by supporting the weakened version of the bill.

Basically, he said he wasn’t interested in being a token gay guy on a suicide task force that wasn’t really serious about doing anything to address suicide among LGBTQ youths.

Wood: The governor’s support here was interesting. He had called some forms of conversion therapy “barbaric” but then during the meeting gave a thumbs up to the new version. That kind of sealed the deal in committee, right @BethanyRodgers?

Rodgers: It definitely seemed like the governor’s support for the sub was the death knell for the bill, @bwood.

Gehrke: Both Troy Williams from Equality and Rep. Hall say there is just too much risk that if a bill passes it will be this substitute version that Rep. Karianne Lisonbee proposed and that will be far, far worse than having nothing on the books. So they let it die and decided to spend the summer working on some *ahem* conversions.

Wood: Ay yi yi, @gehrke.

Stevens: So will the substitute bill move forward, or are any conversion therapy bills finished for this session?

Wood: It’s toast.

Gehrke: It’s done for the session, Taylor. They could probably get something out of the House and try to fix it in the Senate. If they don’t, they could let it die there. But they don’t want to risk it.

Wood: In theory you don’t need the sponsor’s permission to keep a bill going, but there’s an unwritten rule that if the sponsor is done, it’s done.

Gehrke: There has been this ongoing knock on the governor that if you want his support on an issue that you just have to be the last person to talk to him. That weather-vane criticism is maybe a little harsh, but seems to have played out here.

And I’ll go ahead and plug my own criticism of the politics on this bill right here:

To see the conversion therapists coming out of the woodwork to defend an entirely discredited form of pseudo-science was bizarre.

To have the #utleg and @GovHerbert buy into the lies was a disservice to Utah’s LGBTQ youth. #utpol https://t.co/sNh2Ql2gtB

— Robert Gehrke (@RobertGehrke) March 7, 2019

A handful of Utah ideologues should be ashamed for choosing discredited quackery over protecting LGBTQ youth. There was a time when people would take doses of mercury for just about any ailment. No, it didn’t really help. Often it made things worse, sometimes much worse. And there was a chance it could result in death.

Stevens: @gehrke, some lawmakers have argued it is best to make *some* movement on conversion therapy — even though the bill’s sponsor has recognized the changes wouldn’t effectively stop the practice. What do you think? Is incremental better than nothing?

Gehrke: I think the argument on the other side is that this is not incremental movement. Lisonbee’s proposed changes essentially protect the practitioners rather than prohibit the practice.

And I'm inclined to agree. Given the choice between a bill that appears to do nothing good and actually could be really, really bad and getting nothing this session, punting seems like a decent option.

Wood: In the immortal words of Sen. Jake Anderegg: “Doing nothing is always an option.”

Gehrke: The dynamics of that hearing were very interesting, though. You had a young man testifying about the harm that was caused when he went through conversion therapy, and then minutes later you had HIS conversion therapist defending the practice. Drama!

And a last thought: You have a governor who calls it barbaric. You have a Lt. Gov. in Spencer Cox who has won national praise for being a supporter of the LGBTQ community. And neither of them engaged in this in a meaningful or constructive way.

Rodgers: You also had people being shipped in from Arizona by Family Watch International to testify against the bill.

Gehrke: Family Watch International: The folks who brought you the “don’t change your gender on a birth certificate” bill. The numbers the conversion therapists turned out in was striking to speak in support of a practice that every credible psychological organization in the country and the LDS Church have both disavowed.

Stevens: Definitely a conversation we’ll continue to watch, but let’s turn for now to taxes.

The reform bill that’s being presented, as I understand it, would (among other things) expand the state’s sales tax to almost all service transactions — including housekeeping, manicures, travel agencies and funerals. There seems to be a lot of concern about the impacts this will have on small businesses. Have they been lobbying to slow this down?

Gehrke: Is there a bill? It feels like it’s trying to staple jello to the wall.

Wood: We’ve known this was coming for a while but this week really seemed like a turning point for opponents. We’re starting to see more and more business community types voicing concerns.

ICYMI: Here's the latest we know about the big tax reform bill, which underwent a lot of changes yesterday to get people on board, via @sltrib #utpol #uted https://t.co/fDpqxpNYB8 pic.twitter.com/z8eIzbhM61

— Benjamin Wood (@BjaminWood) March 6, 2019

Rodgers: There’s definitely been an effort to slow the bill down.

Which really seems to annoy the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Tim Quinn, who said during a hearing the other day that those same industry folks are all about full-speed-ahead when it’s something *they* want.

Wood: The process behind this has really been something. Assuming it passes, this will be a *generational* shift in Utah tax policy, and yeah, two weeks is a lot of time at the Legislature, but one can’t help but wonder why this had to happen the way it did.

Stevens: Do you think it has enough momentum to get through the Legislature in the next week?

Wood: The answer to that question is always the same: If leadership wants it, they get it.

Stevens: OK. Does leadership want it?

Wood: In this case, leadership appears to want it. So momentum is somewhat irrelevant.

Gehrke: I think both House and Senate leaders want something. I can’t tell if it’s the same thing. And that’s where this might fall apart.

Wood: Good point, @gehrke.

We’re now starting to hear about the pressure they’re putting on members to fall in line. Rep. Phil Lyman accidentally voiced that pressure in a reply-all email to the entire House.

Rodgers: The reply-all was one of my favorite moments of the week.

Wood: Dear legislators, please reply-all more often.

Gehrke: The delayed implementation gives them cover. “We’ll come back and fix what needs to be fixed.” But one of the problems is that nobody can really say right now how the bill affects taxpayers or a lot of businesses for that matter.

Wood: That’s the big glaring hole in all these debates. We have yet to see a clear, crisp estimate on what the average Utahn will pay.

Gehrke: They say a typical family will save $664. But it was revenue neutral (at the time) and so someone has to pay more. My gut tells me it’s business and, frankly, not big businesses who have lawyers and accountants in-house. It is going to be small businesses who have to contract for those services.

Stevens: There’s one (OK, maybe not just one) piece of this bill I can’t wrap my head around. It would cut money from schools, but the House speaker says it’s still in the best interest of public education. How does that work?

Wood: Oh, boy. I can explain, but it’s wonky.

Stevens: Maybe just the Sparknotes version, @bwood?

Wood: OK, let me use a metaphor. What they want to do is turn down the faucet on the Income tax (which is Education funding) and turn up the faucet on sales tax (which can fund anything). And they’re promising that they’ll make up the cut to education with the new sales tax money, through the higher education budget.

So *if* they keep their word then yes, in theory, this could result in the same amount of money spent on schools, just from different sources. I had an article about this dynamic a few weeks ago. They’d be reversing a yearslong trend of pulling sales tax money *out* of education.

Inbox: @myuea elaborating on its opposition to the tax reform bill working its way through the Utah Legislature #utpol #uted pic.twitter.com/UfU3J0D6fP

— Benjamin Wood (@BjaminWood) March 6, 2019

Gehrke: And, as Ben noted in that piece, the reason they have to reverse this yearslong trend of pulling money out of education is because they’re almost out of sales tax money funding higher education. So they need to collect more sales tax than they have been. They’ve been playing this shell game, moving money out of higher ed to keep state government funded, and the well is nearly dry. (Pardon the mixed metaphors.)

Wood: And that’s why you’re seeing some ed folk on board. They acknowledge there’s a problem that needs fixing. It’s *how* you fix it that is causing some heartburn.

And again, to try and massage all of this in the final two weeks of the session causes yet more heartburn

Gehrke: But Ben’s point at the outset is significant. The opposition has really ramped up. Real estate, banks, travel agents, small business groups, doctors, lawyers, on and on, all coming out against it.

And of course education.

Wood: Don’t forget the new tax on newspapers!

And piano teachers.

And lawn care.

and.....

Gehrke: I have some sympathy for Rep. Quinn’s point, though. There is a fairness issue involved. Why do some people pay the tax and some don’t? And that’s what they’re trying to get to. And for all the sky-is-falling rhetoric, MANY states tax a lot more services than Utah does and they seem to manage to not implode.

Stevens: Let’s pivot quickly to a bill that has stalled in the Legislature for the last few sessions but got further than it has in years on Monday. The Utah Senate passed a hate crimes bill in its first hearing since 2016 — a major victory for the proposal’s sponsor, Sen. Daniel Thatcher, and the advocates who have been pushing for it.

Wood: @tstevens do we have any idea how the House feels about it?

Stevens: @bwood, it’s hard to tell, but Thatcher has said Rep. Lee Perry, who will be sponsoring the hate crimes bill in the House, is hopeful. Also, the vote wasn’t as close on the floor as it was expected to be, so there’s definitely some momentum pushing it into the House.

Gehrke: How’s that amendment to make reporters a protected class? The thing has kind of turned into a Christmas tree. I suspect you’ll see additional efforts to add more protected groups over in the House.

Stevens: That was my next question, @gehrke. Part of the momentum behind the bill this year is its inclusion of a number of additional protected classes, including familial status, homelessness, marital status. Do you think those additions are diluting, or does this bill *need* to protect even more people than it does now?

Gehrke: Good question. And with my usual caveat that I got my law degree from Trump University, I’d say that the original version was modeled after language that has been effective in other states. That said, politically, they needed to add these groups to get some key people on board (like Senate President Stuart Adams).

I don't know that it has diluted it. Some of the changes have probably muddied it up some and created potential problems in implementing it. But the core of the bill is still there and I think if that makes it through, that's what is most important.

Wood: Watching the discussion of the protected classes was... interesting. There’s definitely some people who think any crime committed against any member of those groups is now defaulted to a hate crime.

Stevens: This is where it’s worth noting that someone must first be convicted of a crime before a hate crimes penalty enhancement would be applicable.

Wood: And the crime must have been committed *because* of their status.

Gehrke: That is an important point that critics often overlook.

The risk hate crimes faces is that it will get the same treatment as conversion therapy, that it will get amended so severely that the product will be worse than having nothing. And the attacks will come from the same groups. So watch for that.

Stevens: Alright everyone. As we dive straight into the last week of the session, give me a quick hot take / prediction of what you think WILL or will NOT happen by midnight next Thursday.

Wood: I do not think 38 other states will join us in calling a convention before next Thursday.

Gehrke: But what about the flag, Ben? Will we get a new flag?

Wood: Ugh, so much to do so little time.

It’s currently prioritized on the House calendar. So we’ll see...

[1/lots] The bill creating a State Flag Review Commission passed committee yesterday and now we wait for a House vote. https://t.co/aot8DR9BDF

By way of information, the following tweets are *not* the Utah State flag. #utpol

— Benjamin Wood (@BjaminWood) March 6, 2019

Rodgers: The higher-strength beer bill comes back to life and passes last minute.

Wood: Yeah, that bill could get spicy.

Gehrke: I like that one, Bethany. I think Sen. Jerry Stevenson has some pull in the Senate and could get that done.

Wood: “Some pull” (read: understatement).

Gehrke: But this talk of a ballot initiative if it doesn’t happen is total nonsense.

Wood: Is it though? Now that we live in a world where initiatives are just suggestions, I could see an effort to put wine in grocery stores to force lawmakers to meet them halfway with regular beer.

Stevens: My prediction is that the inland port bill introduced last week, which would increase the scope of the development, will pass through. And I think they’ll try to do it before the eve of the final day of the session to avoid more parallels to last year’s bill.

Gehrke: It’s not the hottest of hot takes, but I think the tax bill gets scaled back considerably, but they do pass something, including a sizable income tax cut. But really it serves more as a starting point for discussions in the coming months and special session to tinker with it in the summer.

Wood: Hot take!

Gehrke: Hot summer legislative action on tap.

Stevens: Morning floor time is about to start, so let’s call it a wrap.

Wood: And remember kids, friends don’t let friends share fake news.

Stevens: Readers, what do you hope to see happen before the session ends next week? What do you hope doesn’t pass through? Let us know in the comments.

Have questions for the Trib Caucus? Email them to tstevens@sltrib.com or tweet @TribCaucus with the hashtag #TribCaucus for possible inclusion in a future chat.

VidAngel, the Provo company that lets customers stream filtered versions of Hollywood movies into their homes, has lost another copyright battle in court.

A federal judge in California granted summary judgment against VidAngel Inc., and in favor of four major movie studios. The ruling said the studios have proved that VidAngel violated the studios’ copyrights and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which includes protection for security software to keep the movies from being pirated.

In rulings issued Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge André Birotte Jr. rejected VidAngel’s argument that its filtered streaming service is protected by the Family Movie Act, passed by Congress in 2005. Birotte also said VidAngel “has not raised a triable issue” in its claims that its violation of the DMCA is protected by the First Amendment.

Both arguments had been rejected by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Birotte said in the ruling, and “VidAngel cannot avoid the questions of law that this Court and the Ninth Circuit resolved against it.”

A trial is unnecessary, Birotte wrote, because “VidAngel has not pointed to any evidence that raises a triable issue of fact" about whether it infringed on the studios’ public performance rights, "and the Court finds that it did.”

The plaintiffs in the case are four of Hollywood’s heavyweights: Disney Enterprises Inc., LucasFilm Ltd. LLC, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

In a statement, VidAngel CEO Neal Harmon said Birotte’s ruling "rendered the 2005 Family Movie Act meaningless, subverting the will of the people as expressed through their elected representatives in Congress.” Harmon is pushing for Congress to pass a bill to clarify the FMA, “to preserve the right they intended to afford families.”

Harmon also vowed to continue the legal fight against the movie studios “until the rights of families are secure for the 21st century.”

VidAngel was launched in 2014, offering its customers Hollywood movies in a way that could filter out nudity, violence and profanity.

It’s the way VidAngel did it that rankled the movie studios. VidAngel would buy a DVD, use software to decrypt the studios’ anti-piracy measures, and store the movie as files in a streaming format. The company would “sell” the DVD to a customer for $20, then buy it back after viewing for $19, with the physical disc almost never leaving VidAngel’s hands. The result was, in practice, a streaming service from VidAngel to a customer’s streaming device — such as Roku or Apple TV — for $1 per viewing.

The studios argued, successfully, that VidAngel violated their copyrights by making unauthorized copies of their films, and violated the DMCA by thwarting the studios’ anti-theft technology.

The four studios first sued VidAngel in June 2016, and the Provo company was forced by a preliminary injunction to stop streaming movies from DVDs that December. The case was delayed after VidAngel declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy in October 2017, but a stay was lifted last November to let the studios’ case proceed.

In June 2017, VidAngel started offering its filtering on streaming services, such as Netflix and Amazon. The legality of that filtering is still to be resolved. VidAngel asked to exempt that streaming from the injunction that stopped its DVD-based streaming, but Birotte on Wednesday denied that request.

VidAngel also streams its own content, family-friendly movies and comedy programs. Those are still available on VidAngel’s service, and are not covered by Birotte’s rulings.

The next step is to assess damages that VidAngel must pay to the studios. Birotte’s ruling found VidAngel bore liability for damages, rejecting a move to shift the blame to VidAngel’s customers. The judge also ordered Harmon to participate in a deposition next week, as the studios seek to assess the level of VidAngel’s liability.

VidAngel is just the latest company to try to show edited versions of movies and run afoul of Hollywood. The Varsity Theatre in Provo, owned by Brigham Young University, was not allowed to screen Steven Spielberg’s 1993 film “Schindler’s List” because Spielberg refused to let it be cut. Edited-video services proliferated in Utah in the late 1990s and early 2000s, led by a company called Cleanflix, which went out of business after courts ruled their editing violated studio copyrights.

Upon arriving in Israel nearly six years ago, having just signed a deal with Maccabi Tel Aviv, Joe Ingles didn’t know much about his new home.

In an introductory video for his new club, Ingles, along with fellow Maccabi new signing Tyrese Rice, was quizzed about Tel Aviv landmarks, population, the name of his team’s president, and more. Ingles was stumped on most of it, wildly guessing on others. But there was one question he knew the answer to right away: who was his team’s captain?

“Shawn James!,” Ingles proudly yelled.

It was the start of a friendship, one that became a brotherhood through one remarkable season and one unforeseeable reunion in Salt Lake City, where Ingles is now a standout for the Jazz and James works as a Salt Lake City Stars basketball operations assistant.

James was among the first to welcome Ingles to Tel Aviv. The 6-foot-10 Guyanese-American center had quickly become a fan favorite in Maccabi since signing in 2011 thanks to his league-leading block totals and baskets at the rim — Ingles would later call him the Rudy Gobert of his squad. James had been there for an eventful two seasons, and had done enough in his time with the club to be named team captain: the first non-Israeli captain in team history.

“I was in Maccabi by myself for a bit, because Renee was still playing. [James] and his wife half-adopted me,” Ingles said. “We all lived in like a couple of buildings right next to each other so I’d go to his house all the time.”

Maccabi was a solid team, but weren’t quite as successful as Ingles’ former team, FC Barcelona. While the team was coached by David Blatt, who could go on to coach the Cleveland Cavaliers the following year, the roster wasn’t as talented as the rest of Europe’s best. Beyond James, Maccabi relied on solid-but-unspectacular Americans: Rice, who had played for the Jazz summer league team after going undrafted following a star career at Boston College; Ricky Hickman, who played a secondary role at UNC Greensboro; Devin Smith, who had led the Virginia Cavaliers to a 14-15 record and the 33-year-old David Blu, who had scored 12 points per game at USC before beginning a notable international career.

“A couple of guys had been there, but the team wasn’t great,” Ingles acknowledged.

A season to remember

The 2013-14 season didn’t start auspiciously. Maccabi lost to teams that they should have beaten in the relatively-weak Israeli league. The team did have a better start in EuroLeague, but just as they started rolling, James ruptured a disk in his back, requiring surgery. Losses followed.

But the team snuck into the EuroLeague playoffs anyway, with a mountain to climb. In the quarterfinals, they faced off in a best-of-five series against the team that hosted the tournament, Armani Milano in Italy. They won that series in four games to qualify for the EuroLeague Final Four.

At this point, Maccabi were again massive underdogs. Ingles’ former club in Barcelona were a threat, but the two biggest clubs were CSKA Moscow and Real Madrid. CSKA Moscow had beaten Maccabi by a lopsided score of 100-65 earlier in the season, were the club with the largest payroll in the league, and had perhaps the best European point guard in history in Milos Teodosic. The team was coached by Ettore Messina, the San Antonio Spurs assistant; Jazz head coach Quin Snyder had been Messina’s assistant the previous year. CSKA were 3-1 favorites to win the semifinal.

It looked to be going to script, too, with CSKA taking a 55-40 lead late in the 3rd quarter. But Maccabi, on the back of Rice, made a late comeback, including a game-winning layup with 5 seconds left.

Their opponent in the final was Real Madrid. Madrid were even larger favorites to win this matchup, 6-1 by the oddsmakers. That’s because their talent was overwhelming: they had the Bucks’ Nikola Mirotic, and big European stars Sergio Rodriguez, Sergio Llull, Rudy Fernandez. They even had Utah State star Jaycee Carroll and Mavericks center Salah Mejri off the bench.

Somehow, Maccabi pushed Real Madrid to overtime, again battling back when it was needed most. Somehow, Maccabi ran away with it in the extra period, again on the back of Rice. Somehow, Maccabi Tel Aviv were champions of Europe.

According to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, when Blatt was asked if he felt if the sky was the limit for his championship team, the coach said “In this storm of a season, Maccabi long ago touched the sky and reached the moon."

Re-connecting in Salt Lake City

As odds-defying as Maccabi’s run was in 2014, you can argue that the five years since have been an even larger surprise for those involved. Consider the fact that, in Maccabi’s Final Four run, they had only one player who ever found his way to the NBA: Ingles.

Ingles scored two points in the semi-final, and was held scoreless in the final. He played only 15 minutes against CSKA Moscow, and seven minutes against Real Madrid. His name wasn’t featured in articles about the tournament, nor was his star at its brightest.

The rest of Ingles’ story is frequently-told: Thanks to the L.A. Clippers, Ingles got a chance in an NBA preseason anyway. He impressed Clippers coach Doc Rivers, but was waived as the team needed a guard. Snyder, familiar with Ingles from his time at CSKA Moscow, thought he could help the Jazz. Ingles began as a bit piece, but worked his way up to regular starter, eventually earning a $52 million contract from Utah. Now, he’s top-10 in his position in the NBA; this after not starting the majority of the games in his final European season.

While Ingles’ career was exploding, James’ was collapsing. He failed to recover completely from his back surgery, leading to his release from Maccabi after the miracle season. He signed a deal with Armani Milano, but struggled there as well. He played a few more seasons with other teams in Europe and Puerto Rico, but wanted to stay in the business of the game he loves.

“I knew that if an opportunity overseas didn’t present itself, that I didn’t want to sit at home,” James said. “Joe always spoke highly of the Jazz.”

James had other connections to the Jazz organization, too. He played with Nathan Peavy — a Salt Lake City Stars assistant coach — in his season in Puerto Rico, and had a friend who had played with Stars coach Martin Schiller when Schiller coached in Austria. When James called, the Jazz organization answered.

After an interview process, and glowing words from Ingles, Peavy, and others, James was hired as a basketball operations assistant for the Stars before the season. It gives James an opportunity to find his way on this side of the game, a chance to try his hand at player development work, coaching, and scouting.

James moved to Salt Lake City. Seven thousand miles away and five years removed from Maccabi Tel Aviv, Ingles had the chance to return the favor from years before. He welcomed James to his adopted home in Utah, thrilled to be working in the same place once again.

“I’ve made some brothers from that team, brothers you know that are going to last a lifetime," James said.

One man is dead and another is in jail after an argument about noise at a Woods Cross motel.

Ross Alan Latham, 31, was booked into the Davis County Jail for investigation of manslaughter after he punched an Arizona man, who later died from his injuries.

According to police, both Latham and Tilman Bitsoie, 45, were staying at the Intown Suites at 635 S. 700 West on Monday. Bitsoie was in the hallway talking on his phone when Latham began “yelling at the victim to keep it down,” police said.

Later, when Bitsoie went outside, “he was again confronted” by Latham, who was “threatening to fight him.” Latham punched Bitsoie, who “went down and went unconscious,” according to a probable cause statement.

Bitsoie was transported to Lakeview Hospital, then transferred to the University of Utah Hospital, where he died from his injuries Tuesday.

Sometimes the small lies mask big lies, and we often spend so much time chasing the small ones that we let the big ones slide past, uncorrected and even undetected. Little by little, President Donald Trump's most ardent defenders have smuggled a big lie into the ongoing political debate, and it isn't attracting any scrutiny.

That big lie is this: Democrats in Congress who have launched a new round of hearings and other oversight efforts on Trump are abusing their power, because they lack evidence or reasonable suspicion of crimes before conducting investigations.

This completely misstates the core purpose of congressional oversight. In this sense, the lie doesn't represent a routine disagreement over a particular separation-of-powers clash, or an ordinary lie about whether a given presidential act merits the criticism it's receiving.

Instead, we're seeing a concerted effort to deceive Americans about the very legitimacy of the exercise of a core function of government - Congress' role in acting as a check on the executive branch.

That oversight role actually has little to do with pursuing criminality. The purpose of this deception effort, of course, is to delegitimize any and all efforts to hold Trump accountable for the extensive misconduct, corruption and abuses of power he committed on top of anything criminal he might have done.

The lie is suddenly everywhere. Trump tweeted out a quote from a Republican congressman who said: "No one is accusing the President of a crime and yet they (the Democrats) are issuing hundreds of subpoenas. This is unprecedented."

Fox News regularly blares forth this same idea. In a recent segment that Trump also highlighted, Fox personalities ripped into Democrats for investigating Trump without any "facts or evidence of a crime warranting impeachment" and for following the special counsel in a "search for a crime."

Trump also recently drew attention to Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., making this claim: "All of these investigations are in search of a crime. Democrats have no evidence to impeach President Trump. Ridiculous!" Another Trump media ally recently said that Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who is scrutinizing multiple matters as Intelligence Committee chair, is "inventing crimes." All emphasis mine.

The deeper deception here goes to the core function of congressional oversight in the separation-of-powers scheme. As a Congressional Research Service report explains, Congress' role, among other things, is to scrutinize the executive branch's execution of the laws as Congress intended them, and its implementation of executive power as delegated by Congress.

Congressional scrutiny of suspected executive branch misconduct or abuses of power simply does not require pre-suspicions of lawbreaking. Indeed, what makes such abuses what they are is that they often constitute maneuvers that may be presumptively legal yet could be driven by conflicts of interest, or potentially questionable intent, that render them suspect from a governing perspective.

Congress also exercises oversight as a core part of its legislative function. The courts have affirmed very broad congressional power to scrutinize executive branch and agency conduct, and to compel release of information to carry out that scrutiny, as a critical component of its lawmaking role.

"Criminality is only one very small part of what congressional committees are trying to get at when they conduct oversight," Josh Chafetz, a professor at Cornell Law School, told me. Chafetz has written a book on how Congress can and should use its powers, and one of these, as it happens, constitutes public hearings.

This function is often dismissed as grandstanding — sometimes understandably so. But the act of informing the public via hearings constitutes a legitimate and important way that members of Congress represent their constituents — they reveal to voters what the executive branch may be misleading them on, and offer a competing view of what might be in the national interest in contrast with that of the executive.

"Congress often has the ability to ferret out information that the American public would want to have, but that no one else can get to us," Chafetz said. "Part of acting as our representatives involves informing the public about what is going on."

Among other things, House Democrats are now moving to scrutinize the foreign financial dealings of Trump's businesses; his negotiations over a Moscow tower while a presidential candidate; his numerous efforts to obstruct the Russia probe; and his role in reimbursing an illegal hush money scheme while president.

These all go to the core congressional oversight roles of informing legislation, in the form of responses to Trump's foreign policies and obstruction efforts; informing the public; and fact-finding in advance of possible impeachment, which is the correct order in which to do things. Yes, oversight could also ferret out criminality, but that's a minor possibility.

Trump's allies are laying the groundwork for a spin war over whatever findings by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III are reported to Congress. Anything short of criminal charges for conspiracy with Russia will be touted as vindication.

But this is nonsense. Even if Trump is not charged, he may still have committed crimes — such as directing criminal hush money payments — while escaping charges, at least until he leaves office, due to policy against indicting sitting presidents. Even if Mueller’s publicly released findings don’t confirm this, crimes may have been established — one reason the public must see those findings.

But beyond whether crimes occurred, a great deal of wrongdoing, misconduct, outright corruption and naked abuses of power by Trump have already been established. This will remain true, and worthy of continued scrutiny, irrespective of whether any criminal charges are ever brought against him.

The whole point of this new line of propaganda is to convert any failure to bring additional criminal charges into a blanket of rhetorical fog that obscures that basic reality and places all that misconduct beyond the reach of accountability entirely. All this rests on a big lie that is eluding our attention. But it shouldn’t.

Greg Sargent writes The Plum Line blog. He joined The Post in 2010, after stints at Talking Points Memo, New York Magazine and the New York Observer.

@theplumlinegs

Rep. Tim Hawkes earned lots of laughs from his Republican House colleagues on Thursday as he reviewed some of the “weird” alcohol laws on the books in other states, from prohibitions against serving alcohol to animals to bans on beer advertisements that include depictions of Santa Claus.

But the mood in the House Majority Caucus room sobered significantly when the Centerville Republican pivoted to discuss fetal alcohol syndrome, liver cirrhosis and impaired driving.

“People lose their lives and limbs on our highways,” Hawkes said, adding that liver disease can see people “literally drink themselves to death.”

Hawkes was explaining his opposition to an effort to allow Utah grocery and convenience stores to sell beer with 4.8 percent alcohol by weight, up from the current 3.2 percent. A bill making that change passed the Senate in a 27-2 vote last week, but was hijacked by members of the House Health and Human Services Committee on Wednesday to instead launch a task force to study retail alcohol content.

The bill’s sponsor Sen. Jerry Stevenson, R-Layton, strongly objected to those changes, saying his House colleagues were looking to kill the bill through indecision. Stevenson — a powerful figure on Capitol Hill and the Senate’s budget chairman — said he had not met with his House counterparts on the issue since the committee vote and was not “in a mood” to negotiate.

“I’ve been working on this for three years,” Stevenson said. “I’m not ready to spend the next two [years] working on it.”

Stevenson has maintained that his bill is focused on commerce and related to changes in the beer industry. As other states have abandoned their 3.2 percent standards, major brewers have opted to discontinue their low-alcohol lines, which is expected to result in declining product availability on grocery and convenience store shelves in Utah.

That could mean a decline in revenue for Utah retailers, as well as additional strain on state-run liquor stores as beer drinkers are no longer able to make their purchases at grocery and convenience stores.

“We’ve got an issue here that I think needs to be fixed,” Stevenson said, “and I’ve kind of got my heels dug in.”

But in the House, Hawkes suggested the the Senate’s arguments around the bill ignore the health aspects of higher alcohol content in grocery-store beer. Stronger beers could contribute to higher rates of underage drinking, DUIs, depression and suicide, he said.

He said Utah is “weird” in the sense that the state is an outlier for its low rates of alcohol abuse and its associated problems. And whether that’s due to the state’s culture — a majority of Utahns and every House Republican are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints which teaches abstinence from alcohol and drugs — or the state’s laws, Hawkes said, both are “mutually reinforcing.”

“I’m proud of that culture and I’m proud of Utah’s unique status,” Hawkes said.

None of the lawmakers present for Hawkes’ presentation expressed support for the original bill, while several voiced their implied opposition to lifting the legal levels of retail alcohol content.

“There are lasting, permanent, life-altering affects from the abuse of alcohol,” said Rep. Eric Hutchings, R-Kearns, “and we can point to hundreds of thousands of examples.”

The bill is currently awaiting a vote of the full House. If approved there, the committee’s amendments would necessitate an additional Senate vote, where Stevenson’s opposition is unlikely to see its current, altered form advancing to the governor for his signature.

Tribune reporter Bethany Rodgers contributed to this article.

This week, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced that it has renamed its core websites and social media accounts to reflect the full name of the institution.

Among the changes:

• The church’s official website, which has been<a href="https://www.lds.org/"> lds.org</a>, has been changed to <a href="http://ChurchofJesusChrist.org" target=_blank>ChurchofJesusChrist.org</a>.
• The<a href="http://www.mormon.org/"> Mormon.org</a> website, which is geared for visitors rather than members, will be changing as well, though it’s a bit unclear how; the<a href="https://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/church-name-alignment"> Newsroom announcement</a> says that <a href="http://Mormon.org" target=_blank>Mormon.org</a> will eventually be merged “with the church member-focused <a href="http://ChurchofJesusChrist.org" target=_blank>ChurchofJesusChrist.org</a>,” while<a href="https://www.mormonnewsroom.org/multimedia/file/correct-name-of-the-church-fp-letter-march-2019.pdf"> the First Presidency letter to church leaders</a> says it will be “changed to <a href="http://ComeUntoChrist.org" target=_blank>ComeUntoChrist.org</a>.”
• The church’s various social media accounts will be altered to reflect the institution’s full name and “emphasize the name of the Savior’s church.”

These adjustments follow a strongly worded admonition from President Russell M. Nelson in the church’s fall General Conference, in which he condemned the church’s own long-standing use of the word “Mormon” to describe its members.

Although several years ago the church itself was heavily promoting the use of the word “Mormon” through its “I’m a Mormon” branding campaign and the church-produced film “Meet the Mormons,” Nelson stated in October that “to remove the Lord’s name from the Lord’s church is a major victory for Satan.”

As a Latter-day Saint, I’m happy to avoid using the word “Mormon” at church, at home, and in my family. I can easily try to substitute “I’m a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” for “I’m a Mormon” in my personal conversations and church lessons.

As a columnist for Religion News Service, however, I will continue using “Mormon” in headlines, articles and columns. I will also continue using “LDS” as shorthand after using the church’s full name upon first reference to it as an institution. This is the style guide established by The Associated Press, which RNS and most other media outlets follow.

It’s not just because the AP sets the rules that RNS will continue using “Mormon.” It’s also because the AP style guide makes more sense than what the church is asking reporters to do. Here’s why.

• <b>Brevity is the soul of wit.</b> “Mormon” is single word that can function beautifully as either an adjective (Mormon meetings, Mormon foodways, Mormon theology) or a noun (“I’m a Mormon”). Asking reporters who get eight to 10 words for a headline to take up more than that allotment with the full institutional name of “the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” is not reasonable.
• <b>The church wants to emphasize the name of Jesus Christ.</b> As the Newsroom announcement put it, “the invitation to use the full name of the church is an opportunity for Latter-day Saints to refocus their lives on the living Christ.” That’s wonderful, but Mormons’ spiritual development as disciples of Christ has nothing to do with how journalists do their jobs. Media members do not have a mandate to emphasize the name of Jesus Christ in the course of doing their 9-to-5 jobs just because one denomination has told its members to do so.
• <b>It is not journalists’ job to adjudicate faith claims.</b> Built into the request to use the full name of the church is a claim to theological superiority: this is “The” church of Jesus Christ. (The church’s style guide in fact requests — and AP style recommends — that the first letter of the definite article be capitalized.) But if a church’s full official name includes a theological claim, it’s not journalists’ responsibility to affirm or deny it. For example, the world’s largest denomination is officially called the Holy Roman Catholic Church, but journalists call it the Roman Catholic Church. Whether it’s headquartered in Rome is a fact journalists can verify. Whether it is holy is way beyond our pay grade.
• <b>The name “the Church of Jesus Christ” is too vague to be helpful. </b>Journalists are after clarity and specificity, and there are already untold numbers of denominations that consider themselves to be followers of Jesus Christ. This makes “the Church of Jesus Christ” far more ambiguous than “LDS Church.”
• <b>“Mormon” is what our readers know. </b>If I write a column about the historically important religious community established in Sabbathday Lake, Maine, I don’t primarily call those individuals members of “the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Coming,” even though that is their religion’s name. I call them the Shakers. I can certainly mention the official name in passing, but since that is not what our readers know, it does not help them — and our job is to serve them, not the Shakers.
• <b>“Mormon” is what our readers Google.</b><a href="https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2018/10/22/commentary-name-mormon/"> As I noted in this column in October</a>, for every time “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” is searched on Google, “Mormon” is searched between 75 and 100 times. Journalists’ job is to give our readers accurate information when and how they need it. If the word “Mormon” is what they are using, it is what we will also use.

Provo • Eric Mateos still hasn’t found or even unpacked everything he quickly threw together when he made the overnight drive from Texas to BYU after becoming the Cougars’ new offensive line coach a couple weeks ago.

But the affable, quick-witted and fun-loving assistant coach has already embarked on a more important search — at least to BYU fans — as spring practices got underway in Provo this week. Mateos inherited an experienced and talented offensive line from Ryan Pugh, but needs to find a replacement at right tackle for all-Independent performer Austin Hoyt.

“Yeah, we are going to need five guys, every play. Sometimes six or seven or eight,” Mateos said Monday, seemingly prepared for the biggest question surrounding the 2019 offensive line. “That is what spring is for. My job is to find the best five guys, the best five players, and figure out what the best combination of those five guys is.”

In the media-viewing portions of the first two practices, Mateos’ early pick appears to be Chandon Herring, a 6-foot-7, 302-pound redshirt junior from Gilbert, Ariz., who played in 12 games last year. Harris LaChance, a 6-8, 303-pound redshirt freshman from Herriman has also seen snaps at right tackle with the first- and second-team units.

“So it might be your opinion that we need a right tackle,” Mateos said. “it might be my opinion that we need a left guard. It might be coach [Jeff] Grimes’ opinion that we need a different center. All that stuff changes as you go through spring and summer. I am going to move guys around a lot. That’s what this time of year is for.”

When Pugh left Provo to become Troy’s offensive coordinator, few could have predicted that the 30-year-old Mateos, born in Miami of Cuban descent, would be tabbed as his replacement. Until, that is, they discovered he worked with Grimes at LSU in 2016.

Mateos had spent three years at Arkansas before that (2013-15) and was promoted midseason from graduate assistant to tight ends coach at LSU. He was Texas State’s offensive line coach in 2017 and 2018, but found himself out of a job at season’s end when head coach Everett Withers was fired last November.

“We talked to a lot of different people, but I liked his style,” said BYU coach Kalani Sitake. “I like his way. I like how he complements what Jeff Grimes does. He’s a little different than Pugh, but for our players, and the maturity our O-line has, I think he fits perfectly for what they need right now. They are ready to take the next step.”

Grimes said he’s known Mateos for a long time and knew he would fit in well at BYU.

“So I knew what he was all about,” Grimes said. “It has been great watching our players relate to him. He’s got a lot of optimism and a lot of energy and they are relating well to that.”

Receivers coach Fesi Sitake said Mateos brings a larger-than-life personality that is “perfect” for BYU’s offensive linemen to believe in.

“We have a niche here at BYU, the type of players we get. A lot of these guys don’t have to be kicked really hard. They are all willing guys who are really reliable. They just need confidence. And I think coach Mateos does a great job, and I think Ryan was phenomenal too,” Fesi Sitake said. “He is very personable, relatable, and these guys go to him for what they need. I can tell after two days that he is going to be great for them.”

Mateos said his coaching philosophy is to have confidence, play fast and know what you are doing.

“I keep it simple so guys don’t have to think a whole lot,” he said. “Play violently, with strength. Everybody has strong guys. Everybody has big guys. It is the guys who strain to finish that are really elite. That’s hard to do on every play, but the best do that.”

Sitake on the momentum the bowl win gave the program and what his priorities are for spring practices. pic.twitter.com/bmjJV81GAk

— Jay Drew (@drewjay) March 6, 2019

Alexandria, Va. • When former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort is sentenced for tax and bank fraud, U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III will likely issue the same lecture he gives to drug dealers and bank robbers.

"You write the pages to your own life story," Ellis routinely tells defendants before pronouncing sentence. He also tells those who appear before him that "life is a series of choices and living with the consequences of those choices."

Manafort's choices leave the 69-year-old with the very real possibility he will spend the rest of his life in prison.

Under federal sentencing guidelines, Manafort could receive a 20-year sentence Thursday, though most observers expect he will receive less than that.

Last year, a jury in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, convicted Manafort on eight felonies related to tax and bank fraud charges for hiding foreign income from his work in Ukraine from the IRS and later inflating his income on bank loan applications. Prosecutors have said the work in Ukraine was on behalf of politicians who were closely aligned with Russia, though Manafort has insisted his work helped those politicians distance themselves from Russia and align with the West.

After his conviction, Manafort pleaded guilty to separate charges in the District of Columbia related to illegal lobbying. He faces up to five years in prison on each of two counts to which he pleaded guilty. In the District case, prosecutors say Manafort has failed to live up to the terms of his plea bargain by providing false information to investigators in interviews.

In the Virginia case, neither prosecutors nor defense attorneys have recommended a specific term to the judge in their sentencing memoranda. Manafort's lawyers have sought a sentence significantly below the guidelines, based on a number of factors.

First, they say Manafort has suffered serious health problems since he has been incarcerated, mostly in solitary confinement, at the Alexandria jail where he awaits sentence. They say he has developed gout and suffers debilitating foot pain as a result, and that he is experiencing feelings of claustrophobia and isolation.

Prosecutors say the claims of health issues have not withstood scrutiny and even if they did, poor health is not a reason to escape consequences of criminal conduct.

Defense attorneys have also complained that Manafort was unfairly snared by special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into whether Russia meddled on Donald Trump's behalf during the 2016 presidential campaign. They argue that Mueller went beyond the scope of his mandate to investigate Manafort. Even Ellis at the outset of the case speculated that prosecutors' true motive in prosecuting Manafort was to pressure him to provide evidence against Trump.

Prosecutors have disputed that, and in court filings have said Manafort's business dealings were under investigation even before Mueller was appointed as special counsel.

Defense lawyers have also cited the fact that Manafort has forfeited millions of dollars in cash and property as a result of his convictions, and has also suffered public shame as a result of his high-profile prosecution.

Government lawyers countered that Manafort's millions were built on a criminal enterprise in which he hid tens of millions of dollars in foreign income and failed to pay more than $6 million in taxes.

“Manafort has failed to accept that he is responsible for the criminal choices that bring him to this Court for sentencing,” prosecutors Uzo Asonye, Andrew Weissmann, Greg Andres and Brandon Van Grack wrote in a sentencing memo Tuesday.

There’s a dirty little secret plaguing high school sports in Utah. The fact that the plague might not be as bad here as it is in some other states shouldn’t bring much comfort.

Here’s what would bring comfort: More full-time athletic trainers hired and utilized at Utah schools.

At a conference on safety in prep sports held on Thursday in a suite at Rice-Eccles Stadium, David Perrin, Dean of the College of Health at the University of Utah, asked a significant question: “Don’t high school athletes deserve the same care as college and professional athletes in the treating and prevention of injuries?”

Anybody who answers that question with a big old negatory never pulled on the pads or laced up a hightop or a soccer or baseball cleat, or had a kid in his or her family who did so. And to those who claim that schools can’t afford it, Perrin says they should count the number of remunerated coaches on the sidelines: “They can afford it, if they will. It has to be a priority.”

Right now, it is not.

Lisa Walker, a veteran athletic trainer at Springville High School who has been on the state’s Sports Medicine Advisory Council, as well as national committees for her profession and who addressed Thursday’s conference, estimates that just more than half the high schools in Utah have “access” to an athletic trainer, but that schools that have athletic trainers on site during school days, at practices and games are “significantly fewer.”

“There is no requirement in Utah for an athletic trainer or medical personnel to be on hand,” she says. “Schools that make it a requirement should be commended. But there is no [statewide] mandate. To me, it’s disturbing.”

Doug Casa, a professor at UConn, the CEO of the Korey Stringer Institute, a national expert on exertional heat stroke, and a speaker also featured at the conference, says the problem reaches far beyond Utah: “We contacted all 21,000 high schools in America and found that only 40 percent of them had full-time athletic trainers on campus. Some schools had two or three, some had none. A third had no access to an athletic trainer, at all.”

Casa’s organization, KSI, is in the middle of a four-year outreach to enlighten and educate administrators at schools around the country about the importance of proper preparation and planning for health emergencies among student-athletes. With national and local concerns growing about concussions and heat strokes and heart events among athletes, awareness about preventing and treating such issues is on the rise.

“In the past three to five years, we’ve made more progress than the last 25 years combined,” Casa says. “We need to expand education for coaches in proper tackling techniques and in other areas and in other sports. We’re going to see good news in that space, but education needs to be mandatory for all sports.”

He adds that deaths in high school sports occur 15-20 times annually, but that lasting effects from improperly treated conditions, such as in cases of heat exhaustion and head-and-neck injuries, affect hundreds of student-athletes.

“We’re fighting to have the right protocols in place.” he says.

In 70 percent of the cases where prep athletes died over the past year, there was no athletic trainer present.

Walker, Perrin and Casa are all trying to limit, prevent those tragedies.

One of the keys to change, attendant with pushing for additional athletic trainers at schools, is changing the over-the-top macho culture that persists in some athletic programs, including coaches who not only neglect to call for appropriate treatment for distressed players, but who ridicule those who struggle in training and conditioning.

“At any time, an athlete can have head, heart or heat issues,” Walker says. “It’s not just in June or July. Education is so important — for athletes, parents, coaches and administrators. Most coaches aren’t looking to do harm, but they might not know. That’s why it’s so important to have licensed athletic trainers on hand.”

She pauses.

“It always comes down to money. I’m sensitive to that. But you would never go wrong to have an athletic trainer at each school protecting the lives of the kids. Prevention is better than having to deal with a tragedy.”

Walker concurs with Casa that progress in policy-making is rising — for instance, a 14-day-heat-acclimation period is now required for prep sports in Utah, eliminating so-called hell weeks, in which back-to-back-to-back-to-back two-a-day practices are implemented.

“Some would say, ‘Ah, you’re making the kids weak,’” Walker says. “My response is, ‘No, we’re preserving their health for today and the future.’”

A state law on concussions requires a plan and protocol for treating a high school athlete suspected of suffering one, approved by a parent.

“Any athlete thought to have had a concussion must be evaluated by a health-care professional specifically trained in concussion in the last three years,” she says. “That suspicion can come from a coach, a parent, a player.”

It should come from an athletic trainer, paid to be present at the school.

“We encourage schools to provide the best medical care they can for their students and their school community,” says Jon Oglesby, assistant director of the UHSAA. ”We have trainers at our championships.”

But making athletic trainers comprehensively mandatory would have to come from the State Legislature.

In Utah, all coaches must be current in first-aid and CPR, among other certifications, and some schools have physicians who volunteer their services at games, but that’s not enough. Immediate treatment should be available on campus throughout the day — at practices, games, even for P.E. classes.

That’s a conclusion that everyone — those at Thursday’s conference, coaches, parents and especially the athletes themselves — should agree with and find comfort in.

GORDON MONSON hosts “The Big Show” with Jake Scott weekdays from 3-7 p.m. on 97.5 FM and 1280 AM The Zone.

San Diego • The U.S. government kept a database on journalists, activists, organizers and “instigators” during an investigation into last year’s migrant caravan, infuriating civil liberties and media groups who called it a blatant violation of free speech rights.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection compiled information that contained passport photos, date of birth, suspected role in the caravan and whether they had been arrested. The database was revealed Wednesday by the San Diego TV station KNSD.

People listed in the Homeland Security documents provided to the station included 10 journalists, seven U.S. citizens, an American attorney and 47 people from Central America. Some of the people on the list were denied entry into Mexico and had their passports flagged.

The intelligence-gathering efforts were done under the umbrella of “Operation Secure Line,” which was designed to monitor the caravan of thousands of people who began making their way north from Central America late last year to seek asylum in the United States.

The government compiled the database at a time when the caravan was attracting considerable attention in the White House around the midterm elections, with President Trump repeatedly tweeting about the group.

Customs and Border Protection officials didn’t dispute the database, saying in a statement to The Associated Press that extra security followed a breach of a border wall in San Diego on Nov. 25 in a violent confrontation between caravan members and border agents. The confrontation closed the nation’s busiest border crossing for five hours on Thanksgiving weekend.

Officials said it was protocol to follow up on such incidents to collect evidence, and determine whether the event was orchestrated.

Such "criminal events ... involving assaults on law enforcement and a risk to public safety, are routinely monitored and investigated by authorities," the statement said.

The statement didn't address specifics of why journalists would be on the list to have their passports flagged.

Bing Guan, a freelance journalist and student at the International Center of Photography, said he and a colleague were stopped by U.S. agents while returning from Tijuana in December. A plainclothes agent who didn't identify his agency showed Guan a multi-page document with dozens of photos and asked him to identify people in the images. The agent then asked Guan to show him the photos he had taken in Tijuana.

Guan said the report of the dossiers confirmed the long-held suspicions he and other journalists had.

"It's sort of a weird combination of paranoia and pride," Guan said. "Paranoia because our own government is conducting these intelligence gathering tactics and these patterns of harassment in order to deter journalists from doing their jobs, but also a little bit of pride because I feel like I'm on the right track," Guan said.

The database was denounced by a variety of groups, including media organizations, the Mexican government, the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

"Monitoring journalists and immigration advocates is outrageous — and if based on their political opinions or legitimate human rights-related activities, as we suspect, it is unlawful," said Ashley Houghton, tactical campaigns manager for Amnesty International.

The Committee to Protect Journalists called on Congress to investigate what it called a "disturbing pattern of activity," and representatives from the organization plan to meet with Customs and Border Protection officials to discuss the situation.

The database was built at a time of increasingly tense relations between the Trump administration and journalists, with Trump calling some members of the press the "enemy of the state." There has also been an increase in false news stories proliferating on social media on both the political left and right aimed at edging the American public closer to one side.

The Department of Homeland Security last year sought a contractor to monitor more than 290,000 news sources and social media around the world in several languages, and compile a database of journalists, editors, foreign correspondents and bloggers. DHS officials said the aim was to gather open-source information, not unlike alerts the public can set up through email.

And according to documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by The Nation, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, another part of Homeland Security, tracked a series of anti-Trump protests in New York City last year, including several that promoted immigrants' rights and one organized by a member of Congress.

The caravan documents, dated Jan. 9, are titled "San Diego Sector Foreign Operations Branch: Migrant Caravan FY-2019, Suspected Organizers, Coordinators, Instigators and Media." According to the station, the material was used by Homeland Security and other agencies, including some San Diego FBI agents.

One dossier was on Nicole Ramos, the refugee director and attorney for Al Otro Lado, a law center for migrants and refugees in Tijuana, Mexico. It included details such as the kind of car she drives and her mother's name, KNSD-TV reported.

A photographer working for The Associated Press was also on the list.

The Mexican government, which denied entry to some of the people in the database, said it disapproved of spying and said it didn't do "illegal surveillance" and would ask the U.S. to clarify any possible cases of "illegal spying."

"Mexico welcomes all foreign visitors who, obeying immigration laws, carry out in our territory tourism or professional activities," according to a joint statement from the Foreign Relations Department and the Department of Security and Citizen Protection.

Associated Press Writer Nomaan Merchant contributed to this report from Houston.

New York • Hall of Fame pitcher Tom Seaver, the star of the Miracle Mets 1969 World Series championship team, has been diagnosed with dementia at age 74.

His family made the announcement Thursday through the Hall and said Seaver has retired from public life and will continue to work at Seaver Vineyards, founded by the retired player and wife Nancy in 1998 on 116 acres at Diamond Mountain in the Calistoga region of California.

Seaver has limited his public appearances in recent years. He didn't attend the Baseball Writers' Association of America dinner in January where members of the 1969 team were honored on the 50th anniversary of what still ranks among baseball's most unexpected title winners.

A three-time NL Cy Young Award winner and the 1967 NL Rookie of the Year, Seaver was 311-205 with a 2.86 ERA, 3,640 strikeouts and 61 shutouts from 1967-86. A five-time 20-game winner nicknamed Tom Terrific, Seaver was elected to the Hall in 1992 with a then-record 98.94 percent of the ballots, appearing on 425 of 430. His mark was surpassed in 2016 by Ken Griffey Jr. and this year by Mariano Rivera, the first unanimous selection.

Seaver pitched for the Mets from 1967 until 1977, when he was traded to Cincinnati after a public spat with Mets chairman M. Donald Grant.

"My biggest disappointment? Leaving the Mets the first time and the difficulties I had with the same people that led up to it," Seaver told The Associated Press ahead of his Hall induction in 1992. "But even that I look back at in a positive way now. It gave me the opportunity to work in different areas of the country."

He pitched his only no-hitter for the Reds in June 1978 against St. Louis and was traded back to New York after the 1982 season. But Mets general manager Frank Cashen blundered by leaving Seaver unprotected, and in January 1984 Seaver was claimed by the Chicago White Sox as free agent compensation.

While pitching for the White Sox, Seaver got his 300th win at Yankee Stadium, and he did it in style with a six-hitter in a 4-1 victory. He finished his career with Boston in 1986. He was a 12-time All-Star and led the major leagues with a 25-7 record in 1969 and with a 1.76 ERA in 1971.

"From a team standpoint, winning the '69 world championship is something I'll remember most," Seaver said in 1992. "From an individual standpoint, my 300th win brought me the most joy."

Among baseball's worst teams from their expansion season in 1962, the Mets lost more than 100 games in five of their first six seasons and had never won more than 73 games in their first seven years. With cherished Brooklyn Dodgers star Gil Hodges as their manager, a young corps of pitchers led by Seaver, Jerry Koosman, Gary Gentry and a still-wild Nolan Ryan, and an offense that included Cleon Jones and Tommy Agee, the Mets overtook the Chicago Cubs to win the NL East with a 100-62 record.

They swept Atlanta in the first NL Championship Series to reach the World Series against highly favored Baltimore, which had gone 109-53. Seaver lost the opener 4-1 in a matchup with Mike Cuellar, then pitched a 10-inning six-hitter to win Game 4, and the Mets won the title the following afternoon.

His most memorable moment on the mound was at Shea Stadium on July 9, 1969, when he retired his first 25 batters against the Chicago Cubs. Pinch-hitter Jimmy Qualls had a one-out single to left-center in the ninth before Seaver retired Willie Smith on a foulout and Don Kessinger on a flyout.

“I had every hitter doing what I wanted,” Seaver recalled in 1992. “Afterward, my wife was in tears and I remember saying to her: ‘Hey, I pitched a one-hit shutout with 10 strikeouts. What more could I ask for?’”

Washington • President Donald Trump’s advisers dangled the possibility of a pardon for his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen last year, Cohen’s attorney said Thursday, as congressional investigators zero in on the president’s pardon power.

The issue of pardons has emerged as a key line of inquiry as Democrats launch a series of sweeping investigations into Trump's political and personal dealings.

Lanny Davis, Cohen’s lawyer, said in a written statement Thursday that his client was “open to the ongoing ‘dangling’ of a possible pardon by Trump representatives privately and in the media” in the months after the FBI raided Cohen’s home, office and hotel room in April 2018.

Davis, who was not Cohen’s lawyer at the time, said Cohen “directed his attorney” to explore a possible pardon with Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and others on Trump’s legal team. The statement appears to contradict Cohen’s sworn testimony last week at a House Oversight Committee hearing that he had never asked for, and would not accept, a pardon from Trump.

Davis’ comment raises questions about whether Cohen — who is slated to begin a three-year prison sentence in May for crimes including lying to Congress — lied to Congress again last week. Giuliani seized on Davis’ statement and called Cohen a “serial liar.”

"Let's hope Congress and DOJ are outraged at Cohen's disrespecting them by perjuring himself repeatedly," Giuliani said.

There is nothing inherently improper about a subject in a criminal investigation seeking a pardon from a president given the president's wide latitude in granting them. But investigators want to know if the prospect of presidential pardons were somehow offered or used inappropriately.

The House Judiciary Committee, which is conducting a probe into possible obstruction of justice, corruption and abuse of power, sent letters to the FBI, the Justice Department and others for documents related to possible pardons for Cohen, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. All three have been charged in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible coordination between Russia and Trump’s presidential campaign.

Giuliani said in June that the president might pardon Manafort and others who were ensnared in the Russia investigation if he believed they were treated "unfairly." But, he said, that would happen only after Mueller's work wraps up.

"The president is not going to issue pardons in this investigation," Giuliani said. "Because you just cloud what is becoming now a very clear picture of an extremely unfair investigation with no criminality involved in it of any kind."

But, he added, "When it's over, hey, he's the president of the United States. He retains his pardon power. Nobody is taking that away from him. He can pardon, in his judgment."

Cohen has become a key figure in congressional investigations since turning on his former boss and cooperating with the special counsel. During last week's public testimony, he called Trump a con man, a cheat and a racist.

Trump, in turn, has said Cohen "did bad things unrelated to Trump" and "is lying in order to reduce his prison time."

In his statement on Thursday, Davis tried to downplay the contradiction between his statement and Cohen's testimony. He said when he was brought on to Cohen's legal team in June, his client "authorized me as a new lawyer to say publicly Mr. Cohen would never accept a pardon from President Trump even if offered."

"That continues to be the case," Davis said. "And his statement at the Oversight Hearing was true — and consistent with his post joint defense agreement commitment to tell the truth."

Davis did not immediately respond Thursday to text messages and emails seeking additional information.

Cohen is headed to prison in May after pleading guilty to campaign finance violations, lying to Congress and other crimes.

Federal prosecutors have said Trump directed Cohen to arrange payments to buy the silence of two women — porn actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal — who had alleged they had sex with Trump. Trump has denied having an affair.

Cohen also admitted that he lied to Congress about the duration of negotiations in 2016 over a Trump real estate project in Moscow.

Sisak reported from New York.