Cal and Stanford didn’t get into the Big Ten in 2023’s Great Reshuffling of college sports, but that isn’t stopping their athletes from moving into a top-tier league.

Andrej Stojakovic, the star guard who transferred from Stanford to Cal in 2024, is leaving Berkeley for Illinois. He reportedly considered returning to Stanford in the transfer portal, and North Carolina was also deemed a finalist in his quasi-free agency in the name, image and likeness era.

Stojakovic, a 6-foot-7 rising junior, averaged 17.9 points per game for the Bears in his one season as a Cal player under Mark Madsen. He was a McDonald’s All-American out of Jesuit High School near Sacramento when he chose Stanford, but his freshman year on The Farm was a bit muted, scoring 7.8 points per game.

More minutes (33.4 per game) and a larger role in the Bears’ attack followed his cross-bay transfer, but Cal underwhelmed in 2024-25 after showing promise in Madsen’s first season. They finished just 14-19 overall and 6-14 in league play in their first season as an ACC school, losing to Stanford in the conference tournament.

Stojakovic cited Illinois’ ability to develop big guards under coach Brad Underwood as a key to his decision.

“I’m looking forward to being part of a team where I can bring the ball up and have shooters all around,” Stojakovic told ESPN. “I can also be a shooter, play on the wing, when someone else is bringing the ball up.”

The Bears also lost breakout freshman Jeremiah Wilkinson to Georgia in the transfer portal. The Atlanta-area native averaged 19.5 points over the final 14 games after becoming a starter. Cal has brought in some reinforcements, including former De La Salle forward Chris Bell from Syracuse and Justin Pippen, the son of former NBA star Scottie, from Michigan.

— Michael Nowels

Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neal has agreed to become the general manager of the men’s basketball program at Sacramento State under new coach Mike Bibby.

A person familiar with the situation said that O’Neal will take the voluntary job for the program that his son, Shaqir, recently joined as a player. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the school hadn’t made an announcement.

Bibby, the former NBA star for the Sacramento Kings, was hired as head coach for the Hornets last month as the school tries to raise its profile in collegiate athletics.

One of the first additions Bibby made was signing Shaqir O’Neal as a transfer from Florida A&M. Now Bibby has O’Neal’s father involved in the program.

O’Neal is the latest high-profile athlete to take on a general manager role at a college program. Stephen Curry was recently announced as the assistant general manager at Davidson and Trae Young has that same role at Oklahoma.

O’Neal won four NBA titles, three NBA Finals MVPs and a league MVP during his 19-year career in the NBA. He is currently an analyst on TNT’s “Inside the NBA” show. He also served as a minority owner of the Sacramento Kings from 2013-22.

Sacramento State went 7-25 this season under interim coach Michael Czepil, who was promoted last spring after David Patrick left to take a job as associate head coach at LSU.

A federal judge dismissed an antitrust lawsuit that had been brought against the NCAA by several former college basketball players, including Kansas standout Mario Chalmers, after ruling its claims fell outside the four-year statute of limitations.

The lawsuit, which included 16 total players who played before June 16, 2016, claimed that the NCAA had enriched itself by utilizing their names, images and likenesses to promote its men’s basketball tournament. That date in 2016 is the earliest date for players to be included in the House v. NCAA antitrust settlement awaiting final approval from a federal judge.

U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer pointed toward a four-year statute of limitations for federal antitrust violations, despite the lawsuit contending that the law continues to be breached by the NCAA’s use of the players’ NIL in March Madness promotions.

Engelmayer also noted that the plaintiffs were part of the class in O’Bannon v. NCAA, the 2015 case that helped to usher in the age of NIL payments so the lawsuit was not demonstrably different from other settled cases involving the athletes.

WNBA

Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese’s return to college for WNBA preseason games will be two of a record four exhibition games shown on national TV.

Clark will head back to Iowa for an exhibition between her Indiana Fever and the Brazilian national team on Sunday, a game airing on ESPN. The Fever’s exhibition game against the Washington Mystics a day earlier will be on NBA TV.

Reese will lead the Chicago Sky back to her alma mater, LSU, on Friday to face the Brazilian team. Sky teammate Kamilla Cardoso played for that Brazilian team in February 2024, trying to help it qualify for the Paris Olympics. That game will be part of a doubleheader on ION.

The league showed two exhibition games in 2023 and four last year, including Clark’s debut.

The two rookies last season helped the league draw record-breaking viewership. ESPN games averaged 1.2 million viewers in the regular season, a 170% increase from the previous year. The postseason averaged 1.1 million viewers, making it the league’s most-viewed playoffs in 25 years.

TENNIS

Former U.S. Open champion Coco Gauff was preparing to shower in a dark locker room after play at the Madrid Open was suspended and then postponed due to a major power outage in Spain and Portugal.

Then Gauff realized the water was off, too.

“So I just had to take baby wipes and wipe myself,” Gauff said, “and spray some perfume and call it a day.”

Gauff managed to beat Belinda Bencic 6-4, 6-2 shortly before the outage, which apparently cut off the sound as she was giving a post-match interview on the court. Then the 2023 U.S. Open champion posted an Instagram story showing only an emergency light working in an otherwise dark locker room.

The power went out at 12:34 p.m. local time, stopping two ATP singles matches and one doubles match that were underway. For the day, a total of 22 matches had to be canceled.