March 31
1909 — Baseball’s National Commission rules that players who jump contracts will be suspended for five years. Players joining outlaw organizations will be suspended for three years as punishment for going outside organized baseball.
1923 — The Ottawa Senators of the NHL completes a two-game sweep of the WCHL’s Edmonton Eskimos with a 1-0 victory to win the Stanley Cup for the third time in four years. Harry “Punch” Broadbent scores the goal.
1968 — The American League’s new franchise in Seattle chooses Pilots as its nickname.
1973 — The Philadelphia Flyers tie an NHL record for most goals in one period, scoring eight goals in the second period of a 10-2 win over the New York Islanders.
1973 — Ken Norton scores a stunning upset by winning a 12-round split decision over Muhammad Ali to win the NABF heavyweight title. Norton, a 5-1 underdog, breaks Ali’s jaw in the first round.
1975 — UCLA beats Kentucky 92-85 for its 10th NCAA basketball title under head coach John Wooden. Wooden finishes with a 620-147 career record after announcing his retirement two days earlier.
1985 — Old Dominion beats Georgia 70-65 for the women’s NCAA basketball championship.
1986 — Freshman center Pervis Ellison hits two free throws with 27 seconds left to seal Louisville’s 72-69 victory over Duke in the NCAA basketball championship.
1990 — Quebec’s Joe Sakic, 20, becomes the youngest player in NHL history to score 100 points in a season and the first to do so with a last-place team.
1991 — Tennessee edges Virginia 70-67 in overtime for its third NCAA women’s basketball title. It’s the first overtime in the NCAA’s 10-year history.
1991 — Amy Alcott wins the Dinah Shore golf tournament with a record eight-shot victory over Dottie Mochrie.
1995 — Major league baseball players end their strike when Federal judge Sonia Sotomayor of U.S. District Court in Manhattan rules against the owners in the labor dispute.
1997 — Martina Hingis becomes the youngest No. 1 player in tennis history. The 16-year-old Swiss sensation, who claimed her fifth title of 1997 at the Lipton Championships on March 29, supplants Steffi Graf in the WTA Tour rankings.
2012 — Ray Whitney passes 1,000 career points with a goal and assist in Phoenix’s 4-0 victory over Anaheim.
2013 — In one of the biggest upsets in the history of the NCAA women’s tournament, sixth-seeded Louisville stuns defending national champion Baylor in the regional semifinals, 82-81. It’s the end of a remarkable college career for Baylor’s Brittney Griner, a record-setting 6-foot-8 post player who ended up as the second-highest scoring player in NCAA history.
2013 — Pete Weber ties Earl Anthony by winning his 10th major Professional Bowlers Association title with a 224-179 win over Australian Jason Belmonte in the Tournament of Champions.
2013 — Louisville overcomes Kevin Ware’s gruesome injury and advances to the Final Four with a 85-63 win over Duke. Ware breaks his leg in the first half of the Midwest Regional final when he lands awkwardly after trying to contest a 3-point shot.
2017 — Evgenia Medvedeva retains her world figure skating title, breaking her own world record total score with 233.41 points. The 17-year-old Russian becomes the first woman to win back-to-back titles since 2001.
2017 — UConn’s record 111-game winning streak comes to a startling end when Mississippi State pulls off perhaps the biggest upset in women’s basketball history, shocking the Huskies 66-64 on Morgan William’s overtime buzzer beater in the national semifinals.