When the Gophers emerged victorious on Sunday — downing then-No. 21 Southern California, 63-62 — it marked a major moment for the program, with Minnesota sealing its first win over a ranked opponent since 2019.

Gophers point guard Amaya Battle dribbles the ball during Minnesota’s game against USC at Williams Arena on Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026 (Brady Paitrick / Gophers Athletics)

But there wasn’t too much time for the Gophers to celebrate their victory. A chance for a program-defining victory is on the docket.

“It doesn’t get any easier with UCLA coming,” coach Dawn Plitzuweit said at her postgame press conference. “We’ve got to get recovered as quickly as possible, and then take on UCLA and see how we can battle and that’s not a very easy thing to do.”

No, it isn’t.

There are no easy days in the Big Ten — eight of the conference’s 18 teams are ranked and four more, including Minnesota, received votes in the latest AP poll — but it also doesn’t get tougher than what the Gophers will see Wednesday.

The Gophers will play host to No. 3 UCLA, which comes in at 15-1 on the season, on Wednesday at 7 p.m. at Williams Arena. The Bruins serve as Minnesota’s stiffest competition to date.

They are led by senior center Lauren Betts, a projected top-five pick in the upcoming WNBA Draft who averages 16.4 points to go along with 8.5 rebounds and 2.3 blocks per game, both of which are top-five marks in the Big Ten.

At 87.1 points per game, the Bruins are the ninth-highest scoring team in the nation with four different players averaging at least 13.9 points per game. It’ll be a good test for the Gophers, who currently allow 51.8 points per game, which is tied with No. 1 UConn for fewest in the nation.

Minnesota is currently a No. 8 seed in ESPN’s latest Bracketology projection. A win over a top-ranked foe would go a long way toward cementing the Gophers’ chances of dancing in March.

While the Gophers lost their first two games this season against ranked foes — Maryland and Michigan — they remained competitive in each, taking Maryland to double overtime before falling by just a point to Michigan in Ann Arbor after getting out to an early lead.

In Sunday’s game, the Gophers overcame a 19-0 USC run in the second quarter, with Plitzuweit praising her team’s ability to “do the little things really, really well” in the big win over the then-ranked Trojans.

“We can say it all we want ‘We can compete at the highest level,’” Plitzuweit said. “But then to actually come out on top, it certainly helps you from a confidence standpoint, or it should at least moving forward.”

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Timberwolves center Rudy Gobert missed Tuesday’s game in Milwaukee due to league suspension after accruing his sixth flagrant foul in Sunday’s win over San Antonio.

And there’s little relief for the big man the rest of the way, with half the regular season still to play.

If Gobert’s next flagrant foul is also a Penalty 1, as was the case against the Spurs, it will result in another one-game suspension. If it’s a Penalty 2, which also results in automatic ejection, Gobert will be suspended for two games.

Any subsequent flagrant fouls beyond that will equal automatic two-game suspensions, regardless of their degree.

Tuesday’s suspension cost Gobert $201,149, per ESPN’s Bobby Marks, while the Wolves receive a “tax variance credit” of $100,575. Presumably, the same math will hold true for any other games Gobert loses to suspension the rest of the way.

The flagrant foul-point counter does reset for the postseason, meaning the only way the center — who’s in the running to win a fifth Defensive Player of the Year award — would miss a playoff game due to a regular season flagrant foul was if it was to occur in the 81st or 82nd games of the season.

“I try to not think about it. Some of the rules make it hard,” Gobert said of the predicament. “It’s tough, because I try to be aggressive contesting shots in the heat of the moment. I don’t think there’s, at any time, an intention of getting anybody hurt, putting people in dangerous situations. So yeah, it’s tough. But I’ve got to play through it.”

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By ALI SWENSON and NICKY FORSTER

NEW YORK (AP) — Fewer Americans are signing up for Affordable Care Act health insurance plans this year, new federal data shows, as expiring subsidies and other factors push health expenses too high for many to manage.

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Nationally, around 800,000 fewer people have selected plans compared to a similar time last year, marking a 3.5% drop in total enrollment so far. That includes a decrease in both new consumers signing up for ACA plans and existing enrollees re-upping them.

The new data released Monday evening by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is only a snapshot of a continuously changing pool of enrollees. It includes sign-ups through Jan. 3 in states that use Healthcare.gov for ACA plans and through Dec. 27 for states that have their own ACA marketplaces. In most states, the period for shopping for plans continues through Jan. 15 for plans that start in February.

But even though it’s early, the data builds on fears that expiring enhanced tax credits could cause a dip in enrollment and force many Americans to make tough decisions to delay buying health insurance, look for alternatives or forgo it entirely.

Experts warn that the number of people who have signed up for plans may still drop even further, as enrollees get their first bill in January and some choose to cancel.

Health care costs at the center of a fight in Congress

The declining enrollment comes as Congress has been locked in a partisan battle over what to do about the subsidies that expired at the start of the new year. For months, Democrats have fought for a straight extension of the tax credits, while Republicans have insisted larger reforms are a better way to root out fraud and abuse and keep costs down overall. Last week, in a remarkable rebuke of Republican leadership, the House passed legislation to extend the subsidies for three years. The bill now sits in the Senate, where pressure is building for a bipartisan compromise.

Up until this year, President Barack Obama’s landmark health insurance program had been an increasingly popular option for Americans who don’t get health coverage through their jobs, including small business owners, gig workers, farmers, ranchers and others.

For the 2021 plan year, about 12 million people selected an Affordable Care Act plan. Enhanced tax credits were introduced the following year and four years later enrollment had doubled to over 24 million.

This year’s sinking sign-ups — sitting at about 22.8 million so far — mark the first time in the past four years that enrollment has been down from the previous year at this point in the shopping window.

The loss of enhanced subsidies means annual premium costs will more than double for the average ACA enrollee who had them, according to the health care research nonprofit KFF. But extending the subsidies would also be expensive for the country. Ahead of last week’s House vote, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that extending the subsidies for three years would increase the nation’s deficit by about $80.6 billion over the decade.

Americans begin looking for other options

Robert Kaestner, a health economist at the University of Chicago, said some of those who abandon ACA plans may have other options, such as going on a partner’s employer health plan or changing their income to qualify for Medicaid. Others will go without insurance at least temporarily while they look for alternatives.

“My prediction is 2 million more people will lack health insurance for a while,” Kaestner said. “That’s a serious issue, but Republicans would argue we’re using government money more efficiently, we’re targeting people who really need it and we’re saving $35 billion a year.”

Several Americans interviewed by The Associated Press have said they’re dropping coverage altogether for 2026 and will pay out of pocket for needed appointments. Many said they are crossing their fingers that they aren’t affected by a costly injury or diagnosis.

“I’m pretty much going to be going without health insurance unless they do something,” said 52-year-old Felicia Persaud, a Florida entrepreneur who dropped coverage when she saw her monthly ACA costs were set to increase by about $200 per month. “It’s sort of like playing poker and hoping the chips fall and try the best that you can.”

By JENNIFER McDERMOTT and PAT GRAHAM

Belgian biathlete Maya Cloetens can’t help but think about the future of winter sports as she trains for next month’s Olympic Games in Milan and Cortina, Italy.

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Evidence of climate change is all around her in the mountains above Grenoble, France, where the 24-year-old fell in love with the sport that combines cross-country skiing and shooting.

Grenoble hosted the 1968 Winter Olympics, but its winters are shorter and milder nowadays, and with less consistent heavy snowfall. When the games return to the French Alps in 2030, Grenoble won’t be the focal point.

“I grew up there, and I really see the difference of snow,” Cloetens said. “In 15 years, it has completely changed.”

With the Earth warming at a record rate, the list of locales that could reliably host a Winter Games will shrink substantially in the coming years, according to researchers. The situation is serious enough that the International Olympic Committee is considering rotating the games among a permanent pool of suitable locations and holding them earlier in the season because March is getting too warm for the Paralympic Games, said Karl Stoss, who chairs the games’ Future Host Commission.

Dwindling hosts

Out of 93 mountain locations that currently have the winter sports infrastructure to host elite competition, only 52 should have the snow depth and sufficiently cold temperatures to be able to host a Winter Olympics in the 2050s, according research conducted by University of Waterloo professor Daniel Scott and University of Innsbruck associate professor Robert Steiger that the IOC is using. The number could drop to as low as 30 by the 2080s, depending on how much the world curbs carbon dioxide pollution.

And, the IOC prioritizes locations with at least 80% existing venues, making the pool of potential hosts significantly smaller.

FILE – People ski on a hill with manufactured snow near Bayrischzell, Germany, Feb. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader, File)

The situation is bleaker for the Paralympic Winter Games, which are typically held at the same venues two weeks after the Winter Olympics conclude. However, Scott said he and Steiger found that starting both sets of games about three weeks earlier would almost double the number of reliable locations for the Paralympic Games. Their modeling presumes advanced snowmaking, finding that there are almost no locations that could reliably host the snow sports without snowmaking by mid-century.

Grenoble isn’t the only past host that the researchers believe won’t be “climate reliable” enough to do it again by the 2050s. Chamonix, France, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, and Sochi, Russia, also didn’t make the cut, while past venues in Vancouver, Canada; Palisades Tahoe, California; Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina; and Oslo, Norway, would be “climatically risky.”

“Climate change is going to change the geography of where we can hold the Winter Olympics and the Paralympics. There’s no question,” Scott said. “The only question is, how much?”

Relying on snowmaking, for now

Manufactured snow was first used for the Winter Games in 1980 in Lake Placid, New York. Beijing was the first to rely almost entirely on snowmaking in 2022.

FILE – A person works at a snow making machine on a hill overlooking cross-country skiing practice before the 2022 Winter Olympics, Feb. 2, 2022, in Zhangjiakou, China. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila, File)

For these Olympics, the organizing committee plans to make nearly 2.4 million cubic meters (3.1 million cubic yards) of snow. In contrast, when Cortina hosted the 1956 Olympics, no manufactured snow was used, though the Italian army did transport truckloads of snow down from the Dolomites.

The Italian company supplying nearly all of the new snowmaking systems, TechnoAlpin, developed technology to make snow in temperatures well above freezing. The company said it sent its “SnowFactory” to Antholz — the biathlon site — to guarantee sufficient snow cover.

Davide Cerato oversees snowmaking operations at several Olympic venues. With the newest systems, he said, they can make a lot of snow, efficiently, even at marginal snowmaking temperatures— for the moment.

“But I don’t know in the future,” he said.

Northern Italy is known for its cold, snowy winters. But seasonal snowfall has reduced considerably throughout the Alpine region, with the sharpest declines mainly over the last 40 years due to the temperature increase.

Italian climatologist Luca Mercalli recalls looking at the Alps from his home in Turin, Italy, 50 years ago and seeing the mountains white with snow from late October until June. Now, he often sees gray.

Snowmaking has its limits

One of the foremost experts on building a ski racing course is Wyoming rancher Tom Johnston. To him, manufactured snow is preferable over what Mother Nature can deliver – with one caveat.

FILE – Sweden’s Lars Nelson skis past a hole in the snow during the men’s 4x10K cross-country relay at the 2014 Winter Olympics, Sunday, Feb. 16, 2014, in Krasnaya Polyana, Russia. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia, File)

“I need her colder temps,” Johnston said.

Traditional snowmaking equipment requires cold temperatures and low humidity. Europe is the fastest-warming continent.

It takes an immense about of energy and water to make snow. That can make climate change worse if the electricity is supplied by burning fossil fuels, and can exacerbate water issues in regions where it’s scarce. For Milan Cortina, electricity partner Enel is guaranteeing entirely renewable and certified electricity.

The organizing committee estimates needing 250 million gallons (946 million liters) of water, the equivalent of nearly 380 Olympic swimming pools, for snowmaking. It carved out new high-elevation water reservoirs, or lakes, to store it.

“Without water, there are no Games,” said Carmen de Jong, a University of Strasbourg hydrology professor.

She is critical of building reservoirs that alter the natural ecosystem, though sees no solution— the appetite for artificial snow will only increase due to climate change.

Planning for the future

Events like the Olympics draw participants and fans from around the world and have always contributed to climate change. Many people fly there, new venues are built and a lot of electricity is used to power them, emitting vast amounts of carbon pollution.

Recognizing this, the IOC is requiring hosts to minimize their water and electricity use and avoid unnecessary construction. It may need to eventually reduce the number of sports, athletes and spectators who attend, said Stoss, the Future Host Commission chair.

As the leading organization for sport, Stoss said, it’s the IOC’s responsibility to show how to protect winter sports for the long term.

The IOC picked the French Alps for the 2030 Winter Olympics and Salt Lake City, Utah for 2034. It’s talking exclusively with Switzerland about 2038. Stoss said he likes Switzerland because of its existing infrastructure and excellent public transportation.

FILE – Belgium’s Maya Cloetens competes during the women’s 7.5km sprint event, in the World Cup of Biathlon in Oberhof, Germany, Jan. 8, 2026. (Hendrik Schmidt/dpa via AP, File)

He said this is the future, choosing countries with good conditions and high standards for protecting the climate. He praised Milan-Cortina for using mostly existing venues and reducing the games’ environmental impact.

Diana Bianchedi, the organizing committee’s chief strategy, planning and legacy officer, said that from the very beginning, they sought to model a more sustainable future, both for the Olympic movement and for larger social transformation.

“This is the point,” she said, “where we have to change.”

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.