Briefly: Phil Mickelson returns to Pebble Beach with his confidence again intact

Optimism is never in short supply for Phil Mickelson, and it was especially high when he left the Monterey Peninsula last year with his 44th PGA Tour victory and his fifth title in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.

He had the entire year ahead of him.

It didn't turn out the way he imagined.

"After I won last year, I knew I was going to go out and just crush the rest of the year," Mickelson said Wednesday. "And the rest of the year crushed me."

It wasn't that he failed to win again — no shame in that after turning 49 and competing against an increasingly younger PGA Tour — he only cracked the top 20 one time, at the Masters.

The Presidents Cup, which dates to 1994, was played without him for the first time. And by the end of the year, he was out of the top 50 in the world for the first time in 26 years.

"I didn't play up to my level of expectation, and it just kind of snowballed and got worse," Mickelson said.

It was particularly refreshing because Mickelson had missed PGA Tour cuts in Palm Springs and San Diego, the first time in his long career as a pro he had missed the cut in consecutive events to start the year.

"This is a different year and I've had a great offseason and a lot of good things have happened in the last three, four months and I'm very excited for the year," Mickelson said. "I know that the first two weeks didn't go as planned, but the rest of the year is going to be very good."

Candice Storey Lee took charge of Vanderbilt's athletic department, the first black woman to hold that job in the Southeastern Conference, and she knew her own importance.

"It's not lost on me the responsibility that I have that people who, both those who look like me and those who don't, know that they can have opportunities to excel really in any space that they want," said Lee, a basketball captain at Vanderbilt before graduating in 2000.

"I think that the most important thing is we have to get to the point where there are others. … We need a second and and a third and a fourth, and then we will know we're truly making a difference."

The inductees with the sports each played and year of graduation: Debra Krengel, volleyball, basketball and track and field, 1980; Mahrya (Honer) Johnson, hockey, 2002; Ana (Fernandez) Geronimo, softball, 2003, and Steffanie Jurusik, swimming, 2013.

• Infielder Boston Merila of St. Michael-Albertville signed with the Gophers. The switch-hitter hit .381 for the Knights over the past two baseball seasons.

• Denver hockey forward Bobby Brink, of Minnetonka, was named the NCHC rookie of the month for January. He had three goals and six assists in eight games.

• The Gophers' Lindsey Kozelsky, a senior from Albert Lea, Minn., was named the Big Ten Conference swimmer of the week for her performance against Purdue and Northwestern this past weekend. She won the tri-dual's 100- and 200-yard breaststroke events.

MLS: Los Angeles FC forward Adama Diomande, the team's No. 3 scorer last season, won't be ready for the regular season next month because of a broken bone in his right foot.