U volleyball pair named All-Big Ten

Gophers volleyball player Jessica Granquist was named Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year on Tuesday, and she was joined on the all-conference first team by teammate Lauren Gibbemeyer.

Granquist, a junior, became the sixth Gophers libero named the Big Ten's top defensive player in the past nine years, joining Paula Gentil (2002-04), Malama Peniata (2006) and Christine Tan (2008).

Gibbemeyer was one of nine players named All-Big Ten unanimously and is one of four on this year's team honored for the third time in four years. It's the sixth year in a row and the ninth time in 12 seasons a Gophers middle blocker has received all-conference honors.

Tori Dixon and Ashley Wittman were named to the all-freshman team; Dixon was named honorable mention all-conference.

Penn State's Blair Brown was named Big Ten Player of the Year, teammate Deja McClendon was Freshman of the Year and Russ Rose was Coach of the Year after guiding the Nittany Lions to their eighth consecutive conference title.

The Gophers (24-8) open the NCAA tournament at home Friday vs. North Dakota State (20-10).

• Gibbemeyer was named the national player of the week by CVU.com after the Gophers beat Ohio State in four sets and Penn State in five.

Concordia (St. Paul)'s Megan Carlson and Cassi Haag were named to the American Volleyball Coaches Association's 14-member Division II All-America first team, as was Devin Diedrich of Southwest Minnesota State. Concordia also had Amanda Konetchy and Emily Palkert named to the second team and Kayla Koenecke to the third team.

Woods calls 2010 'very successful' The goal for Tiger Woods has always been to be better than he was the year before. Despite losing his marriage and every tournament he played, he still gave himself a passing grade.

"As a golfer, I learned so much more this year than any other year -- and as a person, infinitely more," he said Tuesday. "So it's been a very successful year, even though it was a very painful year, as well."

That year comes to a close with the Chevron World Challenge, which starts Thursday in Thousand Oaks, Calif., featuring an 18-man field of players inside the top 50 in the world ranking. Woods has won the past two times he played the event, but he missed the past two years -- in 2008 while recovering from knee surgery, and in 2009 because of the Thanksgiving night accident that led to revelations of his infidelity.

It was a year that Woods described as "harder than anyone could have imagined."

"As I played throughout the summer, I kept trying to do the things that I was working on with Hank over the years, and it just wasn't working anymore, and it got to a point where I just couldn't do it," he said. "It's kind of hard to try and play tournament level golf, major championship golf especially, when at the time I was struggling with which way the ball was going to go. That's not fun."

Why wasn't it working? "For some reason, it just wasn't," he said. "And it was time to go a different route."

Auto racing: Pocono Raceway expects a safer track in 2011 and beyond. The NASCAR track in Pennsylvania should be finished by the end of this year with significant safety upgrades that include a soft-wall barrier and catch fence. Work on the multimillion-dollar project started in October. Kasey Kahne was involved in a huge scare in June when his car went airborne and would have flipped out of the track had it sailed higher. In August, Elliott Sadler walked away from a frightening wreck when his car smashed the inside wall.

Tennis: Maria Sharapova will lead Russia in its Fed Cup first-round match against France next season, agreeing to play in the competition for the first time since making her debut in Russia's 4-1 first-round victory over Israel in 2008. Svetlana Kuznetsova, Dinara Safina and Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova will also be on the team.

Soccer: Italian league players say they will strike on the weekend of Dec. 11-12 after union representative Sergio Campana walked out on collective bargaining talks. Campana left the negotiations with Serie A on Tuesday despite a Nov. 30 deadline for reaching a resolution to the dispute, according to the ANSA news agency. ... FIFA will choose the 2018 and 2022 World Cup hosts with 22 executive committee members after the Oceania Football Confederation accepted the loss of its voting rights.