Late Monday night, documents were released that showed the University of Oregon and NCAA acknowledged that “major violations” had occurred within the athletic department.

Since these documents have come to light, they have been dissected and scrutinized by college football pundits across the nation.

While the end result for the Ducks is still several months away and these documents give only a brief snapshot of the picture a few months ago, they are nevertheless very intriguing.

The Register-Guard’s Rob Moseley gives his perspective on the most recent developments regarding the Ducks and the NCAA here.

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In the aftermath of a traumatizing event, it is hard to get back into the swing of things and oftentimes people have a deep yearning for things to return to “normal.”

The people of Boston are now dealing with these feelings and their new reality; they were the victims of an attack that killed three people and injured over 100 others.

While there are still countless unanswered questions regarding the events that took place on Monday, people in Boston, as well as around the country, have rallied together in a show of solidarity for the victims.

ESPNBoston.com’s Jackie MacMullan discusses the events of Monday and how sports will be able to help people attempt to return to a state of normalcy, even if it takes a while.

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Tonight the NBA plays the last day of regular season games and per usual, there is no shortage of interesting storylines to follow. Will the Lakers, minus Kobe, salvage the eighth seed in the West? Will Carmelo claim the scoring title? The schedule of games is rich in intrigue, and the Association has to be quite pleased.

However, one storyline that has gotten somewhat lost in all the commotion is the fact that in all likelihood Stephen Curry will break Ray Allen’s record for three pointers in a single season.

Curry has been a driving force in helping Golden State reach the playoffs for the first time in six years, and claiming the record would just be the frosting on the already very sweet cake of a season.

Entering the game tonight in Portland, Curry is just two away from tying and three away from owning the record.

Late Monday night, KATU in Portland published an article outlining documents that had been acquired regarding “major violations” occurring within the Oregon athletic department.

While the documents attained portray the climate of how the NCAA was thinking six months ago, it is not too early to take a look at what these documents could possibly mean in the long run.

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The attacks that occurred at the finish line of the Boston Marathon that left three people dead and over 100 wounded on Tuesday had reverberations felt not only in Boston but the United States as a whole.

Security across the nation, specifically in Washington, D.C., and New York, was heightened due to the attacks, and as a result of the blasts and the uncertainty they still shrouded, as several professional games were postponed as well.

In particular, the NHL game pairing the Boston Bruins and Ottawa Senators, as well as the Boston Celtics matchup against the Indiana Pacers were postponed from taking place Monday.

Both games were scheduled to take place in Boston.

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The early-season success of the Oregon baseball team, and a few individuals in particular, have begun to draw some national attention.

Pitcher Jimmie Sherfy and outfielder Scott Heineman are the two most recent Ducks to garner such national praise, and the Emerald’s own Aubrey Wieber talks more about their accolades.

According to KATU in Portland, the station received documents stating both the University of Oregon and the NCAA Enforcement Committee agreed the school committed a series of “major violations” between 2008 and 2011.

Now the question becomes, what does this mean for the future of the Oregon football program? The simple answer, while not very fulfilling, is no one really knows.

The documents KATU were able to receive are from September of last year, so in a sense, they are now outdated as the NCAA has made numerous changes in policy since that time.

What we do know is the list of violations were agreed on by the UO and the NCAA back in September. The most glaring violation is the UO paid for a recruiting service headed by Willie Lyles, which is a violation of NCAA rules. Lyles is a name that should be quite familiar to Duck fans, as his name was at the center of the initial violations brought up against Oregon.

What is important to note while reading the report is it is clearly stated during the investigation there was “no finding of lack of institutional control and no finding of unethical conduct.” This is good news for Oregon fans because had the committee found this to be the case, stiffer penalties would be all but certain for the athletic program.

Another key takeaway from this recently-acquired report is the tone throughout implies the UO and athletic department have been cooperative and compliant throughout the investigation process.

The report has now been seen and dissected by numerous sources, so what’s next?

According to KATU, a plea deal between the NCAA and UO was unable to be reached back in December, so the school will bring its case to the NCAA Committee on Infractions. What will happen at this meeting, expected in spring, is anyone’s guess.

While the news broken by this report is by no means good news, it is not quite time for the Oregon faithful to start fearing a multiple-year bowl ban or vacated victories.

This report is a snapshot of how the NCAA was thinking back in September, and it appears as though it is time to play the waiting game to see how the rest of this story will unfold.

Ducks continue spring practice. The Oregon football team completed its sixth of 15 practices on Tuesday afternoon in preparation for the spring game on April 27 and the start of the 2013 season in the fall. The practice consisted of a scrimmage where coaches were able to evaluate how players performed in a game situation.

As is to be expected during spring camp, there were some impressive highlights as well as areas the Ducks are hoping to improve.

The Register-Guard’s Rob Moseley provides a full recap of the days activities here.

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Smith to leave Louisville. Fresh off a National Championship victory over the Michigan Wolverines, Louisville guard Russ Smith is headed to the NBA. Smith’s father, Russ Smith Sr. announced the news and said his son will give a formal announcement sometime in the next week.

Smith is not the only Cardinal that Rick Pitino will be losing next season. Point guard Peyton Siva is graduating and many anticipate that center Gorgui Dieng will declare for the draft as well.

The junior from Brooklyn, N.Y., is expected to be either a late first- or early second-round draft pick.

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Warriors back in the playoffs. For the first time in six years, the Golden State Warriors are back in the playoffs. The team punched its ticket to the playoffs last night after they defeated the Minnesota Timberwolves 105-89 at home, coupled with a 90-80 loss by the Utah Jazz at the hands of the Oklahoma City Thunder.

The last time the Warriors made a playoff appearance was the 2006-07 season where they went on a surprising end of the year surge and eventually upset the Dallas Mavericks in the first round of the playoffs.

The No. 9 ranked Oregon Ducks softball team traveled to Berkeley on Saturday and split their doubleheader with the No. 4-ranked Golden Bears of California.

The Ducks won the afternoon game 5-1, but then fell to Cal 3-1 in the evening matchup.

En route to a victory in the first game of the doubleheader, Oregon scored two runs in the fourth inning thanks to a Kaylan Howard solo homerun and RBI double from Samantha Pappas. The Ducks were able to tack on two more runs, one in the fifth and one in the sixth, respectively, and received another stellar pitching performance from Jessica Moore.

Moore was impressive once again for Oregon, and through her seven innings of work she struck out six, walked no one and the single run she gave up was unearned.

As dominant as the Ducks were in the afternoon game, the evening affair was a different story for Oregon.

Cal was able to establish a lead early, and as the game progressed to its latter stages, the scoreboard read 3-0 in favor the Golden Bears. The Ducks were able to put a run on the board in the fifth thanks to an RBI single from Alexa Peterson, but in the end it was simply just not enough to grab the evening victory.

On the horizon. Following the split of the Saturday doubleheader, the Ducks and Cal will meet again on Sunday at noon to complete the series in Northern California. After the completion of the series, Oregon will return to Eugene and prepare for a three-game series with the Arizona Wildcats next weekend.

Just less than three months after the Oregon Ducks defeated Collin Klein and the Kansas State Wildcats 35-17 in Glendale, Ariz., the Ducks returned to the practice field today for the first day of spring ball.

While many faces present after practice were familiar, there was one obvious and glaring difference; Chip Kelly, after four years as the head man for the Ducks, was not there.

Kelly has since moved on to coach the Philadelphia Eagles, and former Oregon offensive coordinator Mark Helfrich was promoted to head coach.

Talking after his first day of running practice for Oregon, Helfrich spoke of what he was looking for out of the team this spring.

“Improvement, we talked about it yesterday and today,” said Helfrich. “Just setting our daily standard and then that’s the new standard, resetting … When it’s time to work we work, and our guys have done a great job of that for a long, long time.”

Even with the changes within the coaching staff, many things remain constant, most notably starting quarterback Marcus Mariota.

Mariota, who said he put on between five and seven pounds of muscle since the end of last season, seemed at ease when talking about the first practice of the Helfrich era.

“Actually there was no changes at all except Coach Helfrich,” Mariota said. “Nothing really changed, offense was the same, practice was the same. It was a good vibe.”

He continued, “Today Coach Helfrich really handled himself well and he was kind of all over the place which is different for me. To see him over on the defensive side of the ball was a little different … but other than that he did a good job and I’m looking forward to the rest of spring.”

With the departure of Kenjon Barner to the NFL, De’Anthony Thomas will figure to burden more of the responsibility in the backfield during his senior campaign, a role he finds comfortable.

“I just feel like I have the same role, being a momentum builder and a game changer,” Thomas said.

Even with a new head coach and the shuffling and offensive and defensive staff, the Ducks seemed to all reiterate the fact that with Helfrich as their new leader very little has changed.

“No changes at all,” Thomas continued. “We’re just trying to make things better for the players and also the coaches.”

The Oregon acrobatics and tumbling team continued their winning ways Saturday afternoon at Matthew Knight Arena when they defeated Fairmont State, 284.13-265.71, in a meet that never really felt close.

The meet began with the compulsory event where the Ducks were able to win all four phases and jump out to an early 38.15-36.45 lead.

Following the compulsory event, the two squads competed in the acro event, where the Ducks won all three heats, expanding their lead to 6.5 points over the Falcons. Oregon looked much crisper than Fairmont State in the event and were seemingly executing their stunts to perfection. After the completion of the event, the score read 67.7-61.2 in favor of the Ducks.

The third event of the meet was the pyramid event, and unlike the first two events, the pyramid was highly contested.

Turning point. After the three heats, the scores were revealed, and the Ducks were able to slightly best the Falcons, winning the event 29.35-29.15. Their victory in the pyramid event gave Oregon a 97.05-90.35, as the teams returned to the locker rooms for the 15-minute halftime.

Coming back from halftime, they maintained their high level of execution, and Fairmont State could simply not keep up. Entering the toss event, the Ducks consistently had higher starting scores, and they won all three heats, taking the event 28.9-26.9.

The meet continued on into its latter stages with the fifth event: the tumbling event. This was more of the same for the Ducks as they were consistently better than the Falcons, winning all six heats and ballooning their lead to 180.98-170.45 as they headed into the final event.

The meet concluded with the team routine, and once again, they outshone the visitors and won the event 101.15-95.26, taking the overall meet 284.13-265.71.

On the horizon. The Ducks remain undefeated this season and will have a little while to recover and prepare for their next meet. They return to action on March 25 as they travel to Hamden, Conn., to take on Quinnipiac University.

The Pac-12 tournament got under way yesterday in Las Vegas at the MGM Grand. While the Ducks did not hit the hardwood yesterday since they earned a first round bye, several other games of interest occurred in Sin City.

The most notable game of the first day was a battle between No. 8 Stanford and No. 9 Arizona State in a contest that came down to the wire. In the end, Arizona State was able to best the Cardinal and advance to a matchup with UCLA.

The Emerald’s own Jackson Long is live in Vegas covering the tournament and provides a recap of all the notable first day action here.

A different kind of professional. The world of the NFL is cruel. In a league where there are no guaranteed contracts and the average career length is short, players can seem dispensable.

Oregon starting lineman Ryan Clanton decided that after the 2013 season, and the completion of his career as a Duck, he wanted to ensure that if football didn’t work out he would have a legitimate backup plan.

For this reason he decided to intern with Hoffman Construction, a construction firm that has helped to improve many of Oregon’s athletic facilities.

The Register-Guard’s Rob Moseley takes a look at Clanton’s winter and the steps he took to prepare for his future in football.

Mamba down. When the Los Angeles Lakers lost to the Atlanta Hawks last night 96-92, they didn’t just lose another regular season game; they also lost their star Kobe Bryant.

Bryant suffered a severely sprained ankle in the waning moments of the game when he came down awkwardly on the Hawks Dahntay Jones’ foot.

Bryant is out indefinitely and should he miss an extended period of time, it will surely hurt the Lakers’ playoff aspirations.

The best-kept secret on campus is the Oregon acrobatics and tumbling team.

Head coach Felecia Mulkey has successfully guided her team to back-to-back NCATA national titles and has opened up the 2013 season leading two convincing victories over Azusa Pacific University and Baylor.

The excitement and pure athleticism of an acrobatics and tumbling meet is undeniable; it is incredibly fast paced, and seeing the tumblers fly all over the pads is a sight to behold.

But the exciting new sport is still in its infant stages, and seniors Samantha Schulze, Lauren Loos and Julia Magdelino have seen quite the transformation since they arrived in Eugene for the inaugural year of the program in 2009.

The set up of acrobatics and tumbling was the brainchild Mulkey, who outlined the meet format on the back of a napkin while on a plane. Despite these humble beginnings, the sport now has a national governing body, the National Collegiate Acrobatics and Tumbling Association and currently has eight schools that compete at the Division I level.

“It started as us going to cheer competitions,” said Loos, reflecting back on her freshman season. “Our first year we had two or three official meets … We kind of had to just make up stuff as we went. Oregon has led the way in the NCATA program, setting the standards for everything, even little stuff, like (how) you run on and off the floor.”

The question is, why now? What is the sudden draw to competitive acrobatics and tumbling?

Magdelino believes that a large part of it has to do with current state of gymnastics and the increased opportunities her sport provides.

“Artistic gymnastics has slowly been dying, and it’s really hard for any girl in artistic gymnastics to get into the collegiate level just because there’s so limited opportunities,” Magdelino said. “Acrobatics and tumbling, what it does is create so many more opportunities especially since each team has 35 to 40 girls, which is quadruple the amount of a gymnastics team.”

With all the opportunities for women that the sport provides, all three athletes believe that at this point, the sky is really the limit for the sport.

“I think it’s going to be huge,” said Schulze. “I think by then, gymnastics is going to be not completely gone, but I think it’s going to be so much smaller, and this is going to take over. There’s going to be so many more opportunities for girls to do it.”

Magdelino agreed. “I think based on where we are right now as a sport, five years is going to bring something, 10 years is going to bring something … We’re just going to be so far past where we are now just based on what we’ve done the past three years.”

Looking a little closer in the future, the next goal for the Oregon acrobatics and tumbling team is another national championship, and if they were able to succeed, it would be their third in as many years.

Repeating championships is one of the hardest tasks in all sports. When asked if they have the ability to make history and win another title, all three athletes immediately acknowledge, “Yeah, it’s there.”

With their supreme confidence and talent, a threepeat doesn’t seem out of the question for this group of athletes — in fact, it seems very plausible.

A return to the air — As dominant as the Oregon football offense has been the past few years, fans have continually had one complaint: The Ducks lack off a deep threat in the air.

Not since the Jeff Maehl Era has Oregon had a go-to wide receiver that defenses have had to account for in their game plan. Josh Huff has shown glimpses of being this playmaker; however, injuries and inconsistency have hindered his growth into this role.

New wide receivers’ coach Matt Lubick comes to Eugene in hopes of re-establishing the Ducks’ aerial attack, and he is no stranger to Oregon.

Singler possible POY candidate? — Oregon forward E.J. Singler has had quite the memorable senior season. Not only are the Ducks playing the best basketball in his tenure in Eugene, but the team will almost assuredly make the NCAA Tournament.

While he may not be the flashiest player in the Pac-12, his heart and basketball IQ are second to none — and for this reason, his name has popped up in the conference Player of the Year discussion.

The Register-Guard’s Bob Clark takes a look at Singler’s case for the accolade, and what Dominic Artis’ playing time coming up may look like.

Revis does not appear Bay bound — It appears as though the relationship between cornerback Darrelle Revis and the New York Jets is past the point of repair. The talented corner has made it no secret that he wants out of New York, and the team appears to be honoring his request, actively shopping him to others in the league.

One team that has come up in the rumor mill as a possible destination has been San Francisco. The 49ers are an incredibly talented squad fresh off a Super Bowl appearance but are in dire need of help in the secondary.

However, according to team sources, the likelihood that Revis is in the Bay Area for the 2013 season is quite low.