In case you were out living a life of leisure, here’s what you missed in sports on Thursday.

• After the Rangers had the Cardinals down to their final strike in the ninth and tenth innings and failed to finish them off, David Freese hit a walk-off home run in the eleventh to give the Cardinals a 10-9 win and send the Series to a deciding Game 7. In terms of drama, the only thing missing was an epic soundtrack. In terms of schadenfreude, the only thing missing was a reaction shot of George W. Bush weeping in Nolan Ryan’s arms.

• Houston quarterback Case Keenum threw nine touchdown passes to set the all-time FBS career record in a 73-34 win over Rice. Meanwhile, Rice set the all-time FBS record for playing exactly like a useless sack of the school name. (Oddly enough, the previous record was held by Temple.)

• Virginia established a lead with a series of big plays, including a fake field goal and a halfback option, and held off a final drive by Miami to win 28-21 on the road. Watching the trick plays from prison, Nevin Shapiro called Virginia “a bunch of damn cheaters.”

• The NCAA has approved a major reform package that will add money and years to scholarships, increase academic standards, and retool the summer basketball recruiting process. Man, those last two parts can’t bode well for UConn, right? Right?

• Under the new rules, UConn may be ineligible to participate in the 2013 men’s basketball tournament due to low academic scores.

• After discussing the salary cap all day Thursday, NBA players and owners will resume negotiations Friday with a focus on the division of revenues. Once they’ve failed to resolve that issue, they’ll switch the focus back to salary cap, and then back to division of revenues, and on and on until negotiations become so claustrophobic and insane that they perfectly resemble Edgar Allen Poe’s short story “The Masque of the Red Death.”

• In response to a wrongful-termination lawsuit filed by an agent against Michael Beasley, Beasley has countersued, alleging that the agent and a former AAU coach provided improper benefits to his mother while he was in college. Which partly explains why Beasley’s mother was selected tenth in the 2008 NBA draft by the Timberwolves. And partly doesn’t.

• Boise State president Bob Kustra and Big East commissioner John Marinatto met Thursday to discuss the possibility of joining forces as the conference considers expanding to 12 football teams. For Boise State, the downside of the move would be the extensive travel for every road game. The upside would be that they could still go undefeated every year.

• The Chicago Bears have released safety Chris Harris a week after he requested a trade. “Didn’t he ask to be traded to unemployment?” asked Bears coach Lovie Smith, sipping a glass of champagne. “No? Pity.”

---

Follow Grantland on Twitter or check out Grantland’s Facebook page.

Read more of The Triangle, Grantland’s sports blog.

Contact us at triangle@grantland.com