The NCAA Tournament selection committee sees defending men’s nat­ional champion Villanova as the best basketball team in the country. Villanova, No. 2 in the AP Top 25, was the top overall seed in preliminary tourney rankings released by the NCAA on Saturday, joining Kansas, Baylor, and top-ranked Gonzaga atop the four regions. The NCAA followed the lead of the College Football Playoff by releasing its top 16 rankings early in an effort to drum up interest before Selection Sunday on March 12. The first in-season rankings by the NCAA are based upon games played through Friday and certainly could change before the final field of 68 is selected and seeded.

Villanova is the top seed in the East Regional and would play in New York. Kansas, No. 3 in the AP poll, is the top seed in the Midwest and would play in Kansas City. Baylor gets the top seed in the South Regional, which ends in Memphis. Gonzaga, the No. 4 overall seed in the preliminary rankings, is the top seed in the West Regional, slated to finish in San Jose, Calif.

North Carolina was the fifth overall seed and would play in the South, which also includes Florida and Butler. The Tar Heels were put in the South to avoid being in the same region as Villanova. Florida State was second behind Kansas in the Midwest, followed by Arizona and Duke. The East also includes Louisville, Kentucky and UCLA, with Oregon, Virginia and West Virginia filling out the West.

TRACK AND FIELD

Record in indoor 800

Ajee’ Wilson set the American record in the women’s indoor 800 meters to win the event for the fourth straight year in the NYRR Millrose Games in New York. Wilson, 22, finished in 1 minute, 58.27 seconds at The Armory to break the mark of 1:58.71 set by Nicole Teter in 2002. Runner-up Charlene Lipsey finished in 1:58.64 to also surpass Teter’s mark. In the same race, Samantha Watson of Henrietta, N.Y., broke the 43-year-old national high school mark in the 800 set by Mary Decker (Slaney) with time of 2:01.28. Olympic champion Courtney Okolo set a world indoor 500 record at 1:07.34 . . . Usain Bolt and his All-Stars completed a clean sweep of the inaugural Nitro Athletics series in Melbourne, with Bolt winning the 150-meter race in his only solo appearance of the three-night meet. With Asafa Powell and Bolt — the former and current 100-meter world record-holders — running the opening two legs of the deciding 4 x 100-meter mixed relay, the All-Stars ensured they made up a 38-point deficit on Australia to finish first overall in the team event that also included England, Japan, New Zealand, and China. Eight-time Olympic champion Bolt won the 150 in 15.28 seconds.

BASEBALL

Utley back to Dodgers

Veteran infielder Chase Utley is returning to the Dodgers on a one-year contract, according to the Los Angeles Times. The team has yet to announce a deal for the 38-year-old free agent, who played in 138 games last season, hitting .252 with 26 doubles and 14 home runs. The Times also reported the Dodgers and outfielder Franklin Gutierrez agreed to a one-year, $2.6 million pact . . . A person familiar with the situation says the World Series champion Cubs and reliever Pedro Strop have agreed to a $5.5 million, one-year contract.

Strop had asked for $6 million in arbitration with the team offering $4.6 million. The agreement continues a streak for president of baseball operations Theo Epstein, who has never taken a player to an arbitration hearing with Chicago or Boston. Strop was 2-2 with a 2.85 ERA in 54 appearances last season. He came to the Cubs with 2015 NL Cy Young Award winner Jake Arrieta from Baltimore in 2013 — a trade that helped the franchise end a 108-year championship drought in 2016 . . . Former Mariners closer Tom Wilhelmsen agreed to a minor league deal with the Diamondbacks. The righthander split last season between Texas and Seattle.

WINTER SPORTS

Two downhills on tap

A downhill doubleheader is lined up Sunday at the ski world championships in St. Moritz, Switzerland. The marquee races for women and men should go back-to-back after Saturday’s men’s downhill was postponed due to fog. American Lindsey Vonn is among the favorites in the women’s downhill to win her first world title since 2009 . . . Heather Bergsma of the United States won the women’s 1,000-meter title at the world single distance speedskating championships on the 2018 Olympic track in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Bergsma finished in 1 minute, 13.94 seconds, a half-second ahead of Japan’s Nao Kodaira.

Benedikt Doll won the men’s 10-kilometer sprint title, earning Germany its third medal in as many events at the biathlon world championships in Hochfilzen, Austria. American biathlete Lowell Bailey finished fourth, missing out on his first medal at a major championship by 6.4 seconds . . . South Korea had a strong day in the short-track speedskating World Cup in Minsk, Belarus, winning three events, including the men’s and women’s 1,500-meter races. Lee Hyo-Been led a podium sweep in the men’s 1,500.

MISCELLANY

US leads in Fed Cup

The United States took a 1-0 lead over Germany and led in the other opening tennis match in its best-of-five Fed Cup quarterfinal in Kaanapali, Hawaii. Alison Riske beat Andrea Petkovic, 7-6 (10-8), 6-2, and CoCo Vandeweghe led Julia Goerges, 6-3, 3-1, when rain halted play. Following the completion of the suspended match Sunday, the sides will play reverse singles and a doubles match . . . Richard Gasquet remains on course for a third straight tennis title at the Open Sud de France in Montpellier, where he will face German teen Alexander Zverev in the final. The third-seeded Gasquet beat countryman Benoit Paire, 6-2, 6-2, while the 19-year-old Zverev prevented an all-French final by beating Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, 6-7 (6-8), 6-2, 6-4 . . . Rowing’s governing body voted to drop the lightweight men’s four class from the 2020 Tokyo Olympics despite opposition from Asian countries, including China. The world body (FISA) said it wanted to intro­duce the women’s four class to promote gender equality. If the IOC approves the proposal, the 14 rowing events in Tokyo will have seven medal classes each for men and women.

In a further move toward gender equality, FISA decided that men or women should be allowed to cox either a men’s or women’s crew.

One by one, Chelsea’s closest challengers are falling away in the English Premier League title race. After implosions by Manchester City, Liverpool, and then Arsenal over the past month, it was second-place Tottenham’s turn to trip up Saturday. Spurs were outplayed at Liverpool in a 2-0 loss and could be 12 points behind Chelsea if the leader beats Burnley on Sunday. Arsenal and Manchester United also won, 2-0, against Hull and Watford, respectively, as the race for a top-four finish intensified. Two points separate Tottenham and sixth-place United.

A Russian stadium built for the 2018 World Cup and dogged by problems opened to the public, with mixed reviews. The 68,000-capacity stadium in St. Petersburg hosted 10,000 locals for a free extreme sports show designed to test the arena’s ‘‘security system, logistics and other systems,’’ according to deputy city governor Igor Albin. The $738 million stadium has been almost a decade in construction, and another month is needed to fix vibrations affecting the high-tech retractable field, Albin said.