With just under two months left until March Madness, college basketball is heating up with news. Here are my favorite storylines from this week.
After years of stability, life is moving pretty fast at One Patriot Place. The immutable Bill Belichick is gone, replaced by a fresh face, Jerod Mayo, who represents the dawning of a new era for the franchise without quite relinquishing all ties to the Patriot Way. Suddenly, with a new head coach for the first time since 2000, an apparent opening in the front office and the disappointment of a 4–13 season behind them, uncertainty seems to be the new status quo.
While most of the school was enjoying their last weekend of winter break, the women’s basketball team played in two NESCAC games against Amherst on Friday and Hamilton on Saturday. Tufts split the weekend, winning against Hamilton but losing to Amherst in two close games.
Now that we are just over halfway through the regular season, it’s fitting to start predicting who will grace the 2023-24 All-America First Team in college hoops. While a lot could change, here are my picks for the time being, along with an honorable mention.
The Tufts men’s basketball team was in a winning mood after its win at home against Clark University, knowing its next six games were away. The first three against UMass Dartmouth, University of Saint Joseph and No. 5-ranked Keene State were all wins. The squad then headed to the Kingsmen Classic just after Christmas to Thousand Oaks, Calif., where they were scheduled to take on California Lutheran University and UT Dallas. Tufts took its first loss of the season, losing to Cal Lutheran 70–66, before bouncing back to beat UT Dallas 84–72.
I am so unbelievably sick of watching the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers sign or trade for every big name in baseball. It’s just not fair, and it needs to stop.
Typically, fire and ice don’t mix. After all, in the presence of fire, solid ice becomes dripping, liquid water. This contradiction has not stopped the Tufts men’s ice hockey team from setting the NESCAC on fire in recent weeks. After starting the season 0–4–1, the Jumbos rattled off seven consecutive wins, starting with a 7–4 win over Williams College on Dec. 1. So, a Friday night trip to take on the Amherst Mammoths presented another opportunity for the Jumbos to make their mark at the top of the NESCAC standings.
Alejandro Garnacho might have scored the goal of the season against Everton, but the jitters from Argentina’s magical strike would soon fade on the back of a potentially season-defining draw in Turkey. Before Manchester United’s trip to Istanbul on Nov. 29, qualification for the knockout stage was in their hands.
I will be studying abroad in Germany next semester, so with the semester coming to a close, this will be the last Sports and Society column for at least a really long time and potentially ever. However, instead of writing some sappy introspective summation of all we’ve learned, I’m just going to keep things like they usually are and send the column out just like it came into this world: by overthinking relatively simple concepts.
The Tufts men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams had strong starts to their season at the MIT Winter Invitational over the weekend. The men’s team came in first place out of five teams, and the women’s team came in second place out of seven teams. The men’s team ended with 1,875 points, beating runner-up MIT’s 1,567.5 points. The women’s team ended with 1,348.5 points, losing to MIT by 591 points but beating third-place team Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute by 512.5 points.
Five weeks into the season, we’ve had three different teams at the top of the AP poll. The University of Kansas held its own for three weeks but lost handily to Marquette University in the Maui Invitational. Purdue University held the No. 1 spot for one week, losing to an unranked Northwestern University team on Dec. 1. Now, the University of Arizona sits atop the rankings. While it has only been about a month and teams are still working out their kinks, there have been no signs of a single dominant squad in the sport.
The 2023 NFL season has been one of the most unpredictable and volatile in years, for individual players and for entire organizations. This puts many of the NFL’s major awards up in the air, so I’d like to offer my own predictions for these awards to close out the regular season columns.
In college sports, a team’s conference schedule is the most important, and usually the most difficult, part of its season. The Tufts men’s hockey team, though, has found its groove during the first few NESCAC matchups of the young season. The Jumbos defeated the Williams Ephs 7–4 on Friday and the Middlebury Panthers 4–1 on Saturday to claim their first two victories of the year. “It’s always nice to get the six points on the weekend, but also for our team morale and everything. It’s what we needed,” sophomore forward Max Resnick remarked.
The Anaheim Ducks are yet another team that is in a rebuilding process. The Ducks revolve around forward Trevor Zegras, who is an up-and-coming star, and goaltender John Gibson, who, despite being on the older side, is still playing at a very high level. Apart from these two players, the Ducks do not have any other extremely noticeable pieces on their roster, although there are a few nice role players in place, such as Adam Henrique, Alex Killorn and Troy Terry. Despite the average forward core and good goaltending, the Ducks have one of the worst defensive cores in the league, which will likely be the root cause of many losses this season. As the Ducks continue their rebuild, they are not in contention for a playoff spot, but with the vision they are trying to build on, they aim to be there soon.
For a look at baseball history this week, these are my picks for the five biggest Hall of Fame snubs in MLB history. This does not include players who have been left out due to steroid use (like Barry Bonds) or any other illicit activity (like Pete Rose).
As we enter into week 13 of the NFL regular season, the playoff picture is beginning to sharpen. While there are still plenty of spots up for grabs in the National Football Conference, the cutthroat jumble of teams stuck grappling for a wild card spot in the American Football Conference warrants a more in-depth look. With that in mind, let’s jump into where the 16 teams in the conference stand in the hunt for the playoffs.
The Anaheim Ducks are yet another team that is in a rebuilding process. The Ducks are centered around forward Trevor Zegras, who is an up-and-coming star, and goaltender John Gibson, who, despite being on the older side, is still playing at a very high level. Apart from these two players, the Ducks do not have any other extremely noticeable pieces on their roster, although there are a few nice role players in place such as Adam Henrique, Alex Killorn and Troy Terry. Despite the average forward core and good goaltending, the Ducks have one of the worst defensive cores in the league, which will likely be the root cause of many losses this season. As the Ducks continue their rebuild, they are not in contention for a playoff spot, but with the vision they are trying to build on, they aim to be there soon.
As the age-old idiom goes, “third time’s the charm.” For the No. 8 Tufts women’s basketball team, their third time out on the court each game, the third quarter, has proven this cliché to be true. For the third consecutive game, a strong third quarter in which they outscored their opponents by ten or more points propelled the Jumbos to victory, as they defeated the University of New England Nor’easters 64–50 on Sunday.
Every year, college basketball has countless tournaments on the week of Thanksgiving, and they never seem to disappoint. This Feast Week gave us not only great games but also lots of movement within the AP Poll. Here are the teams that either boosted their ranking or busted their resume.
The Jumbos stayed close to home this weekend, taking on UMass Boston at 12:30 pm on Nov. 25th. Walking into the game, the Jumbos were 4-0 and looking to maintain their undefeated streak. Meanwhile, the UMass Beacons were 1-3 and on a two game losing streak.
