Ty Bolton

            Major League Baseball (MLB) is just another sad story of its season being ruined due to COVID-19, also known as the corona virus. The only positive for the MLB, is that there is still s chance they will get to play a small portion of their season. As of right now, they are postponed since there season would just now be starting. Nothing has been stated yet on whether or not the season will or will not be played. A positive side to this crisis some teams were able to get some spring practice in and a few games before the pandemic postponed the rest of their spring games.

            The St. Louis Cardinals arrived in Jupiter, Florida shortly after the New Year. Pitchers were the first to get started. They threw bullpen and worked on technique for a few days before the rest of the team had to show up for practice. Once the whole team was showing up, practices were more normalized. By that, I mean they would have typical batting and fielding practices that baseball players are accustomed too. A typical spring training schedule for the Cardinals is, they would play eighteen games there in Jupiter and then have twelve games on the road. A lot of players will see playing time during spring training. Spring training is a good way for guys in the minors to showcase themselves and to help the major league players get back into the groove of baseball. Since there are a lot more players than a 40 man roster, there are a ton of games played. The Cardinals had a game just about every day from February 22 till March 12. After that is when the games got postponed. The Cardinals were 10-9-2 with a handful of games left to play, before their season came to a halt.

Ty Bolton

            As we all know, this year’s March Madness tournament was cancelled due to the outbreak of the corona virus. As the disease was spreading more rapidly in the United States, the NCAA decided to put a halt to all collegiate sports, and even canceling the rest of the seasons of winter sports. It is upsetting for seniors or for players that are good enough to go to the league next year. These players didn’t get their shot at a NCAA championship and for the seniors, it was their last chance to achieve that goal. At first the NCAA was trying to compromise, by still having the games, but only the essential people would be allowed to be in the arena. That only worked for a couple of games during the conference tournaments, before coming to the decision to cancel the big tournament. A lot of athletes have tested positive for the corona virus, so it was in the best interest of the athletes, staff, and fans to have the tournament canceled this year.

            We will never officially know the outcome of this year’s bracket, there were too many conference tournaments to be finished to determine the bracket. There were also multiple teams on the bubble of making it into the field of play, Indiana being one of those teams. Some of the conference games left, also would determine the seeding for some teams. For example, Louisville was looking at a four or five seed before the ACC tournament, but if they would have won out the conference tournament, they could have been looking at a two or three seed. It’s not much of a difference in numbers, but can effect where they will be playing at and who will be in their path on the way to the final four. We’ll never have a champion for the 2020 season, but this will make the 2021 season much more exciting.

Ty Bolton

            Like most conference tournaments, this year’s Big Ten tournament was cut short due to the pandemic that is going on around the world. Fortunately, they were able to play a few of the first round games this year. The tournament took place in the roots of the Midwest, in Indianapolis, Indiana at Banker’s Life Fieldhouse. Banker’s Life Fieldhouse is the home of the Indiana Pacers and is a great venue for hosting the Big Ten tournament. One of the more popular games to watch was the Indiana University game. They came into the tournament as the eleven seed and squared off against the University of Nebraska. Indiana dominated the game from the start of the game. They finished off the first half with a 31-5 run, using their size and depth advantage. They continued to soar past the Cornhuskers in the second half as well. The final score ended up being 89-64. It was a pretty easy game to get the Hoosiers feeling good about their second round opponent. The Hoosiers leading scorer was Armaan Franklin, leading the team with thirteen points. The Hoosiers had multiple other guys in double digit scoring; Justin Smith, Trayce Jackson-Davis, Aljami Durham, and Devonte Green. The Hoosiers next matchup was going to be against Penn State University. The NCAA had deemed the game to only have the essential personal there and no fans. This was due to the virus.  Archie Miller was disappointed about that for his players, he said the atmosphere would just have a closed scrimmage vibe. Miller also said the Hoosiers would be ready for the tough Nittany Lions. The pandemic was getting more and more out of control in the United States, therefore before the game between Indiana and Penn State could be played, the rest of the tournament had been canceled. This was a big shock to all of the sports world with everyone’s season coming to an end, but life is bigger than sports.

Ty Bolton

            The University of Louisville men’s basketball team just finished their final home of the season at the KFC! Yum Center in downtown Louisville, Kentucky. It was there senior night. The seniors consisted of; Jordan Nwora, Ryan McMahon, Fresh Kimble, Keith Odo, and Stephen Enoch. Almost all off those seniors were also a part of the all-academic team for the NCAA. For senior night the Cardinals hosted the Virginia Tech Hockies. It was back and forth for most of the game, but overall the Cardinals were able to pull away for a big win. Jordan Nwora was the leading scorer with a team high of twenty points. Nwora has been our leading school all season and is a first team All-ACC player this year. He has had a huge present for our team all season. Our next leading scorer for the game was Ryan McMahon, our other big time senior. McMahon has been our deadly threat from deep all season and he was during the game too. He went two for three from the three point line, and both of those three’s came at critical times during the game. At the end of the game, when the win was in reach, Coach Mack put in Keith Odo, a walk on senior. He got in the game and hit a three pointer and the emotion from him and his teammates was priceless. This was the most memorable experience of his career at Louisville. As a fan it was really cool to see him get in the game just to play some, but even more enjoyable to see him hit a big shot in front of his home fans. At the end of the game, he gave his senior speech to the fans and was almost speechless. It’s always cool to see a guy get to experience that when he works his ass off every day just to be on team. Next step is the final game of the season at Virginia and the tournament play. Hopefully the seniors can continue to work and bring us another championship, just like in 2013!

Ty Bolton

            The Evansville Thunderbolts are the local hockey team and they play at the Ford Center downtown. They just had a two game series this past week with the Quad City Storm. The Friday game, the first of the two games, was a very intense game. The Thunderbolts were able to draw first blood. Noah Corson was able to score an unassisted goal with two minutes left in the first period. That was the only goal in the first period. It was a slow start for both teams, but neither team lacked physicality. There were a couple roughing penalties by each team in the first period. The second period got started and the Storm were able to string together two goals to take the lead. One came in the first minute of the second period and the other goal from them came just five minutes later. The aggression continued to progress with more roughing, tripping, and slashing penalties from each team. Before the second period could come to an end, the Thunderbolts were able snag a goal on a power play. Demico Hannoun scored the goal that was assisted by Austin Plevy and Mike Ferraro. The third period rolled around and the Thunderbolts came out to a hot start. They score two goals within twenty seconds of the period. Tanner Butler got the first goal of the third period, assisted by Matthew Barnaby and Noah Corson. The second goal, which was just ten seconds after the first was scored by Mike Ferraro and was assisted by Tanner Butler and Austin Plevy. The Storm followed with another goal, but the Thunderbolts added some insurance late in the third to take the win 5-3. The last goal was scored by Braden Hellems on a power play. Again with the fighting, in the third there was multiple fights that broke out that lead to major penalties to both teams. As much as you don’t want that for your team, fighting is a part of the culture of hockey and it’s a big reason fans stay so engaged within this sport.

Ty Bolton

            The biggest news in the sports world right now is all the events from this past week over the NBA All Star break. This year’s NBA All Star games were hosted by the city of Chicago, at the United Center. It was also a very emotional All Star weekend with the recent death of Kobe Bryant and his daughter “Gigi”. The weekend had many dedications to the Bryant family and the others that lost their lives that day. One thing that the league did, was the two all-star teams wore numbers to remember Kobe and Gigi. Lebron’s team all wore the number two on their jerseys for Gigi and Giannis’s team wore the number twenty-four on their jerseys for Kobe. The rapper known as Common also did a tribute song/video to the Bryant family. Though there were many emotions throughout the weekend, there were some exciting games that went on. Bam Dialo won the skills contest and Buddy Hield won the three point contest. The three point contest went down to the last shot, if Buddy would have missed his last ball then Devin Booker would have won the contest, but he drained it to become the champion. The Dunk contest is one of the most hype events to watch other than the All Star game. The Dunk contest also came down to the wire. The final two contestants were Aaron Gordon and Derrick Jones Jr. They were both throwing down explosive dunks, but the end result was Derrick Jones Jr. being this year’s Dunk Contest champion. The NBA did some rule changes this year for the all-star game. This year the fourth quarter was untimed and they went to a point cap. The played to 157 points. Team Lebron won this year, with Anthony Davis hitting a free throw to win the game.

This week I will be discussing a blog over the Super Bowl, between the Kansas City Chief and the San Francisco 49ers. If you haven’t heard or seen, the Kansas City Chiefs had a comeback win in the Super Bowl. It was the Chief’s first Super Bowl win in the past fifty years. Even though this is the big headline, the blog I am going to talk about is over Kansas City Chiefs starting running-back, Damien Williams. Williams has had a breakout year, as far as his stats go. He was an undrafted running-back that was picked up by the Chiefs to back up Kareem Hunt. Hunt go into some trouble, which led to the dismissal of Hunt. This put Williams in the starting position role for the Chiefs. The Kansas City Chiefs head coach, Andy Reid, noted that he had a lot of faith in Williams being their go to guy for the running game. Williams definitely stepped up to the plate. He was good every Sunday this season, and then became the only running-back in NFL history to rush for more than 100 yards while scoring rushing and receiving touchdowns in the Super Bowl. Also when the Chiefs needed a big push to come back in the game, Williams scored two late touchdowns to secure the win for Kansas City. He had almost 500 yards rushing this season, which doubled his career best. Although Williams’s age could be a set-back, being it’s his seventh season, the Chiefs are considering making Williams the starter for the next season. If this is the case, it will be the first team he’s been the starting-running back on. The overall goal of this blog, is to show that Damien Williams had a great season with the Chiefs and potentially without his performance in the playoffs, the Chiefs may not have won the Super Bowl.

The NHL All Star came to an end with the Pacific Division winning the 2020 championship. MVP (Most Valuable Player) honors went to David Pastrnak, captain of the runner-up squad (Atlantic Division). Pastrnak record 6 points in the two games he played against the Central and Atlantic Divisions. Pastrnak is on the Boston Bruins, who are a top 3 team in the league. It seemed as if the Canadian NHL clubs were the more prominent clubs of the night. Players like Matthew Tkachuk and Leon Draisaitl were some of the representatives for the Canadian NHL clubs. Both Tkachuk (Calgary Flames) and Draisaitl (Edmonton Oilers) recorded some points that helped get the Pacific division the win. There were multiple more Pacific division players that played a large role in them winning the tournament.

The other big headline of the weekend, was the fact it was in St. Louis. The Blues had four players on the team for the weekend (Jordan Binnington, David Perron, Alex Pietrangelo, and Ryan O’Reilly). The Central division did not play to well in the tournament. It wasn’t the Blues’ players that were the talk about St. Louis though. The two hometown kids, the Tkachuk brothers were a big highlight of the weekend. The Tkachuk brothers went head-to-head in the 3-on-final. People were calling it the Battle of the Tkachuks. Other than the Tkachuk brothers, one other standout player (also in the Pacific division) was Quinn Hughes. Quinn Hughes is a defensive player and a rookie for the Vancouver Canucks. With him being a defensive player, he still came away with four points in his first game and then added two more in the second game of the night. Wayne Gretzky was impressed saying, “That young lad’s a defenceman!?”

Overall the blog was very informing for fans. It broke down which players achieved what, and how many points they recorded during the weekend activities. The blog includes the information needed, tweets, and highlights from the All Star games. https://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/star-game-live-blog-division-will-claim-2020-crown/

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
• Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
• What topics do you think you’ll write about?
• Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
• If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.