sutomcat
No recent Cali or Iggy awards; Mr Irrelevant
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Welcome to Saint Erho's Day!
The legend of St. Urho originated in Northern Minnesota in the 1950s. However, there are differing opinions as to whether it began with the fables created by Sulo Havumaki of Bemidji, or the tongue-in-cheek tales told byRichard Mattson of Virginia. Either way, the legend has grown among North Americans of Finnish descent to the point where St. Urho is known and celebrated across the United States and Canada, and even in Finland.
St. Urho's Day is celebrated on March 16th, the day prior to the better known feast of some minor saint from Ireland, who was alleged to have driven the snakes from that island.
The legend of St. Urho says he chased the grasshoppers out of ancient Finland, thus saving the grape crop and the jobs of Finnish vineyard workers. He did this by uttering the phrase: "Heinäsirkka, heinäsirkka, mene täältä hiiteen" (roughly translated: "Grasshopper, grasshopper, go to Hell!"). His feast is celebrated by wearing the colors Royal Purple and Nile Green. St. Urho is nearly always represented with grapes and grasshoppers as part of the picture.
SU News
Trevor Cooney vs Frank Howard: Making Cases for Syracuse Basketball Guards (PS; Ditota)
Trevor Cooney played 24 minutes in Syracuse's loss to Pittsburgh last week in the ACC Tournament. That number represented the fewest minutes the Orange shooting guard logged all season.
It came in a game Syracuse desperately wanted to win. The Orange could bolster its NCAA Tournament profile with a victory over Pittsburgh, a team that defeated SU twice during the regular season. And yet, with SU trailing by 11 and the game essentially on the line, SU coach Jim Boeheim elected to remove Cooney for freshman point guard Frank Howard for what turned out to be a crucial stretch of the second half.
With Howard in the lineup, SU tied the game at 68 before falling 72-71 to the Panthers. Howard's ability to "play downhill," to exploit crevices in the Pitt defense and find teammates for good shots, played a significant role in that comeback.
Advanced metrics can be tricky, incomplete evaluation tools. But in the Pittsburgh game, Howard's plus-minus was plus-6 and Cooney's was minus-8. (The plus-minus measures how much a team leads or trails with that player in the game.)
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Football's Power Lurks Behind the Men's Basketball Tournament (nytimes.com; Tracy)
In a talk at the University of South Carolina last month, the president of the N.C.A.A., Mark Emmert, discussed how colleges outside the so-called Power 5 conferences were adjusting to a new competitive landscape. The more modestly endowed universities, he said, compete without the billions of dollars in football-related revenue that their rivals in the bigger, richer conferences enjoy, even as costs — including scholarships newly buttressed by cash to cover the full cost of attendance — continue to rise.
“Everybody’s recognizing that is just the reality of the world,” he said.
Perhaps remembering that the growing financial divide came about in part because some of those bigger conferences threatened to break away from Division I, Emmert added that most smaller universities in Division I were less concerned with trying to keep up than with simply maintaining opportunities.
“That’s one of the reasons why March Madness is so popular,” he said, referring to the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament, “becauseMercer can go beat Duke, and for Mercer that’s a big deal.”
Still, in a college sports society that features a football-driven financial aristocracy, a disparity in money, many say, is deepening an imbalance in competition. The days of the basketball bracket-buster from outside a traditional football power conference — programs like Mercer, but also Butler and even Villanova, which held the No. 1 ranking for several weeks this season — may be over.
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Other
St Patrick's Day Deals: Wear Green and Score at IHOP, Sonic and More (PS; Axelson)
Top o' the mornin' to ya! Tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day, and that means shamrocks, corned beef and cabbage, Guinness and the color green everywhere.
It also means special offers from several chain businesses looking to bring in customers and reward them for celebrating St. Patrick's Day.
These chains in the Central NY area have special offers on St. Patrick's Day:
- Stewart's Shops are offering special 50-cent single-scoop ice cream cones to anyone wearing green on Thursday.
- IHOP customers can get a $1 shortstack of buttermilk pancakes if they wear green on Thursday.
- Sonic is offering half off on all shakes all day on Thursday.
- Friendly's is offering half off on Mint Fribbles, ice cream sandwiches and kid's sundaes all day.
- Arby's special Mint Chocolate Swirl Shake is available for the entire month of March.
- Burger King's Oreo Irish Mint Shake is available now, but disappears after March 19.
- McDonald's Shamrock Shake is also available through the 19th.
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