sutomcat
No recent Cali or Iggy awards; Mr Irrelevant
- Joined
- Aug 15, 2011
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Welcome to National Scrabble Day!
The popular board game Scrabble is celebrated today, on the birthday of its creator, Alfred Butts. Butts lost his architectural job in 1931, during the Great Depression, and began brainstorming with the goal of creating a game. He organized board games into three categories: strategy games, numbers games, and word games. Realizing most games weren't word games, he set out to make one that everyone could enjoy. He wanted to combine chance and skill, and was influenced by crossword puzzles and anagrams. In his new game, which he called Lexico, words were built by drawing and discarding from letter tiles. Nine letter tiles were held at a time and there was no game board. Between 1934 and 1938, he made Lexiko sets by hand. He tried to license them to Milton Bradley and Parker Brothers but was rejected.
He then tweaked the game so that words could be built like a crossword puzzle, and began calling this version Criss-Cross Words. He included common letters more frequently, but made them worth fewer points than rare letters; he only put in four S's, though, as he didn't want easy points to be made by making words plural. He added two blank tiles and lowered the number of letters each person had from nine to seven. Butts sold Criss-Cross Words from his home for $2 a game and drew all the pieces by hand using his architectural draft equipment. He stopped producing the game sometime in the 1940s.
SU News
Axe: Want to divide Syracuse basketball fans? Just bring up recruiting (PS; Axe)
It’s not religion, politics or when to end social distancing.
If you want to see the Syracuse basketball fan base split up and take sides in an instant, just bring up recruiting.
The latest example came this past weekend when former Henninger High School Center Quincy Ballard, a 7-foot, 240-pound prospect, picked Florida State out of a list of finalists that also included Syracuse, Cincinnati, Maryland and North Carolina State.
Ballard was completely off the radar a week ago (Syracuse just offered him a scholarship on Wednesday night) yet his decision to go to Tallahassee brought out the predictable social media civil war on the prowess of Jim Boeheim’s recruiting.
Look, I get it. Syracuse has been on the hunt for a true, low-post offensive threat since Rakeem Christmas graduated in 2015.
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Syracuse Basketball: Some Orange fanatics are just never satisfied (itlh; Adler)
Syracuse basketball, by a ton of metrics, is one of the 10 best programs in history, but recent blips have various fans unnecessarily up in arms.
In an age of collegiate hoops where immediate gratification is demanded and a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately attitude continually percolates, Syracuse basketball is seemingly hot garbage, according to a section of Orange fans.
That’s utter non-sense to me, but everyone is entitled to his or her opinion.
In fact, whenever a significant development occurs for Syracuse – in recruiting, the team’s performance, or anything else for that matter – I peruse social media to get a sense of the fans’ temperature for the Orange.
Lately, a lot of coldness has persisted. Take, for example, ‘Cuse target Quincy Ballard on Saturday picking Atlantic Coast Conference foe Florida State over Syracuse, and Maryland.
Once this news broke, I knew that the Orange Twitter-sphere would absolutely blow up with negativity. It’s totally reasonable to feel disappointed that the 7-foot Ballard, a promising center in the 2020 class, opted for the Seminoles, particularly since he’s from the Syracuse area.
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Elite 8 matchups for best Syracuse basketball NBA career - The Juice Online (the juice; Dagostino)
Earlier in the week, we at The Juice Online created a 16 player bracket to determine which Syracuse players enjoyed the best NBA careers.
Remember, for this exercise, throw out what happened at Syracuse. Guys like Pearl Washington, Lawrence Moten and Leo Rautins had great SU careers, but didn’t make much of an impact at the next level.
When we left off on Tuesday, the matchups went mostly chalk, with only ninth-seeded Michael Carter-Williams knocking off No. 8 Louis Orr.
Here’s how the matchups look heading into the Elite 8:
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Tech Signee Maxwell Named N.C. Mr. Basketball (ramblinwrecki.com)
Georgia Tech’s incoming freshman guard Tristan Maxwell has been named Mr. Basketball in the state of North Carolina by the Charlotte Observer, the newspaper announced Saturday.
The honor for the 17-year-old Maxwell puts the 6-2 guard in high-level company, not the least of which was Charlotte native Anthony Morrow, the 2004 honoree who played at Georgia Tech from 2004-08 and went on to play nine seasons in the NBA. Recent stars so named include Duke’s Wendell Moore (2019) and Brandon Ingram (2015), North Carolina’s Coby White (2018), Theo Pinson (2014) and Isaiah Hicks (2013) and Kentucky’s Bam Adebayo (1016). Wake Forest and longtime NBA star Chris Paul won the honor in 2003.
He is the first Tech signee to be named Mr. Basketball in any state since Derrick Favors in 2009.
“In ninth grade, all we wanted Tristan to do was shoot,” said Duane Lewis, Maxwell’s high school coach at North Mecklenburg. “This year, we wanted him to play some at point guard. He just grew so much. He understood that, ‘I can get 20 points more efficiently … His basketball IQ was growing each year, but it was on another level this year. He was a great leader and he used to be one to get in his feelings.”
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ACC Analyst on Cole Anthony: 'Some People' Don't Want Him 'For Whatever Reason' (BR; Goldberg)
North Carolina guard Cole Anthony is one of the more divisive players heading into the 2020 NBA draft.
"I've gotten the complete spectrum," ACC Network analyst Cory Alexander said of the player's draft stock, per Zach Braziller of the New York Post. "Some people love him, and some people would not want him on their team for whatever reason."
Though he hasn't yet declared for the draft, Anthony is considered a likely lottery pick after averaging 18.5 points, 5.7 rebounds and 4.0 assists per game during his freshman season.
Bleacher Report's Jonathan Wasserman listed the point guard as the No. 7 overall player in the 2020 class.
Considering his production on the floor and the fact that he entered the year as the No. 4 player in the 2019 recruiting class, per the 247Sports composite rankings, there are plenty with high expectations for the 19-year-old.
"I thought he was a top-five pick before the season, and I haven't really changed my mind," ESPN's Jay Bilas said. "I can't imagine that he wouldn't be taken in the top 10."
However, Braziller noted that while some have Anthony coming off the board within the top five picks, others have him going in the late teens.
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Other
4 decisions that Nichols grocery store’s owner made to keep going during coronavirus pandemic (PS; Curtis)
Mike Hennigan saw a line outside of his grocery store for the first time in over a week when he arrived for work Tuesday morning.
As the owner of Nichols Supermarket in Liverpool, he unlocked the doors and people began to shuffle inside prompting him to say, “I know what what you people are doing and I respect you for that, but — as a guy who’s here seven days a week — the best time to shop is 9 or 10 o’clock in the morning. There aren’t a lot of people here.”
The rush is because of the coronavirus pandemic, which has some shoppers hitting the groceries at dawn. Another push arrives in the evening because customers assume the store will be less busy, he says.
“It’s just been incredible for sales to the point that you wonder where your customers put their groceries,” said Hennigan, who’s spent 55 years with the company.
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