sutomcat
No recent Cali or Iggy awards; Mr Irrelevant
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Welcome to National Popcorn Day!
The origins of this holiday are unknown. We have not found any information or documentation to confirm this is a true "National" day. But, don't let that pop (burst) your bubble, err pop your corn that is. It's a day to celebrate healthy (until you load it with salt and butter), and addicting popcorn.
Strangely, National Popcorn Day is in January, yet National Popcorn Month is October. According to tradition, it is celebrated on January 19th each year. There is some suggestion that Popcorn Day may, at one point, have been tied to the Superbowl. And, we found one reference to it being on January 30th.
On National Popcorn Day, we suggest you pop up some fresh popcorn, kick back and enjoy!
SU News
SU Defeats Duke 64-62 (photo gallery; PS; Axe)
Duke Basketball's Feated Dark Days Are Upon Us (newsobserver.com; DeCock)
This wasn’t hard to see coming from a long way away. It was hazy on the horizon in November, then looming over Duke the moment Amile Jefferson went down. Duke was unavoidably going to struggle at some point this season. That moment has arrived.
Having lost three in a row for the first time since 2007, accepting the inevitability of it all doesn’t make it any easier for Duke to stomach. On the contrary, losing all three games with a chance to win in the final minute makes it all the more cruel, which was unquestionably the case in Monday’s 64-62 loss to Syracuse.
So the cold, dark days of winter are here, as they were always going to be, with inexperienced starters and a shallow bench and a point guard who would, under other circumstances, still be in high school. It was going to be a difficult slog through the ACC even before Jefferson was hurt, a catastrophic loss.
The slog is on, one game after another, Duke’s players looking more and more exhausted with each one, without another home game for almost three weeks. How Duke responds to this will determine not only how long these dark days last, but where the Blue Devils end up this season.
“We know we can fight. We’re so close,” Duke guard Matt Jones said. “For us to be such a young team and us to go through the time we’re going through right now, the positives of it are, when March comes, and we’re lucky enough to make the tournament, we can hang our hats on, we have been in close games. Now it’s just a matter of finishing.”
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Syracuse Conquers Cameron and Blue Devils 64-62 (dukebasketballreport.com; Sumner)
Déjà vu all over again. Rinse and repeat. Live by the 3, die by the 3.
You can probably come up with a few one-liners of your own.
But the scoreboard doesn’t lie and the scoreboard at the end of a wide, wooly and controversial ending read Syracuse 64 Duke 62. The loss was Duke’s third straight and drops the Blue Devils to 14-5, 3-3 in the ACC.
Four of those losses have come since Amile Jefferson went down with a broken foot and all four were up for grabs with a half-minute left. And a talented but young, thin Duke team simply hasn’t made the plays they needed to make.
There are some common threads. In all three ACC losses Duke mismanaged the end of the first half, allowing their opponents to close the gap and go into the locker room with momentum. Duke’s defensive rebounding woes continued and there were some big missed foul shots, this time a pair by Marshall Plumlee with Duke down 56-51, with 5:43 left..
Syracuse’s trademark is their 2-3 zone and it gave Duke fits. Or maybe not. The party line is that Duke had good looks and just couldn’t knock them down. Duke attempted 37 3-pointers and missed 27 of them. Luke Kennard and Matt Jones combined for 2-20 from the field, 2-18 from beyond the arc.
In fact, Kennard went scoreless two days after putting 30 on Notre Dame. He sat out the final, furious 5:23 of the game, a span when Duke made no substitutions.
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Other
How Will Gov. Cuomo Pay for $100 Billion in Projects? (PS; McAndrew)
Gov. Andrew Cuomo proposed an astounding $100 billion in infrastructure projects last week in his State of the State speech and state budget.
But how does he plan to pay for them?
One answer is that New York taxpayers would be on the hook for only $29 billion of the $100 billion in capital projects in Cuomo's budget.
Cuomo is counting on a big chunk of the bill to be paid by others: $25 billion by the federal government, $15 billion by private investors, $13 billion by the Metropolitan Transit Authority, and $12 billion by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
And most of the costs will be spread over multiple years. They won't be fully paid for in Cuomo's proposed $145 billion 2016-17 budget for the fiscal year that starts July 1.
Take the $22 billion for Upstate roads and bridges. The state plans to pay nearly $14 billion over 5 years and get $8 billion from the feds. This year, the state would use $200 million it received in legal settlements from banks and insurance companies to help pay for this.
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