So sick of seeing the hate Clark and Edey get. I literally can't believe there is any controversy about the offensive foul on UCONN. About as obvious a call as there could be.

We both have a mountain left to scale but it wouldn't be meaningful if it was easy. Let's win a couple of national championships for the Big Ten.

Good luck tomorrow.

Go Hawks!
Go Boilers!

This is incredible to see it charted out like this

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How soon will yesterday's tv ratings be announced ? Maybe I missed them. TIA

AP Top 25 - Final (4/8)
1. South Carolina (35) (38-0)
2. Iowa (34-5)
3. Connecticut (33-6)
4. North Carolina State (31-7)
5. USC (29-6)
6. LSU (31-6)
7. Texas (33-5)
8. Oregon State (27-8)
9. Stanford (30-6)
10. UCLA (27-7)
11. Notre Dame (28-7)
12. Indiana (26-6)
13. Baylor (26-8)
14. Gonzaga (32-4)
15. Colorado (24-10)
16. Ohio State (26-6)
17. Duke (22-12)
18. Virginia Tech (25-8)
19. Kansas State (26-8)
20. Syracuse (24-8)
21. Oklahoma (23-10)
22. Utah (23-11)
23. Creighton (26-6)
24. West Virginia (25-8)
25. Iowa State (21-12)

Others Receiving Votes
Tennessee, Nebraska, Mississippi, UNLV, Louisville, Middle Tennessee State, North Carolina, Fairfield, Kansas, Alabama

==============================

USA Today Coaches Poll - Final (4/8)
1. South Carolina (30) (38-0)
2. Iowa (34-5)
3. Connecticut (33-6)
4. North Carolina State (31-7)
5. Texas (33-5)
6. USC (29-6)
7. LSU (31-6)
8. Stanford (30-6)
9. UCLA (27-7)
10. Oregon State (27-8)
11. Notre Dame (28-7)
12. Indiana (26-6)
13. Gonzaga (32-4)
14. Ohio State (26-6)
15. Baylor (26-8)
16. Colorado (24-10)
17. Virginia Tech (25-8)
18. Kansas State (26-8)
19. Creighton (26-6)
20. Oklahoma (23-10)
21. Duke (22-12)
22. Utah (23-11)
23. Syracuse (24-8)
24. UNLV (30-3)
25. West Virginia (25-8)

Others Receiving Votes
Iowa State, Louisville, Tennessee, Middle Tennessee State, Nebraska, Princeton, Mississippi, Fairfield, Alabama, Richmond, North Carolina, South Dakota State, Kansas, Jackson State

Found this link on Rutgers' WBB board. Very nice article.

Are performing satanic activities during the solar eclipse?

I’m going with…..
Vin Scully
John Madden
Keith
Bob Costes

what chu got????

A West Union man who allegedly turned the roadside into an impromptu dump is facing thousands of dollars in fines.
Fayette County sheriff’s deputies received a report about trash tossed into a ditch at Echo Valley and Imperial Roads near Echo Valley State Park on Sunday.

The pile included box springs, beds and several garbage bags.

Deputies were able to trace the debris back to Christopher Loren Ray Zuercher, 38, of West Union, formerly of Waterloo, according to the sheriff’s office. He was cited with 29 counts of littering on a highway, citations that resulted in $4,596 in fines.
In comparison, dumpster rental usually runs around $400.

Zuercher was also ordered to return to the area and remove all the garbage in the presence of deputies, according to the sheriff’s office.

1. Ward. He’s actually intelligent and is the only person worth listening to on the pod. You can tell he cringes a lot when the others fart from their mouth often.

2. Kluver. A self righteous health nut who admits he doesn’t know even like college football. Brings his own cooked food to cookouts and makes fun of people for drinking. Tries to sell his workout plan on Twitter and begs people to DM him about it.

3. Kulick. A MAGA racist who tweeted a lot of anti Muslim stuff awhile back. Also defended Chris Doyle and said “the blacks were wrong”. Is completely stupid and talks like he’s 15. “Brah. Like, I really hate Nebraska dude.”

2 and 3 are clowns.

A highly anticipated Vatican document released Monday offered something of an olive branch to church conservatives, after a series of liberal declarations by Pope Francis. The new treatise denounced attempts to obscure the “sexual difference between man and woman” and stated that “any sex-change intervention” is a risk to human dignity.


But the Vatican stood by the more inclusive measures Francis has promoted, and the rollout of the new document offered a rare window into the frustrations his inner circle is feeling toward his traditionalist critics.
Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez — Francis’s new right-hand man and a fellow Argentine who heads the powerful Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith — omitted any mention of the gender passages from his opening remarks and then appeared to take aim at the pope’s critics in an unusually candid news conference.



Fernandez used the moment to deliver a staunch defense of Francis’s open-door stance, especially the December decision he penned with the pope’s backing to allow blessings of same-sex couples. That policy was widely criticized by traditionalists, including senior clerics in Africa and Eastern Europe. But Catholics, Fernandez said, should not be picking and choosing which parts of Francis’s teachings to follow. The 61-year old cardinal specifically called out an unnamed Catholic group that he said had backed an unspecified government’s harsh new legal measures against homosexuality.
Asked directly for the Catholic church’s position on anti-gay laws, he retorted: “Of course we are in favor of decriminalization.”
At one point, Fernandez also sought to counter the traditionalist view that a sitting pope should not contradict his predecessors. He noted that in 15th Century, Pope Nicholas V had explicitly offered permission to the king of Portugal to enslave pagans — a position contradicted 80 years later Pope Paul III.



“It seems like Pope Francis cannot say or think different from what was said before,” Fernandez said, referring to view of the pontiff’s adversaries.
The 23-page document released Monday, titled Dignitas infinita, or “infinite dignity” in Latin, amounted to a sweeping pronouncement on the human condition marking the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights issued by the United Nations. It warned of the ills of poverty, the plight of migrants and modern challenges to the concept of dignity, including cyberbullying.
But its briefer sections on gender theory and gender-affirming care were perhaps its most closely scrutinized.
In recent months, Francis, in conjunction with Fernandez, has affirmed that transgender people can be baptized and serve as godparents and approved the blessings of same-sex and other unmarried couples. Francis also told a young transgender Italian last year that “the Lord loves us as we are,” and he has warmly received transgender people in papal audiences.



Those gestures and others have stoked a powerful conservative backlash, prompting criticism of Francis in often remarkably harsh terms. Leading clerics in Africa, Eastern Europe and Asia have rejected the guidance on blessings for same-sex couples, despite the explicit Vatican caveats that such benedictions do not and should not bear any similarity to the sacrament of marriage.
The new document released Monday, approved by the pope on March 25, does not undo those measures or fundamentally change Francis’s more inclusive stance. It asserts, for instance, that the Catholic Church “wishes, first of all, to reaffirm that every person, regardless of sexual orientation, ought to be respected in his or her dignity and treated with consideration, while every sign of unjust discrimination is to be carefully avoided.”
But it does add context. It appears to separate the need to provide outreach to transgender people from the act of obtaining gender-affirming surgery. It cites Francis as saying that “creation is prior to us and must be received as a gift. At the same time, we are called to protect our humanity, and this means, in the first place, accepting it and respecting it as it was created.”



The document concludes that means “any sex-change intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception.” The church, however, saw nothing wrong with “people born with genital abnormalities” seeking medical treatment.

Asked about the apparent contradiction between pastoral reception of transgender people, and the condemnation of the gender affirming procedures, Fernandez did not provide a clear answer. He seemed to suggest that the document strove to call out a “trend” of not viewing sex at birth as a gift from God. He suggested, however, that there would be no change in LGBTQ+ outreach. “The principle of reception of everyone is evident from the words of Pope Francis,” he said.
The document is critical of “gender theory,” or the notion that gender identities exist along a spectrum and can involve individual choice. In the past, Francis has sharply denounced the idea, even comparing it to nuclear weapons in 2015.



The Vatican document on Monday doubled down on that opposition, saying gender theory “intends to deny the greatest possible difference that exists between living beings: sexual difference.”
The document also exalts heterosexuality: “In the male-female couple, this difference achieves the most marvelous of reciprocities. It thus becomes the source of that miracle that never ceases to surprise us: the arrival of new human beings in the world.”
Some church conservatives hailed the document, focusing on the passages on gender rather than the critical rollout.
“As far as I’m concerned, after 11 years of [Francis’s] papacy, this is the first document that I would quote from and make use of, as I do with Benedict VI and John Paul II,” said Roberto de Mattei, president of the conservative Catholic Lepanto Foundation. “Yes, he’s said these things before, but … not as strong.”



Catholic clerics ministering to the trans community expressed private dismay at the statement on “sex-change intervention.” But other observers said its cautiously worded phrasing might blunt the impact. The section on gender theory raised more alarm.
“The way in which gender theory is addressed is self-referential and quite hasty, and does not convey the complexity of the theory,” said Andrea Grillo, Professor of Sacramental Theology at the Anselmianum, a pontifical university in Rome.
The Vatican further reiterated Francis’s opposition to surrogate pregnancies, contending the practice violates the dignity of women and turns a child into a “mere object.” The document warned against the increasing legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide, arguing that “even in its sorrowful state, human life carries a dignity that must always be upheld, that can never be lost.” Echoing long-held church teaching, the document condemned abortion as a “deliberate and direct killing.”



Fernandez mentioned that after seeing an earlier draft, the pope requested greater focus on the human dignity lost because of poverty, as well as sections on the dignity of migrants, violence against women and other themes. Noting a surge in global conflict, the Vatican repeated Francis’s belief that a third world war is already being fought “piecemeal.” The Vatican appeared to once again slam wealthy countries for policies against migrants. “No one will ever openly deny that they are human beings; yet in practice, by our decisions and the way we treat them, we can show that we consider them less worthy, less important, less human.”
Its sharpest focus was on a subject Francis has frequently railed against: poverty. World leaders have heralded numbers that have shown reductions in global poverty, but the Vatican argued that this does not take into account rising inequality and the hoarding of wealth by a few. The document once again called out consumer culture and corporations — described as the “empire of money” — that downsize employees in a quest for higher profits.
“The claim that the modern world has reduced poverty is made by measuring poverty with criteria from the past that do not correspond to present-day realities,” the document stated. “As a result, poverty can take a variety of forms, such as an obsession with reducing labor costs with no concern for its grave consequences.”

In the aftermath of last month’s terrorist attack on the Crocus City Hall concert venue outside Moscow, Russian officials not only have blamed Ukraine but also have repeatedly accused the West of involvement — even though U.S. officials insist they gave Moscow a specific warning that the Islamic State could attack the venue.


If the U.S. warning was so detailed, it raises further questions about Russia’s failure to prevent the country’s worst terrorist attack in two decades. But rather than publicly confronting questions about their own actions, Russian security officials have disregarded the claims of responsibility by the Islamic State.
Instead, they have insisted that U.S. and British intelligence were involved in helping Ukraine organize the strike.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment Wednesday on a report in The Washington Post that U.S. intelligence specifically warned Russia that Crocus City Hall could be a target for terrorists. The New York Times published a similar report shortly after The Post.


Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev on Wednesday directly blamed Ukrainian security services for the Crocus City Hall attack, in which at least 114 people were killed. Patrushev also hinted at Western involvement.
A day earlier, he accused Western intelligence of using terrorist groups to attack adversaries.
“They are trying to make us think that the terrorist attack was perpetrated not by the Kyiv regime but by followers of radical Islamic ideology, possibly members of the Afghan branch of [the Islamic State],” Patrushev said at a meeting in Astana, Kazakhstan, of security council secretaries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization nations. He said it was more important to identify the “masterminds and sponsors,” squarely blaming Ukrainian security services. He added that numerous hoax bomb threats have emanated from Ukrainian territory since the attack.



“It is also indicative that the West began insisting on Ukraine’s noninvolvement in the crime as soon as the terrorist attack on Crocus City Hall was reported,” Patrushev said.
Russia’s blame game comes amid increasingly confrontational anti-NATO rhetoric from top security officials who insist that the U.S.-led alliance is fighting a “war” against Russia. Several of these officials have hinted repeatedly about Russia’s potential use of nuclear weapons.
NATO officials continue to assert the alliance’s right to supply Ukraine the weapons it needs to defend its territory.

Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev in Moscow in 2022. (Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP/Getty Images)
Since the Crocus City Hall attack, Russian officials have subtly framed the violence as part of that “war,” while barely mentioning the Islamic State’s Afghanistan branch, Islamic State-Khorasan, or ISIS-K, which U.S. intelligence officials have said was responsible.



U.S. intelligence also warned last month that terrorists could attack a Moscow synagogue. A day after receiving the warning, on March 7, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) announced that it had prevented an attack on a Moscow synagogue by an ISIS-K cell.
Asked if the United States warned Russia that Crocus City Hall was a possible target for a terrorist attack and whether a U.S. warning helped the FSB avert the synagogue attack, Peskov on Wednesday declined to confirm the report.
“Okay, I see,” he said. “This is not our competence because such information exchanges are conducted at the level of specialized services, and the information is transmitted directly from service to service.”

At least two members of the cell that planned the synagogue attack, based in the Kaluga region, were killed by FSB agents when they opened fire during arrest, according to the agency, which reported that the cell was planning to attack the synagogue using firearms. Kazakhstan confirmed that two of its citizens were killed in the raid.


Four days after the Crocus City Hall attack, FSB Director Alexander Bortnikov blamed Ukraine and said Western security services were involved.
“We believe that the action was prepared by radical Islamists, naturally, Western security services contributed to it, and Ukrainian security services bore a direct relation,” Bortnikov told reporters.

Patrushev told Argumenty i Fakty newspaper in an interview published Tuesday that Washington used NATO as a tool to carry out hybrid wars “to undermine and disorganize the system of state administration of countries that do not agree with the policy of the Anglo-Saxons.”

“At the same time, the alliance does not disdain using terrorist organizations in its interests,” he said. NATO, he said, “has been a source of danger, crises and conflicts for many years.”

In some games I've watched this year Van Lith looks like she's not enjoying things. At one point I believe the announcer said her teammates were yelling at her for taking a certain shot.

I wouldn't be surprised ti see her use the covid year but transfer to another school.

2 consecutive National Championship game appearances.

We came up short in both games but the memories will live on forever.

34-5 this year
31-7 last year
...........................
65-12 (.844)
============

What a ride it's been.

Keep rebound margin under 10.

Blinken is a phucking idiot.

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In this game of you are either a Russian simp or not we seem to have forgotten that Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries in the world.

And today she plays in her second-straight national title game.

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Fair to say that not many hires at Iowa have worked out better than hiring Lisa Bluder to coach Iowa WBB.

WHO: 1-seed South Carolina Gamecocks (37-0 overall, 16-0 SEC)
WHEN: 2:00 p.m. CT (Sunday, April 7)
WHERE: Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse (Cleveland, Ohio)
TV: ABC
RADIO: Hawkeye Radio Network
ONLINE: https://www.espn.com/watch/
MOBILE: https://www.espn.com/watch/
FOLLOW: @IowaAwesome | @IowaWBB | @IowaonBTN

Just over an hour until the biggest game of the year. The last game at Iowa for Caitlin Clark -- and Kate Martin, Gabbie Marshall, and Sharon Goodman as well.

By Jim Trotter
Apr 7, 2024

49

---

CLEVELAND — Everyone wanted to talk about the game, which was expected after the South Carolina women’s basketball team held off Iowa for an 87-75 victory and second national championship in three years. But Dawn Staley also wanted to talk about the other game. Actually, that’s not strong enough. She was going to discuss it.
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Basketball has played such an important role in her life that she protects it as fiercely as a mother would a newborn. Her love for it is matched only by her respect for it. So even as questioners asked about the Gamecocks becoming just the 10th team in NCAA Division I history to finish a season undefeated, going 38-0, Staley purposely turned the spotlight back to the person who was central in helping to make this a transformative season and inflection point in the game’s evolution.
“I don’t want to not utilize this opportunity to thank Caitlin (Clark) for what she’s done for women’s basketball,” she said of the Iowa guard whose transcendent play helped drive record viewership numbers. “Her shoulders were heavy and getting a lot of eyeballs on our game. And sometimes as a young person, it can be a bit much. But I thought she handled it with class. I hope that every step of the ladder of success that she goes, she’s able to elevate whatever room she’s in.”
Minutes earlier, Staley had elevated herself to the upper rungs of a ladder in Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse. She snipped the final polyester strands from the net and placed it around her neck. Then she turned each way and waved to fans.
As I later listened to her describe her feelings, Maya Angelou’s words came to mind: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
That summarizes the 2023-24 women’s basketball season for me. Years from now, I will likely forget Clark’s career points total, how many games South Carolina won, why Kim Mulkey always seemed so angry, and which players were involved in the moving screen at the end of the UConn-Iowa national semifinal. But I will never forget the sense of satisfaction derived from seeing the sport come of age.


For decades, broadcast partners and the public marginalized women’s basketball, ostensibly relegating it to the kids’ table. The calls for respect were heard but ignored. But this season was different. The women no longer asked for respect; they demanded it with the record-breaking viewership that stemmed from the genius of Clark, the high-level play of South Carolina, Iowa, UConn, LSU and others, and the storylines and grudge matches that set social media ablaze.
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How far has the game come? When the Final Four was held in Tacoma, Wash., in 1988 and ’89, the local newspaper didn’t send any of its top sportswriters to cover the event. It sent a lowly community news reporter who had never staffed a major sporting event. I know because that person was me.
I was stunned there wasn’t more interest after experiencing the intensity of Tennessee coach Pat Summitt’s piercing blue eyes, the playmaking of Long Beach State guard Penny Toler, the generalship of Stanford guard Jennifer Azzi, the consistency of Tennessee forward Bridgette Gordon, and the promise of Louisiana Tech center Venus Lacy. But traction is hard to come by when broadcast rights are sold to a cable outlet that views you as an afterthought.
ESPN should be ashamed for that. The fact is, it’s not deserving of what it now has — one of the hottest products in sports. The women’s game this year attracted more viewers than NBA Finals, World Series, college football playoffs — you name it. And while there might be a drop-off with Clark leaving for the WNBA, the chances of a significant decline seem remote at best.
The reason is the abundance of elite teams and playmaking young stars, including USC freshman JuJu Watkins, who ranked second in the country in scoring; Notre Dame freshman Hannah Hildago, who was must-see TV; and South Carolina freshmen MiLaysia Fulwiley and Tessa Johnson, who just played prominent roles in winning the Gamecocks their third national championship in franchise history. And then there is senior guard Paige Bueckers, who led Connecticut to the Final Four and should be in the running for national Player of the Year next season.
“I just want our game to grow. I don’t care if it’s us. I don’t if it’s Caitlin. I don’t care if it’s JuJu or Hannah,” Staley said. “I just want our games to grow, no matter who it is. Because there’s a lot of people that are out there growing our game, a lot of programs out there growing our game. We need to continue to uplift them as well, as we take our game to the next level.”

GO DEEPER
Dawn Staley created South Carolina's perfect championship season out of last year's loss
There will be plenty of time to discuss the passing of the baton, so to speak. But Sunday was about recognizing those who, if not created this moment, unquestionably built on the momentum created in recent seasons. And Clark was at the front of the line.
Before disappearing from the dais for the final time as a college player, she reflected on the things she will remember and appreciate most — her teammates, her coaches, and her support inside and outside the program. And she will also take great pride and satisfaction that she played a part in making the women’s game top of mind.
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“When I think about women’s basketball going forward, obviously it’s just going to continue to grow, whether it’s at the WNBA level, whether it’s at the college level,” Clark said. “Everybody sees it. Everybody knows. Everybody sees the viewership numbers. When you’re given an opportunity, women’s sports just kind of thrives. I think that’s been the coolest thing for me on this journey. We started our season playing in front of 55,000 people in Kinnick Stadium, and now we’re ending it playing in (front of) probably 15 million people or more on TV. It just continues to get better and better. That’s never going to stop.”

Cheap hoop building I put up 3 years ago while I figure out what I want to do with a permanent pad/building.

It just seemed like the perfect storm for the wind from the south east. Ripped the cover all to threads and bent the frame in the process.


Not great bob.

Now that the woman's team is done for the season, "by the way, what a wonderful 4 years that its been, congratulations girls and coach Bluder and all her coaching staff", can we all now focus on what's really important and that's continuing the bitching fest and railing on Fran and how the roster is not Big Ten material. It's time to get back to the basics.

Has anyone ever tried one? I just got my second one and think I'm ready for wiring.
First one is a Hawaiian Umbrella Tree. Have had it for 4 years and is currently an eight year old tree. The one I just got is a Green Mound Juniper and is 4-6 years old.

He has an immigration detainer hold.

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