Utter dominance. Delirium. Destiny. Those were the thoughts racing through the minds of the raucous crowd filling the bleachers inside historic Cousens Gymnasium on Saturday afternoon as Tufts destroyed Connecticut College 71–42 and improved to17–2 overall and 5–0 in NESCAC play.
Livvy Dunne from Louisiana State University Gymnastics recently shared a lengthy post on X addressing what she feels is a disconnect between collegiate scoring and the crowd’s expectations. “Too many deductions taken at a judge’s discretion feels the same as watching a basketball game that’s constantly interrupted with penalties,” she wrote in her statement. She argues that when the crowd can’t follow the scoring, it reduces the overall enjoyment and excitement of the sport.
The Tufts men’s basketball team just wrapped up a weekend of hoops that could only be described as dominant, securing back-to-back road wins against Williams and Middlebury. Tufts dictated the pace and rhythm of each game while forcing opponents to play catch-up. Now riding a six-game win streak, the No. 9 Jumbos are 16–2 overall and a perfect 4–0 in NESCAC play.
Tufts women’s basketball faced NESCAC opponents Williams and Middlebury on Friday and Saturday. In the matchup against the Ephs, the Jumbos maintained the lead from the tipoff to the final buzzer but not without the Ephs chasing hard each quarter.
The year is 2022. The month, February. Two days ago, the Los Angeles Rams and Cincinnati Bengals punched their tickets to Super Bowl LVI. Matt Eberflus has just been hired as the Bears head coach, and Nathaniel Hackett has been snatched up by Denver.
The Los Angeles Dodgers are quickly becoming the biggest bullies in professional sports. Since Guggenheim Baseball Management took control of the club in 2012, they have missed the playoffs only once, won at least 100 games five times and appeared in four World Series, winning two.
Last weekend, Tufts men’s ice hockey played two drastically different home games against Hamilton on Friday night and Amherst on Saturday. Tufts lost 6–1 against Hamilton, but returned to Malden Valley Forum on Saturday with a new energy to beat Amherst 5–2.
The biggest news of this week is certainly that 2020 Olympian Yul Moldauer has been suspended for 16 months due to three whereabouts failures within a 12-month period. As one of the top gymnasts in the United States, Moldauer is part of the USADA’s Registered Testing Pool. Athletes in this pool are required to declare their location for one hour each day between 5 a.m. and 11 p.m., ensuring they are available for random out-of-competition drug testing without prior notice. Over the course of the year, testing officers attempted to conduct a test three times at the location Moldauer had designated, but he was not there on any of those occasions and missed the tests.
Tufts women's basketball kicked off their conference play with a challenging trip up north to battle against two of the NESCAC’s top teams, the Bowdoin College Polar Bears and the Colby College Mules.
Have you ever yelled at a professional athlete through the TV, fully knowing they can’t hear you? Have you ever punched a wall, thrown a remote, or shed a tear after a particularly disastrous performance? Or, like a friend of mine — a Steelers fan, unfortunately — have you experienced what was described as a “depressive tailspin” after yet another playoff loss?
When the Jumbos men’s basketball team returned to Medford, Mass. to resume their spring semester campaign on the Cousens Gymnasium floor on Friday night, memories of the struggles the first weekend of NESCAC play of the previous three years lingered as the Jumbos looked to sweep the opening weekend of conference play for the first time since 2019–20. When the clock hit triple zeroes on Saturday afternoon, the now No. 9 Tufts had taken care of business against Colby and Bowdoin, moving to 14–2 for the season for the first time since 2016–17.
As students made their way back to campus during the final days of winter break, the Tufts men’s and women’s squash teams headed to San Diego to play against Denison University’s teams. The men and women alike saw lots of success on Jan. 11, with the men taking home a clean 9-0 sweep and the women only dropping one match, winning 8-1. The wins were much needed to start the momentum for 2025 after both teams lost to Cornell in December.
Ana Bǎrbosu of Romania recently stunned the gymnastics world with her announcement that she had committed to Stanford University for gymnastics. Bǎrbosu is notable because she was the Romanian gymnast involved in the dispute with American gymnast Jordan Chiles over the floor bronze medal at last year’s Olympics. In case you missed it: Bǎrbosu and her teammate Sabrina Maneca-Voinea were tied in third place with a score of 13.700.
Tufts men's basketball swept all four of its games last week and heads into the winter break ranked No. 16 nationally. Look back at Tufts’ home games versus Keene State College and Brandeis University.
Returning from Thanksgiving break, men’s squash welcomed Cornell University this past weekend. Tufts beat the University of Rochester 6–3 at home, leaving them with a record of 2–3 as of Nov. 23. The Big Red are ranked No. 9 while the Jumbos are ranked No. 10. The matchup was a highly intense game, with the Jumbos losing 8–1. Sophomore Rutva Samant secured the lone win for the Jumbos.
Ellie Black sometimes gets overlooked by casual fans because she is from Canada, but she is one of my favorite gymnasts of all time. To be fair, I’m partial to any gymnast who does front handspring vaults, and she has an excellent handspring front full (and even a rudi at one point). I also have to give props to anyone who can rock a maple-leaf-themed leotard — I appreciate Canada’s commitment to a theme.
In a 1977 regular season game, Lakers’ power forward Kermit Washington punched the Rockets’ Rudy Tomjanovich in the face so hard that it fractured his skull and he tasted spinal fluid leaking into his mouth. He would later need facial reconstruction surgery.
The past week was one of, if not the busiest week of the NHL season thus far. A lot of important moves and decisions were made, and we are going to look at the ones with the biggest implications.
As I stirred mashed potatoes over Thanksgiving break, an avid reader of “Full Court Press” (and, coincidentally, a family friend) approached me, asking my opinion on the name, image and likeness phenomenon that has taken over college sports in recent years. One week earlier, superstar high school quarterback Bryce Underwood flipped his commitment from Louisiana State University to Michigan State University in one of NIL’s wildest stories yet: one that involved billionaire Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy and what even conservative estimates say will be a fat $10 million paycheck.
After two weeks featuring many challenging NESCAC matchups, Tufts ice hockey went on the road to play the North Country Tournament in Canton, N.Y. Tufts won the tournament, winning both games by a solid margin.
