“Every NESCAC opponent is a battle,” Jumbos’ junior guard Stella Galanes wrote in a message to the Daily. That sentiment rang true Saturday as Tufts faced off against NESCAC opponent Colby.
We are now almost halfway through the college basketball season and there has been no shortage of storylines up to this point. With every team well into conference play, the top contenders are becoming clearer, while bubble teams are striving to build their resumes before Selection Sunday. So far, these are the most important questions regarding the state of college basketball as I see it.
The FIFA Final Draw is complete, and if you missed it, you missed quite the show. The 2026 World Cup draw ceremony managed to pack in more unexpected moments than most tournaments deliver in their entirety. Among the notable moments: President Donald Trump receiving a freshly-created peace prize, FIFA President Gianni Infantino’s subsequent effusive praising of Trump and the actual draw being conducted by a distinguished panel of North American sports icons including Tom Brady, Wayne Gretzky, Aaron Judge and Shaquille O’Neal. Talented athletes all, though their combined professional football experience totals precisely zero.
No. 3 Tufts faced off against No. 2 Emory in their fourth NCAA semifinals appearance on Thursday. Despite a gritty performance and dominating possession, the Jumbos fell 3–0, and their season came to an end.
Ask anyone who has been to a professional sports game in this country and they’re bound to give you a strongly worded opinion on the sights and sounds that occur within both the stadium and arena experience. Many diehards will be quick to scold the corny music played during play, asserting that it takes away from the gameday product and the “game’s gone” because of it. Other fans, however, will be quick to laud and praise the gameday experience, pointing to the Red Sox’s “Sweet Caroline” or the Bruins’ “Livin’ on a Prayer” as mainstays within fan culture.
Coming into Sunday’s game with the memory of their recent nail-biting 74–77 overtime loss to Endicott College, Tufts women’s basketball held a record of 3–3, while Rhode Island College entered with a 5–1 standing.
San Antonio Spurs Hall of Famer David Robinson once remarked, “It’s the playoffs. There’s no room for okay.”
Making an appearance on the “Hot Ones” YouTube series back in October 2024, Jaylen Brown elucidated one of the best insights on the game of basketball I’ve ever heard. “I look at basketball as like poetry in motion, which is music, and everybody is playing their own song,” Brown commented to host Sean Evans. “Everybody samples from different artists, and they’re playing their own song and if you wanna stop them you gotta study their rhythm.”
Last Friday and Saturday, the Tufts volleyball team went up against Wesleyan and Colby in the semifinal and final matches to win their fourth NESCAC championship and first since 2022. The triumph also marked the first time since 2008 where a No. 4 seed has taken home the title.
After an impressive season last year that ended with a defeat by Hamilton in the NESCAC championship, Tufts ice hockey looked ready to repeat the 2024 magic, starting off with a searing 4–1 win against Wesleyan on Friday.
In 2014, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver advocated for the legalization of sports betting in a New York Times op-ed. His main argument was one similar to one made for cannabis legalization: “Sports betting should be brought out of the underground and into the sunlight where it can be appropriately monitored and regulated.” In that same op-ed, Silver stated, “one of my biggest responsibilities [as commissioner] is to protect the integrity of professional basketball.” It is clear Silver views his role as juggling the ideals of maximum profit and total sporting integrity.
No. 3 Tufts advanced to the Sweet 16 of the Division III NCAA tournament after a dominant 7–0 win against Lesley on Saturday and a 2–0 victory over Wesleyan on Sunday.
Welcome back to the “Road to the World Cup.” We’re now just 203 days away from the inaugural match at the Estadio Azteca. Recent developments have been coming fast, so let’s get straight to them.
It is quite a rare occurrence for a player to be hated by their own club for so long. The tale of Kai Havertz is certainly interesting, but it just makes sense. When you score a club defining goal, you become a club defining player, regardless of what happened before the moment. Havertz turned contenders into champions and anxious fans into content ones.
This past Saturday, Tufts’ campus was buzzing with the excitement of the NESCAC tournament. Both men’s and women’s soccer competed for conference titles on Bello field, volleyball kicked off its tournament run in Cousens Gymnasium and field hockey faced fourth-seeded Wesleyan.
The phrase ‘better late than never’ is often used and usually rings true. Still, those four words don’t account for the rollercoaster of emotions that completing a task before ‘never’ brings. The Tufts women’s soccer team experienced this rollercoaster twice this past weekend, as they scored a late goal to beat Colby and a late equalizer that yielded a penalty shootout win over Williams to claim the 2025 NESCAC crown.
As the Tufts men’s basketball team gears up to tip off its season on Friday at Babson, they are driven by experience, hunger and a shared commitment to accountability. Building off of last year’s success, the Jumbos have a great advantage with all five starters returning.
Officially a week into the college hoops season, the storylines are already rolling in. As usual, there weren’t many ranked matchups, but the ones we did have offered good insight into the year ahead. Let’s take a look at three early storylines.
There are a lot of dysfunctional, disastrous and downright depressing teams in the world of athletics. These are teams that always find themselves with high draft picks that become busts, miss the playoffs year after year and just as a wave of optimism appears, still seem to encounter the most unfortunate of events. The Colorado Rockies, Oakland Athletics, Charlotte Hornets and Cleveland Browns all sit among the pyramid of sports misery, but there is one unlucky team that lies above them all … the New York Jets.
Victor “Wemby” Wembanyama is changing the way I view basketball.
