The Tufts hockey team split a NESCAC doubleheader on the road this weekend, winning its first game of the season 3–2 against Middlebury on Friday and falling to Williams 5–4 on Saturday. The team now sits at 1–5–1 overall, with a 1–2–1 NESCAC record that puts them ranked in the middle of conference play.
Minutes before the MLB owners and MLPA issued a lockout of the 2021 offseason over the expired Collective Bargaining Agreement, the Red Sox orchestrated a trade that received a questionable response from the fan base. Hunter Renfroe, one of the bigger offensive contributors for the team in 2021, is now a Milwaukee Brewer; in compensation, the Red Sox receive Jackie Bradley Jr. (JBJ), a fan favorite in Boston, and two young prospects. Without examining the fine lines of the deal, this seems like a lopsided trade for the Red Sox. In 2021, Renfroe was a 2.3 WAR player with 31 home runs and 96 RBIs; JBJ could barely hit his weight in 2021 with a .163 AVG and -0.7 WAR. Although JBJ does provide a massive defensive value to a team's outfield, Renfroe was an average defender with a cannon of an arm; he had 16 defensive assists which led all MLB right fielders. By simply looking at statistics, the Red Sox gain nothing from this head-scratching trade.
It’s Week 14 and for the final time this year, let’s look at who’s Hot and Cold:
Tufts’ men’s and women’s track and field teams began the indoor track season admirably at the Sharon Colyear-Danville meet, hosted by Boston University on a banked track on Saturday, Dec. 4.
The Jumbos brought the heat to the MIT pool this past weekend for their first away meet of the season. The men came in as runner-up to MIT but dominated Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), Wheaton College and Keene State College, while the women defeated MIT, Wheaton, RPI, Wellesley, Keene State and Simmons.
Nobody thinks of an American labor union and pictures multimillionaires fighting against a multibillion-dollar corporation. Nor does anyone usually assume that the union holds the upper hand in negotiations. Major League Baseball’s latest dramatic implosion, however, checks both boxes.
As the final buzzer sounded in Tufts women's basketball's matchup against the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Corsairs on Dec. 4, the Jumbos came out on top with a resounding 76–59 win over the hosts to improve to 5–1 on the season. In a game defined by lots of back-and-forth action, the Jumbos used a huge fourth quarter to pull away and come out with the win.
Tufts men's basketball fell to Brandeis after five overtime periods in the final of the New England Big 4 Challenge this past weekend. Tufts beat Salem State 78–52 on Dec. 3 to advance to the championship game. Yet after a hard-fought battle, the Brandeis Judges ultimately secured the home court championship win with a score of 108–102.
At first glance, Zack Cummings is a cheerful 19-year-old from Saugus, Mass., a first-year undergraduate student at Tufts University who plans on studying political science and is a die-hard New England Patriots fan. But behind his contagious positivity and unending smile is a story of adversity and an extraordinary will to overcome.
Paul Svagdis (A93, AG96), an alum of the Tufts baseball and football programs, assumed his role as the new head coach of the baseball team last month. Svagdis comes to Tufts after serving as head coach at Azusa Pacific University in Southern California since 2002.
Standing at a modest 5 feet, 3 inches, Allison Cheng doesn’t intimidate at first glance. You’ll often find this friendly child studies and human development major conducting research in the Kaplan Lab or working in the music department. However, once equipped with a fencing foil and jacket, you won’t want to mess with this former Junior Olympics participant.
If you’ve been to a game at Bello Field this year, you’ve probably wondered who the tall man wearing bright neon green in goal is. Roaming the penalty area as his eyes scan the opposition’s attacking movement, he tracks the ball like a hawk, ready to charge at any loose ball. In spite of being blinded by the sun as the ball travels through a crowd of players, he manages the save, often at full stretch, palming the ball away.
Both Tufts men’s and women’s teams dropped all nine matches to the visiting Harvard Crimson in their home opener at the glistening Tufts Squash Courts on Tuesday. This is the first loss for both the men's and women's Jumbo teams, which are both now 3–1 on the season.
At a certain point in a team's successful run, the discussion of the "championship window closing" becomes a hotbed topic; for the Boston Bruins, it's all they've been hearing since 2019. Although they've been to two Stanley Cup finals since their win in 2011, the Bruins continue to fall short of expectations in the most frustrating of fashions. Take for example the recent playoff series loss to the New York Islanders; even though the Islanders took the Tampa Bay Lightning to the brink in the Eastern Conference Finals, they weren't the better team in the Bruins series. In each loss, the Bruins committed frustrating mistakes that ultimately led to their demise — bad turnovers, horrific shot attempts and undisciplined hockey, just to name a few.
In a close bout between Emerson and Tufts on Nov. 28, the Lions just squeaked by the Jumbos 75–72 to hand Tufts its fifth loss of the season. The 2019 NESCAC champions continue to struggle without senior co-captain Luke Rodgers, who exited the first game of the season with a knee injury. Without Rodgers, junior guard and co-captain Tyler Aronson and junior guard Carson Cohen have taken the helm on the offensive end, but the lack of a major post presence has hurt the Jumbos during most of their efforts this season.
On Nov. 21, the NFL encountered its 1,070th instance of Scorigami. What’s that, you say? Created by Jon Bois from SB Nation, Scorigami is the concept of experiencing a final score unique to NFL history. So when Indianapolis finished its beatdown of Buffalo on that Week 11 Sunday, the 41–15 result was added to the Scorigami record books.
Over Thanksgiving weekend, the Tufts men’s ice hockey team was swept in a two-game series against Stevenson University. Entering the weekend, the Jumbos’ record was 0–2–1. Comparatively, the Stevenson Mustangs’ record was 4–1–2. The first game ended with a score of 6–2, and the second 4–0, both in Stevenson's favor.
On Nov. 20, the men’s and women’s cross country teams traveled to E.P. “Tom” Sawyer State Park in Louisville, Ky. to compete in the NCAA Championship race. The men and women competed in the 8K and 6K races respectively.
On Nov. 24, Aaron Rodgers proclaimed on popular podcast “The Pat McAfee Show” that his post-COVID symptoms involved a case of “COVID toe.” One day later, he released a statement saying that he had no idea what COVID toes were, and that his toes were merely broken.
