Have you ever been centel’d? If you don’t know what that means, good for you; it means you’re not a chronically online basketball fan, unlike many people I talk to on a daily basis. If you do and if you’ve been victimized by the infamous account, that’s okay too … it happens to the best of us.
Every so often, there is a play in football where all conventional knowledge seems to go out the window. The quarterback snaps the ball and either throws a screen or hands it off. Instead of running with the ball, the ball carrier squares up and launches the football 30 yards down the field. The announcers are screaming into their headsets about how the man who just threw the ball played quarterback in high school.
For Tufts men's ice hockey, last weekend was make-or-break in terms of their playoff positioning. In a conference position, where one or two wins could make or break playoff chances and positions, the Jumbos had to put up a fight to keep the best NESCAC seed they could. With two home games to finish out their season, Tufts was able to finish their season strong.
On Saturday, the Tufts women’s basketball team — seeded sixth in the conference — kicked off their post season play by traveling to Hartford, CT to take on No. 3 seed Trinity College. Three weeks ago, the Jumbos played their last home game against the Bantams, earning a 68–59 victory on their senior day. The team was looking to achieve a similar result in the quarterfinal game. However, despite the team’s intense tenacity, Tufts fell short.
Kylian Mbappé has officially arrived at Real Madrid. After a sluggish start, the Frenchman silenced any doubts with ahat-trick in Madrid’s emphatic 6–3 aggregate win over Manchester City in the UEFA Champions League playoffs. Greatness calls. Elsewhere in Europe, Paulo Dybala delivered a stunning strike in Roma’s tense 3–2 Europa League win over Porto, proving class is permanent. Meanwhile, Luka Modrić reminded the world why he’s still a magician, curling in a beauty against Girona — his first goal in what feels like forever.
Leading up to the USA Gymnastics Winter Cup, Olympic bronze medalist Frederick Richard teased what he called an innovative new uniform for men’s gymnastics. In a video for The Players’ Tribune, he shared his frustrations with the traditional men’s uniform, which consists of a form-fitting top and either loose shorts or long pants, depending on the event. Richard revealed that he had designed a new kit. Despite the uniform not meeting the official requirements, he announced that he would wear it at the Winter Cup, accepting the necessary deduction.
If the modern football fan took a time machine to the year 1980, they’d notice a few similarities but a lot more differences. Arsenal, just as they did last weekend, lost to West Ham 1–0, only in a game with higher stakes, the FA CupFinal. Nottingham Forest won their second consecutive UEFA Champions League, then known as the European Cup, against Hamburger SV –– two finalists with contrasting current situations. Forest is third in the Premier League and dreaming of returning to Europe, whilst Hamburg is first in the 2. Bundesliga, Germany’s second division.
Though 1980 was an eventful year across all sports, one single moment stands head and shoulders above the rest — the Miracle on Ice. In the final round of the men’s ice hockey tournament at the Winter Olympic Games in Lake Placid, the United States upset the heavily favored Soviet Union in a 4–3 thriller, with Winthrop, Mass. native and former Boston University Terrier Mike Eruzione scoring the go-ahead goal. As the final seconds ticked off the clock, announcer Al Michaels famously exclaimed, “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!”
With ten minutes left in their quarterfinal against Williams College, there was a question of which Jumbo would step up in crunch time. Would it be Scott Gyimesi, the junior who had already recorded 13 double-doubles during the season and 34 in less than three seasons? Perhaps it would be junior James Morakis, currently averaging over 17 points? Shockingly, it was an electric shooting performance sparked by the whiteout crowd from sophomore Zion Watt, who posted a career-high of 15 points, making four threes in the span of five minutes, sending the Jumbos on to an 80–70 win and earning them a trip to next weekend’s NESCAC semifinals at Wesleyan University.
The docks of Bramley-Moore are eager for the new construction project in town: Everton Stadium, the new home of the Everton Football Club. A state-of-the-art stadium occupies the new venue, standing ready to usher in a new era for the Toffees on the weekend of Aug. 16, when they will most likely play their first home fixture of the 2024–25 season. Many fans will certainly experience delight in singing along to the “Z-Cars” theme in the architectural masterpiece, but the modern-day bowl stadiums signify a bigger trend coming to the pinnacle of the English Football League.
We know that Victor Wembanyama will be one of the greatest basketball players of all time — if he stays healthy. This is the statement that defines his career. Now, Wembanyama is out for the rest of the season with a deep vein thrombosis and a blood clot in his shoulder which, according to Dr. Brian Sutterer, “could have traveled to his lungs and killed him.”
What do you say after a game like that? That the Jumbos showed heart? That they proved their resilience? That they refused to let a home loss stain the end of their regular season? Yes, yes and absolutely. It wasn’t always pretty, but No. 14 Tufts clawed back from the brink on Saturday, erasing a 10-point deficit in the final minutes to force overtime before dispatching Bates 83–75 at Cousens Gym.
Tucked less than 20 km west of Málaga on Spain’s Southern Costa de Sol lies the quiet town of Benálmadena. In addition to its quintessential Andalusian beaches and historic architecture, the town is home to one of Spain’s greatest midfield talents: Francisco Román Alcarón Suárez, known to the world as Isco.
Tufts men’s ice hockey took a road trip out west for a pair of conference matchups against league-leading Hamilton as well as Amherst, returning to Medford with a win and a loss in the penultimate regular season weekend. The Jumbos made their first stop in Clinton, N.Y. to face the Continentals on Friday for the second time this season with aspirations for revenge after being handily beat 6—1 on Jan. 17.
The women’s swim NESCAC Championship was held in Waterville, Maine at Colby College from Thursday to Monday. The Jumbos finished second out of the 11 NESCAC opponents.
Last week’s football action delivered everything we expect from this stage of the season: drama, tactical battles and a few moments that reminded us why this sport captivates millions.
This week, the head of Russian national rhythmic gymnastics team, Irina Viner, stepped down and was replaced by Alina Kabaeva. The only person who responded with appropriate shock to this news when I told them was my mother, who did gymnastics in the seventies and eighties. Everyone else was just like, "Huh." So, this column goes out to everyone at the Fletcher School and all the international relations majors.
After breezing past their first-round matches 9–0 this past weekend at the annual NESCAC tournament hosted by Trinity College, both the men’s and women’s squash teams faced their closest competition from the regular season in the semifinals. The men faced Williams on Sunday morning, who they had lost 5–4 to just two weeks prior. The women, ranked No. 11, took on No. 3 Amherst, who they topped 5–4 on Jan. 17.
The NFL has entered a phase of expansion, where its leadership is determined to spread the market to destinations deemed unreachable just 10 years ago. The highest-grossing revenue league has cemented its gritty and purely American presence in settings across the globe. Becoming more worldwide than ever before and with the 2025 Super Bowl in the books, the league trails in building an effective player development model. Many teams feel burdened to fast-track their own rebuilding process, leaving a scarcity of “complete” teams league-wide.
Around 7:30 p.m. Sunday night, a collective cacophony of gasps, screams and sighs could be heard from the couches of most American households. Seconds before the rapture, the Kansas City Chiefs lined up for a third-and-16. The ball was snapped. Mahomes rolled right, looked back over the middle and fired it … right into the hands of Philadelphia Eagles rookie nickel cornerback Cooper DeJean.
