It was the match that everyone wanted to see.

On Friday at Austin Country Club, former Longhorn Jordan Spieth faced off with his good friend and bullish match player Patrick Reed. The two have partnered together in the past for Team USA in the Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup.

But on this day, they were against each other — winner moving onto the weekend’s knockout round of the World Golf Championships-Dell Technologies Match Play.

The playing conditions were brutal, with severe winds gusting and switching on the players all day. That gave way to some so-so golf from both Spieth and Reed throughout the match. And in the end, it was Reed who prevailed, sending Spieth home early for the second consecutive year in this event.

“It was just one of those days that with how the conditions were, it wasn’t fun,” Reed said. “It was a grinder’s day out there.”

The hype for this match began almost as soon as the groups were announced Monday night.

After his match on Thursday, four-time major winner and world No. 7 Rory McIlroy was even asked if he had any interest in watching Spieth-Reed.

“I have a lot of interest in that. What time are they playing?” McIlroy said.

“In the afternoon — 1:30,” a reporter said.

“Hopefully I get done early, I can watch it.”

Joking or not, McIlroy wasn’t able to make it out for the match on Friday afternoon — but plenty of others did.

It was easily the largest gallery of the tournament thus far, and to no surprise it was pulling hard for its hometown hero in Spieth.

Shouts of “Hook ‘em” echoed among the spectators all day. Fans on a Lake Austin party boat began a “Texas! Fight!” chant as Spieth walked to the 14th tee box. At times, the crowd was five deep or more.

Former professional cyclist and Austinite Lance Armstrong even followed Spieth and Reed on the back nine.

“First golf tournament ever,” said Armstrong, a Longhorn fan.

Spieth appeared to be a little off on the practice range as he warmed up prior to his match. It carried over into his first few holes. He knocked his opening tee shot out of bounds. He hit both approach shots on the second and third holes into the hazard. After two holes, Spieth was already 2 down.

Spieth birdied the par-4 5th to move to 1 down and made a crucial 8-footer for par on the par-3th 7th. He bogeyed the par-4 8th to fall 2 down again. But then the 24-year-old three-time major winner turned it on.

Spieth’s wedge shots at the par-4 9th and par-4 10th were knocked stiff and conceded for birdies, which squared the match with Reed.

“I thought I rebounded nicely after it kind of looked like a round of 90 or 92 through the first few holes,” Spieth said.

But Spieth made another costly mistake at the par-3 11th and bogeyed, giving Reed a 1-up advantage. Reed didn’t surrender it for the rest of the day.

Spieth missed critical birdie putts at the par-5 12th and the par-4 14th that kept him from mounting a charge. It was a struggle all day, and beside holes 9 and 10, Spieth could just never get it going.

Spieth was 3 down heading to the par-5 16th. His birdie closed the gap to 2 down. But at the par-3 17th, Reed drilled a 40-foot putt from off the green to win the hole and the match, 3 and 1.

“Today I tried four or five different things and started to really feel good about it towards the end of the round,” Spieth said. “It was just a little bit late.”

Spieth hasn’t had a stellar 2018 season. He said after his match with Reed that he’s struggled with his putting and alignment. He’s finished in the top-10 twice this year, but he’s also missed two cuts. In less than two weeks, he’ll return to Augusta National seeking a second green jacket.

Until then, it’s about more fine-tuning as he searches for his form. Spieth will play at the Shell Houston Open next week before heading to the Masters.

“All in all, I didn’t come in expecting a whole lot this week,” Spieth said. “I’m just trying to continue to make progress. I have emphasis on four events a year. And anything in between, especially as we get really close to them, is leading up to it.”

Before routing the Bluejays Monday night, the Bruins watched all three 11-seeds upset the 3-seeds in Round 2 of the NCAA Tournament.

“Christian (Blanks), our video coordinator, brought it to our attention,” said senior guard Jordin Canada“Seeing the upsets that day… that wasn’t going to be us.”

No. 3-seeded UCLA went on to steamroll No. 11-seeded Creighton en route to an 86-64 victory to advance to its third consecutive Sweet 16. The Bruins will face No. 2-seeded Texas in the regional semifinal game at the Sprint Center in Kansas City on Friday night.

“When we played against Creighton, we came out strong and played consistent throughout the whole game,” Canada said. “I think that’s how we need to play the rest of the tournament.”

The Longhorns are averaging 42.9 rebounds a game this season, a number the Bruins have not achieved this entire postseason. Because Texas ranks second in the nation in rebounding margin at 11.4, coach Cori Close said UCLA will need rebounding help from its guards, in addition to post players, to be successful Friday.

“If we’re playing zone, our guards (need to be) able to rebound on the backside,” said Close. “For us to be able to mitigate that advantage and their strength of theirs, all of our guards are going to have to be involved in rebounding every single possession.”

Senior forward Monique Billings has been the consistent rebounder, averaging 9.7 boards throughout the season. But senior guard Kelli Hayes hopes to improve on being a contributor at that end as well through non-statistical categories called passion plays.

“One of (our) passion plays are assist box outs, and maybe I could box out a player and I may not get the ball, but I box out so well that (Canada) gets the ball,” Hayes said. “Those are ways we can build the rebounding margin.”

The Longhorns have also shot over 60 percent from the field in both Rounds 1 and 2. However, the Bruins pride themselves on defense and have called it their identity all season long. In Rounds 1 and 2 combined, UCLA collected 21 steals and forced 33 turnovers.

“I really do believe that the team that can take care of the ball and that can control the rebounds will win (this) game,” Close said following the win against Creighton.

Texas is led by guards Brooke McCarty and Ariel Atkins, who both earned All-Big 12 first team honors during the regular season, averaging 13.7 and 14.8 points respectively.

But the Bruins are familiar with the Longhorns.

“These guys have been playing against each other for a long time,” said coach Karen Aston. “They know each other.”

Guard Lashann Higgs grew up with junior transfer guard Japreece Dean in the Austin, Texas area, while Canada and Billings played with Atkins on the USA Women’s U23 National Team in summer.

This season, the Bruins faced the Longhorns in a closed scrimmage at the beginning of the season, but both teams have added important pieces to their rosters since then.

Dean, who transferred from Texas Tech, became eligible to play in mid-December for UCLA and guard/forward Joyner Holmes rejoined Texas after suspension due to university due to team violation. The reserves have averaged 7.3 and 6.8 points, respectively.

UCLA was eliminated by Texas in the Sweet 16 two years ago, the first time the former No. 1 recruiting class – Canada, Billings and Hayes – made it to the regional semifinals.

The Bruins led for most of that game, despite shooting just 30.5 percent. Canada and Billings, sophomores at the time, each logged 20 points, but a team scoring drought that included just one made field goal in the entire fourth quarter cost them the game.

This time, Close said the Bruins are going to need contribution – especially outside the paint – from other key players so that Canada and Billings don’t draw in all the double and triple teams. The two are averaging 16.7 and 15.3 points this season, respectively.

“We’re really hard to beat if we make threes,” Close said. “I’ve always said that if we have two of either Hayes, Dean or (junior guard) Kennedy Burke … have a good shooting night, we’re really difficult because then we are able to get the ball to the middle of the floor.”

They made the Sweet 16 the following year as well, but fell to a Connecticut team that had an undefeated season until losing in the Final Four.

The trio still has not been able to make it over the hump, as the Bruins have not reached the Elite 8 since 1999.

This is their last chance.

“No program in UCLA basketball history has made it three times in a row and we’ve done it and we’re not done,” Hayes said. “If anything I think we’re ready, (and) I know we’re ready to conquer this and exceed in ways that we haven’t before.”

Hannah Kiester

It has been a month since the school shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School, but the public is still reeling from the tragedy.

To remember the victims and prompt action to prevent future school shootings, the community created a memorial at the school.

Over spring break, FSC student athlete Anna Brook Opalinski visited the memorial twice with her family.

Opalinski lives in Ft. Lauderdale and is very familiar with Stoneman Douglas. In high school, Opalinski frequently competed against Douglas on their track and at other competitions.

“They were always one of our biggest competitors,” Opalinski said.

This personal connection with the school prompted her to visit the memorial with her parents. She parked in the field where students and parents waited during the shooting for news or to be reunited with their children.

“The flowers and crosses and signs started before we even got to the school,” Opalinski said. “Then, at the school, the memorial was massive. There were signs all the way around the fence.”

Members of the community piled flowers for each victim in front of the school. In addition, several victims had symbols of their religion placed above their names.

Opalinski said when she visited the school, it did not feel real at first. It felt like a news story. She said she suddenly felt an intense hopelessness.

“My mind went to the survivors and the victims and their families,” Opalinski said. “I couldn’t help thinking that could have been, and still could be, me, or my sister, or my family. When that hits you, it hits you hard.”

Among the signs, there were large posters of the victims’ faces. Opalinski said that was the image that brought her to tears.

Despite the obvious sorrow surrounding the memorial, there was also a reason to feel pride present. Opalinski said that seeing all of the people not just locally but from all over the world show their support by making the trip to leave tokens of their support at the memorial was inspiring.

For that reason, Opalinski felt that FSC should be represented with the others. After her initial visit to the Stoneman Douglas High School, she returned to place an FSC track and field t-shirt on the fence amid representation from several other universities. On the shirt, she wrote #MSDstrong.

The nation has responded to this tragedy in support of the students, faculty and families of Stoneman Douglas High School with a powerful drive towards gun control. Student survivors of the shooting have organized awareness events and spoken out openly on the news and social media to voice their discontent over current gun regulations. There has been an outcry for stricter gun control laws to help prevent school shootings and make students feel safer when they are in school.

Florida lawmakers have been under mass scrutiny since the shooting at Stoneman Douglas, causing them to raise the legal age to buy a firearm from 18 to 21. For those speaking out against gun violence, this will not be enough to stop the efforts they are making to ensure a safer environment.

One such statement against gun violence was the walkout on March 14. Across the nation, thousands of schools walked out of school during the day and stood outside for seventeen minutes – one minute for every victim.

“Never feel like you can’t help,” Opalinski said. “I didn’t think there were things I could do to make a difference, but there are.”

Since the Stoneman Douglas shooting, students have been spearheading the fight for gun control.

They have been actively speaking out about not feeling safe in school and how it is the responsibility of our legislators to ensure student safety.

More events such as the walkout are being planned by countless communities so that more people can get involved and show their support for the students.

After the public phase of the presidential search, Dr. Nancy Targett withdrew her application, narrowing the candidates down to the final three. On Sunday, March 18, and Monday, March 19, the Board of Trustees met and one of their topics of discussion was to review the Chancellor’s briefs on each candidate. From there, the board authorized the chancellor to conclude his decision and begin talking negotiations and contracts with the candidate that he sees best fit for the position. The decision should be made within the next two to three weeks, according to Tracy Bigney, a special assistant for executive employment at the University of Maine.

Alton Thompson | Contributing Writer

BJ Griffin is the multi-talented musician on the rise from Hampton Road to watch. After a successful trip around the world and guest performances with stars like Lauryn Hill and Smash Mouth, BJ blasts off to … Read More

The post BJ Griffin comes to ODU for Virginia Arts Festival appeared first on Mace & Crown.

In an attempt to understand the effects that drugs like Adderall have on typical brains, scientists have found a relationship between activity of the neurotransmitter glutamate and mood for the first time, according to a study conducted by University researchers.

“Considering the rising prevalence of off-prescription use of ADHD medications as study aids, especially on college campuses, it is crucial that we understand how these substances affect the healthy human brain,” said Adam Nitenson GS, co-author of the study. The study focused on psychostimulants that are commonly abused to enhance memory and learning.

Glutamate has been widely studied in recent years since the advent of more exact measuring techniques, said George Rebec, professor of psychology and brain sciences at Indiana University. “Thirty years ago, the main transmitters everyone talked about were dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine because they were relatively easy to measure.”

Glutamate, “the brain’s principal excitatory neurotransmitter” is involved with processes relating to learning and memory, said Lisa Weyandt, professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Rhode Island. 

While “all addictive substances result in an increase in dopamine,” scientists currently do not understand how other neurotransmitters like glutamate can contribute to mood and addiction, Weyandt said. “It doesn’t make sense that if you affect one neurotransmitter system, another wouldn’t be involved in some way as well.”

Because “glutamate is important for driving a lot of motivated behaviors and goal-directed behaviors,” it can play a role in craving food or seeking the drug itself, Rebec said.

After administering a psychostimulant, researchers observed an increase in the presence of glutamate, measured through the use of a technique called magnetic resonance spectroscopy. The researchers tested two psychostimulants, both of which were ADHD drugs.

Furthermore, positive mood consistently followed glutamate production, according to the study. Women seemed to show a greater increase in glutamate response when compared with men, “indicating a heightened vulnerability to psychostimulants in females,” according to the study.

Because glutamate plays a major role in many brain processes, its potential effect on mood is unsurprising, Rebec said.

The study, however, did not speak to the cognitive effects of this glutamate increase, Weyandt said. It remains uncertain if this increase in glutamate translates into better planning or executive function, she added.

“It does appear that in healthy brains, there is a small effect for Adderall improving memory, but this is not found in all studies,” Weyandt said. Future research could help determine whether quality of work is actually being improved or if the drugs simply allow users to maintain attention for longer, she added.

In a previous study with ADHD subjects, glutamate increase was shown to last for a two-month medication period. This study observed non-ADHD subjects for only five hours, so long-term effects of the increase still need to be studied, Weyandt said.

“Kids may take these drugs early on, but what happens 20 years later, … that’s important research that, I think, still needs to be done,” Rebec said.  “We are still just scratching the surface of glutamate.”

Beyond opening questions for further research, the study offers a potential clinical application that takes advantage of the glutamate-mood link. “Maybe we could deal with a drug abuse problem by manipulating the receptors that respond to glutamate,” Rebec said.

The Senate passed three bills in its final meeting of the 54th Administration. A new crop of senators and executive board members will take office in early April. | Michael Slaten/The Cougar

At its last meeting of the semester Wednesday, the Student Government Association Senate passed three bills about itself. One of the bills will open a more consistent line of communication for students to reach out to their representatives on the Senate.

The Standardized Senate Communications Act will create email addresses for each college represented within student government solely for the purpose of creating an easier line of communication between senators and other students. Every senator will have access to the email address.

Currently, individual senators emails are listed on the SGA Senate Directory alongside the college they represent.

“Sometimes students feel uncomfortable directly emailing one person that they don’t know,” said Carlos Iniguez, a College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics senator and the author of the bill.

He said the bill will prevent interruptions between students and their colleges’ representatives as senators come and go. At least 10 senators left SGA before the official end of the administration on March 31.

The Senate also passed a bill titled Website Responsibilities, which specifies that the director of public relations update several pages up to date on the SGA website throughout the year, including the rosters for the Senate, executive and judicial branches.

Graduate-at-Large Senator and President-elect Cameron Barrett said several justices are missing from the judicial branch page because no one was specifically responsible for updating it.

“In the past election, people were like, ‘How many justices even are there? I think there’s seven, but there are only four people on (the website),’” Barrett said.

If there is no director of public relations, the duty of updating the website will fall to the vice president. The speaker of the senate will also update the legislative page of the website, under the Speaker Responsibilities Reform Bill, which also passed Wednesday.

The bill also outlines that the speaker must post the Senate meeting agendas, the dates of upcoming meetings and current legislation on the SGA website. The speaker will also be responsible for booking rooms for standing committee meetings each semester.

President Winni Zhang will need to sign Wednesday’s bills before the current administration ends in 10 days or the bills will expire.

Zhang did not attend the Senate meeting due to academic responsibilities. Vice President Adrian Hernandez delivered a message on her behalf, issuing congratulations for the Senate’s accomplishments.

Political science senior and former SGA presidential candidate Christopher Caldwell attended most of the Senate meetings this year. He said he told the Senate during its first meeting in 2017 that the meeting was terrible, but he thought the senators turned it around.

“You really embodied service above self, and I’m really proud of each of you,” Caldwell said.

news@thedailycougar.com

—
“Senate ends year by passing three bills about itself” was originally posted on The Daily Cougar

Love and care, that’s what this boils down to. Part of a college coach’s job comes outside of sports entirely. It comes in real life, when young men and women are faced with difficulties.

Colton Becker and Mehraz Rahman will be the next student body president and vice president after winning the executive alliance runoff election following a revote after the initial results were nullified.

Becker and Rahman received 8250 votes — the highest number of votes in UT history, according to the ESB — or 56.18 percent of the vote. Candidates Guneez Ibrahim and Hannah McMorris secured 43.67 percent of the vote with 6413 votes.

“I feel relieved that it’s over but also excited for what’s to come,” Rahman said. “There’s a lot of work to be done in terms of addressing campus climate…now it’s part of our job to help address that.”

BREAKING: The @ColtonMehraz18 campaign has won the executive alliance runoff. pic.twitter.com/Tvpm7ycv1F

— The Daily Texan (@thedailytexan) March 22, 2018

The team will start reuniting the campus by reaching out to followers of the Ibrahim-McMorris campaign, Becker said.

“We just have a lot of work to do mending the wounds of this election,” Becker said. “I’m glad it’s over, and we want to start reaching out ot the other side of the aisle.”

Candidates faced a prolonged campaign with a total of three elections, the first of which was nullified and the second resulted in a runoff that led to tonight’s final election.

Ibrahim and McMorris rallied their supporters with the message that marginalized voices on campus will be heard.

“We didn’t need to win this election to win,” Ibrahim said. “This was a message that needed to happen on this campus at some point; black students, brown students, queer students, most marginalized groups on our campus have been ignored systematically. This is a perfect example of it considering the harassment and the threats and the physical assaults that Hannah and I have had to deal with the past six weeks.

“It’s not over," she added. "It’s just the beginning, because now people are paying attention.”

The Election Supervisory Board issued multiple sanctions throughout the three campaign periods, including two personal moratoriums earlier today against Ibrahim and Becker that prohibited each of them from campaigning for several hours.

According to a ruling from the ESB, Ibrahim was prohibited from campaigning from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. due to a Class B campaign violation after retweeting several tweets endorsing her and McMorris during spring break, when campaigning was prohibited by the ESB.

Meanwhile, Becker was prohibited from campaigning from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. because he gave a “love-reaction” to a Facebook post that accused the Guneez-Hannah campaign of being complicit in anti-Semitic rhetoric, which the ESB considered verbal harassment, also a Class B violation.

The first election on March 1 intensified when the ESB issued a moratorium against the Ibrahim-McMorris alliance for campaigning in a “knowingly deceptive” manner. Hours later, Colton and Mehraz were declared the winners of the election, but the results were soon declared invalid by SG Supreme Court, which found the moratorium against the Ibrahim-McMorris campaign to be wrongfully issued.

In the days following, the Dean of Students called for a new election, which took place March 7 and 8. When no executive alliance secured the majority during that election, the Ibrahim-McMorris and Colton-Mehraz campaigns headed for a runoff in their third and final election.

Join Senior News Editor Will Campbell, Senior News Reporter Michael Tobin and Podcast Editor Alec Cowan as they review the biggest stories from a busy winter term at the University of Oregon. The stories featured include U.S. Senator Ron Wyden’s visit to campus, Red Wagon Creamery’s EMU closure, the passing of SOJC Professor Tom Wheeler and a quick hits of biggest headlines. The end of the podcast also features a goodbye speech from Will Campbell, who will be graduating this term.

Music in this episode is”Chrysalis” by Podington Bear.

This episode was produced by Alec Cowan.

The post Podcast: News wrap: The biggest stories from winter term appeared first on Emerald Media.