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Bacon earns back-to-back national titles in the 3-meter springboard

In her sixth and final season and her last collegiate meet with the Gophers, redshirt fifth-year Sarah Bacon repeated as the 3-meter springboard champion at the NCAA Championships Friday night to claim the fifth individual title of her career.

Bacon will go down as one of the greatest divers in Minnesota’s program history and the sport’s history. Her accolades include but are not limited to three titles on the 1-meter and two on the 3-meter.

“It’s pretty crazy,” Bacon said when asked about her five titles on the ESPN broadcast. “I don’t know if that’ll sink in for a while. Right now, I’m just excited. I want to enjoy what we just accomplished in that pool with my coach tonight and my family.”

The top seed through the prelims, Bacon led the finals through the first three rounds. She fell back into second place by 2.1 points after the fourth round. However, she regained the lead heading into her sixth and final dive.

To cement her back-to-back title, Bacon needed to score 65.95 or higher on her final dive. She blew that score out of the water as she earned 78.00 to finish with a title-winning score of 409.25.

“Sarah always does a great job on the boards,” Gophers associate head coach Stacy Busack said. “Her last dive as a Gopher was a thing of beauty and capped off one of the greatest NCAA diving careers with another national title.”

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Survive and advance: UH holds off UAB in NCAA tournament

UH guard Kyler Edwards scored a game-high 25 points in the Cougars victory over UAB in the first round of the NCAA tournament on Frdiay night in Pittsburgh. | Sean Thomas/The Cougar

UH guard Kyler Edwards scored a game-high 25 points in the Cougars victory over UAB for the first round of the NCAA tournament on Friday night in Pittsburgh. | Sean Thomas/The Cougar

The music plays on as the UH men’s basketball team will dance a little longer. Houston defeated UAB 82-68 in the first round of the NCAA tournament on Friday night at PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh.

The Cougars came out of the gates red-hot from the deep. UH, which averaged eight 3’s per game during the regular season, hit nine shots from behind the arc in the first half led by senior guard Kyler Edwards’ five 3-pointers.

UH bigs Fabian White Jr. and Josh Carlton made their presence felt early, scoring eight first-half points apiece.

Despite the hot start from the field, UH took only a 46-37 lead into the locker room after the Blazers got a slow start offensively, ending the half shooting 61.5 percent from the field as a team.

UAB hovered around 10 points of the lead throughout the majority of the second half but UH did not allow the Blazers to inch any closer than that. Every time it appeared that UAB had the momentum and was about to go on a run, the Cougars found a way to answer to maintain a comfortable cushion.

Edwards finished with a game-high 25 points to go along with seven rebounds.

White scored 14 points and pulled down six boards.

Sophomore point guard Jamal Shead dished out seven assists to go along with his 12 points.

Carlton finished with 12 points and graduate guard Taze Moore scored nine points as well as had six assists.

UH remains perfect (4-0) under Kelvin Sampson in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

Next up, the UH men’s basketball team will face 4-seed Illinois on Sunday with a Sweet 16 berth on the line.

sports@thedailycougar.com


Survive and advance: UH holds off UAB in NCAA tournament” was originally posted on The Cougar

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Kieft, Mafe and Faalele stand out at Gophers Pro Day

Thirteen draft-eligible players from the Gophers 2021-22 roster, competed in the program’s Pro Day Wednesday, showcasing their skills and athleticism to NFL scouts.

A college program’s Pro Day is quite similar to the NFL’s Scouting Combine. The players often compete in the same drills and events, but it gives those who weren’t invited to the Combine an opportunity in front of NFL scouts, and gives those who were a second chance to improve their stock.

Ko Kieft, Sam Schlueter, Jack Gibbens, Coney Durr, Justus Harris, Micah Dew-Treadway, Nyles Pinckney, Phillip Howard and Bishop McDonald were all able to test in front of scouts for the first time in the draft process. Daniel Faalele, Blaise Andries, and Boye Mafe made their second appearance after participating in the Combine at the beginning of March. 

Defensive end Esezi Otomewo was still not able to compete, as he is still recovering from a late-season knee injury.

After all the participants complete a weigh-in, they first test their vertical jump. Mafe led the way with a remarkable jump of 41.5-inches, after weighing in at 257 pounds. Kieft at 32, Harris at 39.5 and Faalele at 29.5 -all impressive results for their size.

Next up was bench press. Micah Dew-Treadway led the way with 25 reps at 225 pounds, while Mafe, Kieft and Schlueter all completed 21 reps.

The broad jump was next, another jumping exercise that tests the player’s explosiveness. Kieft jumped an impressive 9-feet-3-inches, while Faalele recorded 7-feet-10-inches and McDonald 10-feet-3-inches.

The 40-yard hard dash times were recorded unofficially by hand. Coney Durr had an impressive time of 4.5 seconds, while Faalele ran 5.4 and Kieft 4.85.

After finishing their athletic testing, all of the prospects competed in position-specific drills on the field in front of the 30-plus NFL scouts in attendance.

The NFL Draft is still over one month away, beginning with the first round kicking off on April 28. Wednesday’s Pro Day was another opportunity for the Gophers players to showcase their talents in hopes of hearing their names called.

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UH women’s basketball team rolls past LA Tech in WNIT first round

Bria Patterson led the UH women's basketball team with 18 points in the victory over LA Tech. | Sean Thomas/The Cougar

Bria Patterson led the UH women’s basketball team with 18 points in the victory over LA Tech. | Sean Thomas/The Cougar

The UH women’s basketball team opened its first game of the Women’s National Invitation Tournament with a 63-52 victory over Louisiana Tech.

The Cougars stamped their footprint on the offensive end and controlled the game early on.

An even start at 8-8 saw the Cougars jump out on a 10-2 run to create some distance at 18-10 with 2:09 left in the first quarter.

UH women’s basketball closed out the quarter with a 20-15 lead as sophomore guard Laila Blair and junior guard Tiara Young led the offensive efforts scoring six points each in the first period.

The Lady Techsters opened the second quarter on a 5-0 run to tie the game at 20-20. The Cougars regained the lead and maintained it until the break with a 35-28 lead at halftime.

Junior forward Bria Patterson led the charge on offense as she scored seven out of UH’s 15 points in the second quarter.

The third quarter was a copy of the second quarter with even competitive play from both teams.

UH found its first double-digit lead at 38-28 with a 3-pointer by Patterson to start the quarter.

The Cougars held on to a 10-point lead deep into the quarter, but the Lady Techsters managed to cut the margin to six to end the quarter at 49-43.

Despite shortening the deficit, LA Tech struggled to battle back in the fourth as UH rode a 6-0 run and stretched the lead to 55-43.

The Lady Techsters never managed to pose a threat in the remainder of the fourth quarter as the UH women’s basketball team closed out the game and walked away with their first win of the WNIT.

Patterson and Young led UH in scoring on the night with 18 and 17 respectively to combine for 35 of the Cougars’ 63 points.

The Cougars now advance to the second round of the WNIT and will host Tennessee Tech on Sunday, March 20 at Fertitta Center.

sports@thedailycougar.com


UH women’s basketball team rolls past LA Tech in WNIT first round” was originally posted on The Cougar

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Augustine Kofie talks ‘Rotationships,’ building unity through pieces of the past

Augustine Kofie talks ‘Rotationships,’ building unity through pieces of the past

Illustration of street and graffiti artist Augustine Kofie and their most recent mural.

Angela Bi/File

Desaturated yellows and dusty pinks geometrically coalesce with monochromatic package labels on a 300-pound oblong-shaped installation piece, rising up to the offbeat sound of hammered nails as artist Augustine Kofie tilts the wooden structure onto its side. The hollowed-out center acts as a giant window, temporarily enveloping the back wall of Heron Arts in an elliptical frame as it waits to be hung for the opening night of Kofie’s solo exhibition “Rotationships.”

“(‘Rotationships’) is not a drastic jump from what I’ve been doing for all these years, but it is narrowed in and very specific — different from what I’ve done before,” Kofie said in an interview with The Daily Californian. 

With roots in Los Angeles, Kofie has long portrayed his relationship with rounded shapes through paintings, murals and collages, uniting soft curves with angular linework. From steno notepads to filing folders, “Rotationships” — on display through April 9 — draws on Kofie’s 15-17 year collection of found materials to continue his exploration of circular forms. 

“Kof is my name for short,” the artist explained. “So structurally, it’s a hard K, a round O, a hard F. So I have to think of this balance of how I can incorporate these linear and rounded forms. Over time, as I was doing that in my paintings, I realized the rounded form was more of the feminine to the masculine hard edge line work.”

In “Rotationships,” each sharp line and gentle curve cannot exist without the other. Collaging together similar colored pieces, Kofie preserved the salvaged aesthetic of each found item, putting his paint aside to invite the unaltered shades of past narratives into his work. 

“I’m very into ‘Vintage Futurism’ and taking from the past,” Kofie said. “Usually the futurism is the present in a way. I’m not a futurist per se, but I like taking the past and remixing it into something that can stand the test of time and still look good down the line, if I can manage that.” 

Though Kofie began his art career in graffiti lettering, over time his letterforms unfolded into abstract shapes until they disappeared altogether. With partial logos from industrial labels and fragmented song titles from forgotten album covers, Kofie is coming full circle, reintegrating words into his work — only this time he’s recontextualizing buried texts of the past. 

When asked about graffiti lettering within ‘Rotationships,’ Kofie said, “The only connection to that, other than the type that’s incorporated, is the way that I approach my lettering and how I am much more architectural and linear about it. These hidden structures in the background are the hints toward the way I build letter form, but they’re secondary. The oblongs and the shapes are what I’m trying to put the attention to.”

Hung side by side, two of Kofie’s later oblong pieces pop out of their black backgrounds, a color used mindfully due to its rare appearance in old packaging materials. In one piece, the familiar rotations begin to merge, forming different color combinations and pattern arrangements where they overlap. 

“I didn’t even know they were going to get hung together, which is great seeing it now,” Kofie expressed as he ran his fingers down one of the collage’s mosaic textures. “At this point, I was getting much more experimental with transparency and crisscrossing because generally (the oblongs are) just bumped up against each other. I was getting a lot more comfortable with them interacting and all of these unique transitions that can happen in between.”

Kofie utilized serigraph printing to create meditative background pieces reminiscent of security envelope patterns, adding a sense of consistency amongst the limited supply of certain found material colors. When assembling each component, Kofie lets his materials guide their placement, aligning trust falls with architectural precision.

“When I’m working on them flat, there’s no set orientation,” Kofie said, referring to each piece. “I’m just building out based around the shapes and I place them where they’re going to go, whatever feels right. But I also try to give myself some kind of groundwork: I build off of certain lines, I place all the paper within those lines and see how it comes out. It’s still kinetic, but it’s also taking chances.” 

To provide a beat for his rotations, Kofie constructed a soundtrack for “Rotationships,” extending his collage work to sound by intermixing dialogue and music samples that influenced him during his three-year creation process. As the pound of the hammer softens, Kofie stands encircled by oblong forms, filling the center of his cohesive work while the final pieces make their way to a wall for the first time. 

“(‘Rotationships’) is something I needed to do, to let out and express,” Kofie intimated. “And maybe it’s about me feeling like I’m a whole artist now. All these years, maybe I felt like I was just a creative person doing it. But this really feels like a step forward in my art career.”

Amanda Ayano Hayami covers visual art. Contact her at ahayami@dailycal.org.

The Daily Californian

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Endowment increases by 39% in 2021

Emory University’s endowment increased by 39% from $7.94 billion in fiscal year 2020 to $11.03 billion in fiscal year 2021, according to the annual study conducted by the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO). 

This jump represents significantly more growth compared to the 0.82% increase from fiscal year 2019 to fiscal year 2020, reflecting financial repercussions from the first few months of the pandemic. Emory now ranks No. 16 of the 735 U.S. and Canadian institutions surveyed, up from No. 17 of 717 last year. 

Of participating colleges and universities in Georgia, Emory’s endowment remains the largest, followed by the Georgia Institute of Technology with $2.97 billion and the University of Georgia with $1.82 billion, which nationally ranks them No. 49 and No. 78, respectively. 

Emory’s $11 billion endowment comprises 2,000 individual endowments. Assistant Vice President for Communications and Marketing Laura Diamond wrote in a March 4 email to the Wheel that each endowment represents the culmination of months-long conversations between the University and potential donors. 

Ally Hom/Photo Editor

In a Feb. 18 press release, NACUBO highlighted that institutions across the country have taken advantage of “dramatically higher investment returns” to better fund student financial aid. According to Diamond, 70% of Emory endowment funds are contractually restricted in their usage and the other 30% are unrestricted. Both types of endowments support academic programs such as scholarships and fellowships, with restricted funds contributing $40.1 million in fiscal year 2021 and unrestricted funds helping support the Woodruff Scholars, among other programs. 

Although donors are able to restrict the use of their funds, Emory Investment Management has the discretion to invest the funds. “Emory’s endowment is invested in a globally, diversified portfolio of investments,” Diamond wrote. However, the NACUBO report noted, endowments are beginning to turn their attention to the navigation of growing inflation.  

Diamond said the University’s “primary investment objective is to earn an average annual real total return of at least 5% per year over the long term, net of cost,” in order to sustain the endowment’s purchasing power and support funding priorities. 

Emory’s endowment was a beneficiary of the unprecedented performance in global equity markets in 2020 and 2021,” Diamond concluded.

The post Endowment increases by 39% in 2021 appeared first on The Emory Wheel.

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One Golden Moment S05E01: Crafting the perfect March Madness Bracket

One Golden Moment S05E01: Crafting the perfect March Madness Bracket

Ryan Chien and Will Cooke help our podcast host, Sarah Siegel, fill out her March Madness bracket.

 

 

 

 

 

The Daily Californian

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UH men’s golf picks up top-five finish at Louisiana Classics

The UH men's golf team had a strong showing in its season opener in the Rice Intercollegiate. Sophomore Austyn Reily lead the Cougars finishing at -3 on the day. | File Art

Juana Garcia/The Cougar

Juana Garcia/The Cougar

The UH men’s golf team took care of business at the Louisiana Classics, finishing top five in the team standings in fifth place with a total score of 856 (-8).

The first day of action included the first two rounds of play, as junior Marcus Wochner led the Cougars with a 69 and 70 for a tie for seventh-place at 139.

Graduate Alexander Frances recorded a team-best 68 in the first round, yet a par-72 in the afternoon dropped him down into a tie for 12th at 140.

A 71 in the morning for freshman Jacob Borow followed up by a 73 in his second round positioned him in a tie for 25th-place at par-144.

Senior Braxton Watkins posted a 1-under 71 in the first round but took a heavy fall in the afternoon with a 76 to place him in a tie for 45th at 147.

Graduate Andrew Gibson struggled in both of his first two rounds, posting a 76 and 75 to fall into a tie for 75th at 151.

The second and last day of the competition saw Watkins record the lowest score of the round for the UH men’s golf team with a 70 to finish at 217 (+1) and tied for 31st.

Wochner shot his highest score of the tournament at par-72 to end his involvement with a total score of 211 (-5) and sit in a tie for 13th.

Borow also recorded a par-72 in his final round to finish the tournament on par at 216 (E) and take a tie for 27th.

Gibson posted a 1-over 73 to take a tie for 69th at 224 (+8), while Frances played the highest score of the day and his tournament with a 74 to finish in a tie for 21st at 214 (-2).

sports@thedailycougar.com


UH men’s golf picks up top-five finish at Louisiana Classics” was originally posted on The Cougar

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Men’s basketball season ends as Big Dance chance trips Rams in 2nd half

The NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Tournament has finally begun after weeks of anticipation and a season of preparation for the Colorado State University Rams. 

The No. 6 Rams went into the first round taking on the No. 11 University of Michigan Wolverines in Indianapolis for the first game of the tournament in Gainbridge Fieldhouse, home arena of the NBA Indiana Pacers.

The Rams came out ready for the Big Dance, starting the game strong with several threes to get them an early 14-7 lead in the first half. Colorado State’s tight man defense seemed to be slowing down Michigan while also keeping a leash on 7-foot-1-inch monster Hunter Dickinson.

Throughout the first half, the Rams eliminated the chance for Michigan to get comfortable, shutting down U-M’s offense and holding Dickson to 12 points, with CSU adding five steals that created potential play opportunities. 

Closing the half, Colorado State went 8-20 around the 3-point arc, holding the Wolverines to 0-7. Dischon Thomas started the first half looking like a guard, making half the green and gold’s threes. The Rams headed into the locker room with a 36-29 lead.

The Rams started the second half with what seemed like the same strong momentum as the first 20 minutes; however, the Wolverines came out of the locker room with a new burst of energy, slowing down CSU to a three-point lead. 

Colorado State’s lead slowly started to fade away as the Wolverines’ shooting accuracy increased, the Rams up one, 44-43, with just over 13 minutes to go. Michigan saw their first lead of the game shortly after, but the Rams battled, the two trading leads three times in three minutes. 

Despite the back-and-forth, the Rams stayed on the Wolverines’ tail until they fell seven points behind with just over five minutes left, but they couldn’t get out of that hole. With a minute left in the game, the Rams were down 10 points when it turned into a free-throw game, as Isaiah Stevens and David Roddy fouled out late. 

Although Colorado State came out starting the game with what looked like a victory in sight, things turned south as Michigan created the first upset of the tournament, taking over the Rams 75-63. Thomas led the Rams with 15 points, followed by Roddy with 13 points, six rebounds and four assists. 

The Rams finish the 2021-22 basketball season in Indianapolis with a 25-6 overall record and even more of a drive for next year.

Reach Taylor Paumen at sports@collegian.com or on Twitter @TayTayPau.

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After two years of cancellations, BU Global Medical Brigades is ready to head to Guatemala

Boston University Global Medical Brigades will be on its way to Guatemala in May. This is their first in-person trip in two years.

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