Axodys 10C Edition

Jack Cunningham had a full ride to play for the Jayhawks at the same time Paul Pierce, Raef LaFrentz, and Jacque Vaughn were there. Here’s what would’ve happened if he hadn’t quit.

🏀🍿 I'd seen a brief trailer in passing for a movie featuring Ben Affleck as a high school basketball coach¹, but I didn't even know anything about the actual premise of The Way Back or remember its title until I read this piece (which is a pretty awesome what-if). Anyway a fun historical exercise in imagining what kind of impact the Ben Affleck character could have had if he had been a real player that had played at Kansas during the implied era and didn't have his career derailed by alcoholism.

1. I've kind of got a thing for this particular sports movie sub genre, even if most are ultimately disappointing.

An ambulance crew found a dead person in the road near Northwood Middle School early Tuesday morning, leading to a two-hour delay in the Mead School District.

The AMR Ambulance Crew found the body just after 3:30 a.m. on Farwell Road east of Pittsburg Street, according to a Spokane County Sheriff’s Office statement.

I planned to turn onto Farwell this morning on the way into work to go get some gas at the local Fred Meyers and was surprised to find it completely coned off with a police car overseeing the roadblock. You don't expect someone to drop dead in the middle of a suburban neighborhood during the early morning hours so hopefully more information will be forthcoming soon.

"Let's say that we discover that COVID-19 is an illness where the public health is really threatened," NCAA Chief Medical Officer Dr. Brian Hainline told CNN. "The only people that are in the building are the players and the referees and the necessary personnel. The fans aren't there and we know that the risk mitigation is superb and that the people there are without risk of transmission… We painted all of those scenarios and so we're prepared for that."

🏀 Not really encouraging when we know that COVID-19 is in fact "an illness where the public health is really threatened." The NCAA has the plans, but they don't have the will to implement them proactively, only reactively when infection has spread to a significant number of people. It's up to government to step up to the plate and be the bad guy in this situation, which means we're screwed for a national tournament like this one.

"We've already gone to three shifts," says Dr. Keith Jerome, a professor in the department of laboratory medicine who runs the lab. "People are going to be here basically all the time."

The lab is processing about 100 coronavirus tests a day. But it's prepared to do more than 1,000 a day immediately and could quickly increase that to 4,000, Jerome says.

I'm so glad these UW scientists had the foresight to start preparing when they did. Hopefully similar efforts have already been underway at labs throughout the rest of the country.

Through interviews with dozens of public-health officials and a survey of local data from across the country, The Atlantic could only verify that 1,895 people have been tested for the coronavirus in the United States, about 10 percent of whom have tested positive. And while the American capacity to test for the coronavirus has ramped up significantly over the past few days, local officials can still test only several thousand people a day, not the tens or hundreds of thousands indicated by the White House’s promises.

The time it took to test the two cases in Eastern Washington that I know of (fortunately both negative I believe) was in excess of three days. Now that the UW Virology lab is approved I think it's going to help a lot, but we clearly need even greater capacity across the country to increase testing to an adequate level.

The event, featuring the Denny Humphrey Memorial Boys All-Star Game and the Jack Blair Memorial Girls All-Star Game, is March 17 at Lewis and Clark High School. The girls’ game is at 5:30 p.m. and the boys tip at 7:30.

The games will feature all-stars from the Greater Spokane League (“Metro”) against the best from the region’s smaller schools, North Idaho, the Mid-Columbia Conference and the Columbia Basin Big 9.

Each of the GSL and Great Northern League schools are represented between the four teams, and MVPs from more than a dozen leagues east of the Cascades dot the rosters.

The Boys Metro team with all the Greater Spokane League players is going to be really solid, but the Region team has some outstanding players as well (a bunch of Eastern Washington league MVPs in fact). Happy to hear that Ferris senior Zach Fleming will be taking part and looking forward to seeing how this one turns out.

“Ichiro’s at the plate, and Allen’s flipping him balls. It was amazing,” he said. “I watched this guy hit 50 balls. He hit 45 of them perfectly. Like, ‘OK, I’m going hit these in front of you now,’ and they come running in and it’s perfect, shoestring catch.

” ‘OK, now I’m going to hit them over your head,’ and it’s right at the wall. And the fans are just watching it, the players are just going about their business. I’m thinking, ‘Do you people not know how hard that is to do?’ It’s a gift. I talked to Allen about it. He said, ‘He was practicing all winter.’ Not surprising. Nothing amazes me anymore about that guy. Just a love for the game.”

⚾ Going to a Mariners game just to see Ichiro do his thing in BP, whether it's pitching or hitting fungoes sounds pretty awesome. What a privilege for the young players to get to work with him.

📚 Galaga (Boss Fight Books, #4) (★★★★) is a quick read that I ended up enjoying more than I expected. Like most books in the series this book is equal part classic video game examination and memoir; I found this one particularly entertaining and poignant. It made me want to fire up an emulator and start playing a game that I had probably only played at a pizza place once or twice before.

Just found out about Tot via John Gruber's post. Tot is an "elegant, simple way to collect & edit text on your Mac, iPhone, and iPad." Craig Hockenberry and the Icon Factory have really outdone themselves because this is exactly the tool I've needed for a long time. I use plaintext in a lot of different scenarios, but I've never had a great place to work on and store short term text on the Mac.¹ The mac version is free, but requires Mojave or higher (and uses iCloud for syncing), the iOS version is a $20 one time fee.

1. Although it just occurred to me that Drafts for Mac (which I have yet to try) could serve a similar role with even more power.

Surely you know the vitals: college hoops’ leading scorer in 2006, when he was also a consensus All-American and co-Player of the Year by the measure of coaches and writers with Duke’s JJ Redick. Their long-distance rivalry for the scoring title gave the season its buzz, but it was Morrison’s style that provided the bite.

And nowadays, no one remembers how improbable it all was.

He was a local kid out of Mead High School – an ex-GU ballboy – with no other Division I offers, despite outsized scoring numbers.

Truly a deserved honor, but I kind of wish they'd recognized Courtney Vandersloot first because of her huge impact on the women's program.¹ Her WNBA career is still going strong though² and she did come along a year after Morrison left Gonzaga so chronologically I guess it makes sense.

1. First person to score 2000 points and handout 1000 assists during their college career, as well as leading her team to the Elite 8 her senior year.

2. Just signed a new 3 year deal with the Chicago Sky I believe.