Local Beer Preview: Crystal Lake Reel Hazyon March 27, 2021 at 4:09 am

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Local Beer Preview: Crystal Lake Reel Hazy

Stairway to Heaven is still legendary but what about the rest of Led Zeppelin IV fifty years later?on March 27, 2021 at 5:26 am

I’ve Got The Hippy Shakes

Stairway to Heaven is still legendary but what about the rest of Led Zeppelin IV fifty years later?

Stairway to Heaven is still legendary but what about the rest of Led Zeppelin IV fifty years later?on March 27, 2021 at 5:26 am Read More »

How the Super 25 fared in Week 2on March 27, 2021 at 3:45 am

1. Loyola (1-0)

Saturday vs. No. 2 Mount Carmel

2. Mount Carmel (1-0)

Saturday at No. 1 Loyola

3. Lincoln-Way East (2-0)

Won 31-0 at No. 8 Homewood-Flossmoor

4. Batavia (2-0)

Won 21-19 vs. St. Charles North

5. Brother Rice (1-1)

Lost 20-16 at No. 7 Marist

6. Glenbard West (2-0)

Won 21-0 at York

7. Marist (2-0)

Won 20-16 vs. No. 5 Brother Rice

8. Homewood-Flosssmoor (1-1)

Lost 31-0 vs. No. 3 Lincoln-Way East

9. St. Rita (1-1)

Won 51-13 vs. No. 19 Montini

10. Naperville Central (1-0)

Sunday vs. Marmion

11. Warren (2-0)

Won 21-7 vs. Stevenson

12. Nazareth (0-0)

Saturday vs. St. Laurence

13. Maine South (2-0)

Won 10-7 at Evanston

14. Prairie Ridge (2-0)

Won 63-26 vs. Crystal Lake South

15. Hinsdale Central (2-0)

Won 41-7 vs. Leyden

16. Wheaton Warrenville South (2-0)

Won 20-12 at Glenbard North

17. Joliet Catholic (1-0)

Sunday at Fenwick

18. Cary-Grove (1-0)

DNP

19. Montini (0-2)

Lost 51-13 at No. 9 St. Rita

20. Oswego (2-0)

Won 20-10 at Plainfield North

21. Neuqua Valley (1-0)

DNP

22. Phillips (0-0)

DNP

23. Fremd (2-0)

Won 14-8 vs. Schaumburg

24. Huntley (2-0)

Won 35-0 vs. Burlington Central

25. DeKalb (1-0)

Saturday at Naperville North

How the Super 25 fared in Week 2on March 27, 2021 at 3:45 am Read More »

Sharon Osbourne exits ‘The Talk’ following Piers Morgan fallout, network reviewon March 27, 2021 at 2:22 am

LOS ANGELES — CBS says Sharon Osbourne will no longer appear on its daytime show “The Talk” after a heated on-air discussion about racism earlier this month.

The network said Friday Osbourne had decided to leave the show after a review that found in part that “Sharon’s behavior toward her co-hosts during the March 10 episode did not align with our values for a respectful workplace.”

The network said its internal inquiry said the show’s co-hosts, including Osbourne and Sheryl Underwood, were not properly prepared by the show’s team for a discussion on race. But it said there was no evidence found to support Osbourne’s claim CBS ordered she be confronted about her support of British TV personality Piers Morgan.

Morgan, who is a friend of Osbourne’s, left “Good Morning Britain” after saying he didn’t believe Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, when she said in an interview that she had considered suicide when unhappy with her life in Britain’s royal family.

“The Talk” has been on hiatus while the March 10 discussion was investigated. CBS said it had conducted workshops and training this week “about equity, inclusion and cultural awareness for the hosts, producers and crew.”

There was no immediate comment from Osbourne’s publicist.

No replacement has been announced. CBS said the show will not return until April 12.

During the discussion of Morgan, Underwood asked Osbourne, “what would you say to people who may feel that, while you’re standing by your friend, it appears that you gave validation or safe haven to something that he has uttered that is racist, even if you don’t agree?”

Osbourne replied angrily, using words that were bleeped out, and said she felt like she was being placed on “the electric chair” for having a friend that some people think is racist.

After a commercial break, the discussion continued with Osbourne telling Underwood at one point: “Don’t try to cry. If anyone should be crying, it should be me.”

Osbourne gained TV fame with the 2002-2005 reality show “The Osbournes,” which she produced and starred in alongside her heavy-metal rock star husband, Ozzy Osbourne, and two of their three children.

Sharon Osbourne, a manager for her husband and other musicians, was a judge on the British talent show “The X Factor” and on “America’s Got Talent.”

Sharon Osbourne exits ‘The Talk’ following Piers Morgan fallout, network reviewon March 27, 2021 at 2:22 am Read More »

Jamari Grant’s 53-yard TD run wins Pulaski Road Super Bowl for Mariston March 27, 2021 at 2:22 am

Marist senior Jamari Grant didn’t play football as a sophomore. Last season he was the scout team running back.

So the group of reporters waiting to talk to him after his 53-yard fourth quarter touchdown run helped the No. 7 Redhawks beat No. 5 Brother Rice 20-16 in the “Pulasi Road Super Bowl” was a little intimidating.

“This is my first time [being interviewed],” Grant warned before handling the questions as expertly as he ran for 149 yards on 18 carries. “It was my whole line [responsible for the touchdown]. I love them to death. [Brother Rice] almost had me. I felt tripped a little bit on it. I was scared.”

Grant showed impressive patience as a running back. He calmly waited for his talented line, led by Notre Dame recruit Pat Coogan, to make space.

“I learned that this year,” Grant said. “[Assistant coach Pat Fleming] taught me how to be patient. It’s hard.”

“[Grant] is really fast,” Marist coach Ron Dawczak said. “He was going a million miles an hour all the time. We had to teach him how to slow down. Now he’s showing that patience. He’s really progressed. That’s the value of being a scout team running back. It’s a thankless role but he gained so much experience and he showed what he learned last year.”

Grant’s touchdown helped turn the tide after Brother Rice took a 16-14 lead late in the third quarter when Crusaders junior Mike Fahy tackled a Marist running back for a safety.

“Don’t ever get too high or too low,” Marist quarterback Dontrell Jackson Jr. said. “Our saying is ‘next play best play’ we just try to make the most out of every opportunity.”

The visiting Crusaders (1-1) had an opportunity to win the game in the final minutes. Brother Rice had the ball on its own 27 with 2:37 to play but the Redhawks ‘defense held strong. Jimmy Rolder, who caught a six-yard touchdown pass in the first quarter, knocked down Jack Lausch’s pass on fourth down to seal the win.

“I give all the credit to our senior leadership,” Dawczak said. “Looking in their eyes [after the safety] I could see it didn’t faze them. It would have been easy for the guys to put their heads down but they continued to fight. They believed we were going to fight, scratch, claw, whatever they needed to do to get this win.”

Jackson, a Coastal Carolina recruit, was 9-for-20 for 101 yards and two touchdowns. Senior Collin McGlynn had four catches for 39 yards and Tim Warr caught a 25-yard touchdown pass in the third quarter for the Redhawks.

Lausch was 19-for-33 for 139 yards and one touchdown, a seven-yard pass to Toledo recruit Willie Shaw.

The Crusaders beat Providence last week. The challenges keep stacking up for Brother Rice, which faces No. 1 Loyola on Thursday.

Marist (2-0) beat Notre Dame last week and faces No. 2 Mount Carmel at home next week.

“This gives us a ton of momentum and shows our true character,” Jackson said. “We’re gonna fight for 48 minutes every game. We just kept our composure and kept on going.”

Jamari Grant’s 53-yard TD run wins Pulaski Road Super Bowl for Mariston March 27, 2021 at 2:22 am Read More »

Pritzker OKs local officials to vaccinate anyone 16 and up — ahead of deadline Chicago already won’t meeton March 26, 2021 at 10:59 pm

Citing a “concerning possible trend” in rising COVID-19 infection rates statewide, Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Friday deployed vaccination teams to five hard-hit counties in northwestern Illinois and authorized other local health departments to expand eligibility to get more shots into arms as quickly as possible.

Public health officials say they’ve seen demand slow down in a number of counties, leaving appointments unfilled while the average statewide coronavirus testing positivity rate has increased by 38% in less than two weeks.

That’s why the governor’s health team is allowing local health officials to start giving out doses to any resident 16 or older “at their immediate discretion,” according to the Illinois Department of Public Health.

“We want to avoid a surge, and so we’ve tried to jump on top of this as fast as possible, making sure we’re not only vaccinating more people, but that we’ve got teams that are going to the regions of the state where this is happening, and… effectuating change so that we can bring down the numbers,” Pritzker said during an unrelated South Side news conference.

The troubling uptick also threatens to derail Pritzker’s “bridge phase” plan that had been poised to loosen more business restrictions within weeks.

“We cannot move forward if our metrics are going backward,” Illinois Public Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike said in a statement.

Pritzker’s latest inoculation edict applies mostly to downstate areas where demand “appears to have waned,” according to the governor’s office. Vaccine demand is still far outpacing supply in Chicago and its collar counties.

Residents should contact their local health departments directly to see if they’ve expanded eligibility.

“Each county is different and local health departments know better how to vaccinate people in their communities as soon as and as equitably as possible,” Ezike said.

Pritzker previously announced plans to open appointments to all residents 16 and up starting April 12, though officials in Chicago and suburban Cook County have said that’ll likely happen closer to May 1 for city-area providers.

For now, Pritzker is also sending “rapid response” vaccination teams to five counties in the northwest portion of the state where experts say they need “to administer doses quickly to blunt increasing trends.”

The state is scheduled to receive an all-time high of nearly 1 million vaccine doses from the federal government next week. With the latest 126,710 shots administered statewide on Thursday, nearly 2 million residents have now been fully immunized, but that’s only 15.4% of the population.

COVID-19 vaccine doses administered by day

Graphic by Jesse Howe and Caroline Hurley | Sun-Times

Source: Illinois Department of Public Health

Graph not displaying properly? Click here.

Illinois has averaged 99,449 shots administered per day over the past week, while COVID-19 infection and hospitalization rates — which were near record lows earlier this month — have inched upward just as they did last October before a devastating fall resurgence.

For the first time since Feb. 6, the public health department reported more than 3,000 new cases of the disease in a single day, with 3,002 infections diagnosed among 76,774 tests. That raised the state’s rolling average positivity rate to 2.9%, which had been at 2.1% on March 13.

Hospitals were treating 1,302 COVID-19 patients Thursday night, the most they’ve seen since the end of February — and a 15% increase compared to two weeks ago.

New COVID-19 cases by day

Graphic by Jesse Howe and Caroline Hurley | Sun-Times

Source: Illinois Department of Public Health

Graph not displaying properly? Click here.

“While these rates are certainly significantly lower than the peak, they represent a potential early warning sign about a possible resurgence,” the state health department said in a statement.

The state also reported 33 more deaths, including that of a Cook County teenager.

Overall, Illinois’ death rate has been falling since late December, but experts agree a rise in cases is typically followed weeks later by rises in hospitalizations and deaths.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Chicago Public Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady sounded the alarm earlier this week on rising transmission among young people in the 18-39 age range. The governor’s health team noted the city has seen its daily case rate jump by 50% in the last week. Cases are up about 40% in suburban Cook County, where officials still followed the city in easing outdoor dining restrictions Friday in their “cautious approach to reopening.”

Pritzker touted his “aggressive action” against the potential spike about a week after outlining the “bridge phase” plan ahead of a potential full reopening as early as May.

To get to the bridge phase, 70% of residents 65 or older have to receive at least a first dose of vaccine — a benchmark the state will hit “in the coming days,” officials said.

The other requirements are keeping 20% or more of intensive care unit beds open across the state, and keeping hospitalization and death rates flat or declining over a 28-day period. Both those metrics are heading the wrong direction.

“This is very concerning to us and it makes us take a pause here to evaluate these numbers,” Pritzker said. “What we want to do most of all is make sure: is this a blip in the numbers?… Or is this something that could have some sustaining features to it, in which case, obviously we want to be extra careful.”

Over the past year, more than 1.2 million residents have tested positive for the disease, and 21,203 have died.

Pritzker OKs local officials to vaccinate anyone 16 and up — ahead of deadline Chicago already won’t meeton March 26, 2021 at 10:59 pm Read More »

Justice reform bill leaves out some important police accountability measureson March 26, 2021 at 10:14 pm

Last month, Governor J.B. Pritzker signed a landmark bill on criminal justice reform, which was championed by the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus and grassroots community groups across the state. This monumental policy package will take crucial steps in advancing racial justice in Illinois by enacting long overdue reforms to anti-Black systems of policing, and revising overly punitive sentencing laws.

But while the passage of the ILBC’s historic legislation has been rightly celebrated as a hard won victory, the final language included several glaring omissions, particularly around limiting the power of police unions, who have been the most steadfast and powerful voices against police accountability. If the state legislature is truly serious about reform, they must pursue additional legislation to plug these gaps.

Under fierce pressures from Chicago’s Fraternal Order of the Police and the largest public employee labor union in the nation, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, the final bill dropped a powerful measure included in the ILBC’s original proposal that would have dismantled systems of police impunity in Illinois.

This provision, originally introduced by Representative Carol Ammons and the Chicago-based Workers Center for Racial Justice as HB 5830, would have prohibited measures in police union contracts that obstruct the open investigation of officer misconduct and thwart efforts to enact meaningful police reform. Many current police contracts, such as Chicago’s, include provisions that undermine fair investigations of misconduct by allowing accused officers time to review evidence, prepare before an investigation starts and limits the mechanisms for handing down discipline.

Under the false guise of protecting workers rights, AFSCME and the FOP pushed lawmakers to remove the right of Illinois residents to hold the police accountable through open investigations and discipline for officer wrongdoing. This has been the way police unions and, by extension, police forces have amassed power that allows for rampant systemic misconduct and office impunity.

Since the early 1960s, police unions have weaponized collective bargaining power to create a firewall for police misconduct. Unlike most union contracts that deal explicitly with wages and compensation, police collective bargaining agreements include provisions that shield individual officers from investigation into misconduct, provide impunity, and in some cases, allow law enforcement to destroy disciplinary records of individual officers. These contracts grant a level of protection enjoyed by no other profession. Doctors can be sued for malpractice, lawyers can be disbarred, even your hairstylist can lose her license for failure to follow health standards. But police officers, who have powers of life and death, rarely face consequences.

In reality, police contracts undermine public safety by allowing police misconduct to go unchecked, often until it is too late. Jason Van Dyke, the officer convicted in the 2014 murder of Laquan McDonald in Chicago, had at least ten excessive force complaints against him at the time of the murder — none of which resulted in disciplinary action. Tracking by the Citizens Police Data suggests that Van Dyke had more complaints filed against him than 94 percent of other officers. Police contracts have allowed law enforcement to terrorize Black people with no recourse and no semblance of justice. Communities aren’t safe when anyone is above the law, including police.

As police unions have amassed power through their contracts, they have also been able to undermine any attempts at police reform through threats and fear mongering. Shortly after the introduction of ILBC’s reform package, the President of the Illinois Association of Police Chiefs said that the provisions would “destroy law enforcement’s ability to keep communities safe.” A representative from the Illinois Fraternal Order of Police said the provisions would lead to “frivolous lawsuits” and was punishing good police.

Police unions routinely give political donations to candidates’ campaigns, making legislators politically beholden to them. By conservative estimates, Illinois police unions have given at least $376,410 to sitting Illinois state legislators. But police unions have also organized walkoffs and slowed their response to 911 calls to put pressure on political officials, a tactic so common it has its own nickname — the “blue flu.”

What’s clear is that with all the praise for reform we heard from lawmakers, many of them still ultimately sided with the police unions. While the Black Caucus was clear-eyed about where the real problems lay, their allies were not willing to take the hard step of curbing the power of police unions. True reform will not be possible until that work is complete, and lawmakers who want to be celebrated as defending Black lives still have work to do.

Erika Maye is the deputy senior director of criminal justice and democracy campaigns at Color Of Change.

Send letters to [email protected].

Justice reform bill leaves out some important police accountability measureson March 26, 2021 at 10:14 pm Read More »

How the days of Madigan’s ‘everyone at the table’ incrementalism were ended by progressive billson March 26, 2021 at 10:35 pm

Since 2006, federal law has capped annual interest rates on payday loans to active duty military members at 36 percent. The interest rate cap was broadened in 2015 to include several more types of personal, unsecured loans.

In Illinois, meanwhile, payday loan borrowers have been subjected to average annual interest rates of close to 300 percent.

Illinois lawmakers tried to tackle this issue in 2005, and passed a rate cap that was widely heralded. But the industry took advantage of a gaping loophole and then kept right on with their business.

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That legislation was painstakingly negotiated over many months. Under the old regime of House Speaker Michael Madigan, most every interest was given a seat at the table and then they were told to hammer out their best deals. Madigan often said he was a big fan of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s use of that same method to pass much of his own legislation.

I don’t know about FDR, but MJM also had mouths to feed. The political machine he built (which was copied by the other legislative leaders) provided a path for his most favored former state staffers into contract lobbying jobs, where they continued running his campaign apparatus as well as representing a huge number of interests under the Statehouse dome. Hiring one of Madigan’s former staffers didn’t necessarily guarantee any specific industry a win, mainly because those folks represented all sides of almost every coin. But it did mean they were listened to. And oftentimes bills couldn’t move until their concerns were addressed, sometimes leading to very complicated laws that appeared on the surface to be wins for liberal Democrats, but, as with the payday loan bill, turned out to be paper tigers.

As always, there were notable exceptions during the years, but this overall approach began to change after the 2018 gubernatorial election. A new liberal Democratic governor and empowered progressive legislators and interests were no longer content to settle for incremental surface wins and pushed for big things like a $15 minimum wage. Madigan for decades would only agree to small minimum wage increases, but he quickly realized he couldn’t stand in the way of that freight train.

Then, as the Legislative Black Caucus truly united for the first time during the tumult of 2020 and began working on a massive package of reform legislation, Madigan found himself under fire from all corners. Federal prosecutors were clearly coming after him, and a steadily increasing number of his own caucus members were growing weary of his leadership and wanted him gone. He needed some allies and he needed them fast.

Those two phenomena, combined with a new and untested (because of the pandemic’s cancelation of 2020’s legislative session) Senate president, a national mood shift and numerous other factors, produced an environment that the Black Caucus fully took advantage of to pass a remarkable number of wide-ranging bills on criminal justice, education and the economy during the brief January lame duck session.

The days of Madigan’s “everyone at the table” incrementalism were ended by straight-up progressive bills that were far from watered down. Madigan’s long and storied career also ended in January. His gambit didn’t work.

Last week, Gov. Pritzker signed into law the Black Caucus’ huge package of bills dealing with economic reform. Among them was SB1792, a bill that basically applied the military’s simple but seemingly effective interest rate cap on payday and other personal loans. The payday loan folks expressed outraged at how they’d been cut out of the process and predicted their industry’s imminent demise.

We’ll see if the industry’s dire predictions turn out to be true, but it’s as plain as day that massive change is happening, not just in the types of bills that have passed, but in how they’ve passed.

Opinion This Week

A weekly overview of opinions, analysis and commentary on issues affecting Chicago, Illinois and our nation by outside contributors, Sun-Times readers and the CST Editorial Board.

The question now is whether January’s session was a super-intense brushfire that will burn itself out and/or be extinguished by more moderate Democrats, or whether the path the General Assembly is on will be sustained.

Case in point, Rep. Curtis Tarver’s,D-Chicago, bill to eliminate qualified immunity for police officers advanced out of committee last week.

The Black Caucus’ criminal justice reform bill originally contained that qualified immunity provision, as well as limits on collective bargaining rights for police unions. But their bill was only able to gain enough votes when they agreed to strip out those items at the request of some moderate Democrats.

Tarver’s bill could put more heat on those same moderates and create tension within the party. So, this bill could be one to watch.

How the days of Madigan’s ‘everyone at the table’ incrementalism were ended by progressive billson March 26, 2021 at 10:35 pm Read More »

Shootings of Chicago cops are also an assault on all of our neighborhoodson March 26, 2021 at 9:00 pm

Eight people shot, one dead.

Seeing the horrible news crawler across my TV screen, for a moment, I was confused.

Did someone post old news? Or did this really happen so soon after a mass shooting at a South Side warehouse party left two people dead and 15 wounded?

Sadly, it wasn’t an error.

Early Friday, two men started shooting inside a building in Wrightwood, killing a 26-year-old man and leaving seven others in need of medical care.

Yet I count us lucky because of what recently happened in Atlanta, where a white gunman killed eight people, six of them women of Asian descent, leading many to label the shooting a hate crime.

Soon after that, a man suspected of having a mental illness opened fire at a grocery store in Boulder, Colorado. Ten people were killed there, including a police officer.

That last shooting is part of a plague that, like the pandemic, also seems to target a vulnerable population — in this case, police officers, who have become targets in Chicago as well. Four police officers have been shot in Chicago in two weeks, making the city feel more like a war zone than a place to call home.

In one of the shootings, prosecutors said a man shot an innocent person to “lure” police to the area “because he wanted them to kill him.”

The suspect, Tracey Thomas Jr., has been charged with the attempted murders of five police officers.

This unprecedented assault on police officers comes at a time the Chicago Police Department is trying to strengthen its ties with communities experiencing high crime.

In recent months, I’ve witnessed police officers participate in prayer vigils on corners that are under siege by folks up to no good. And I wonder how these officers keep up their morale.

Police Supt. David Brown took over a department embarrassed by scandal at the top and hampered by mistrust at the bottom. Yet he had to stand before the cameras after each gun atrocity and say something that was supposed to give us hope.

As he did again on Thursday.

“Here in Chicago — it’s the idea that cops are putting their lives on the line every day, and it seems that these offenders are acting with impunity, and yet, with hypercriticism, officers continue to run toward danger,” Brown said at a news conference after an officer was shot and wounded in Brighton Park.

We should all remember police officers and their families in our prayers. They need it.

And so do we. With the police under this kind of fire, what are we supposed to do?

It used to be that I felt pretty safe during daylight hours in specific neighborhoods and particular places. But when gunfire breaks out at a Home Depot and cops are getting shot on the regular, it’s clear that there is nowhere to hide.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of gun deaths across the country is staggering — 39,707 in 2019. We consider ourselves to be such a progressive country. But the U.S. gun homicide rate is 25 times that of other high-income countries.

And, for all of the progress that Black folks have made, we represent most of the victims of these killings. We are 10 times more likely than white Americans to be shot to death, according to the Everytown Research and Policy.

The news media need to run a daily tally of gun deaths in this country just like we do with COVID-19. Perhaps then more elected officials would be willing to take up the fight to pass more restrictive gun laws.

We’ve fought too hard to defeat the COVID-19 pandemic to succumb to the epidemic of gun violence.

Contributing: Grace Asiegbu

Shootings of Chicago cops are also an assault on all of our neighborhoodson March 26, 2021 at 9:00 pm Read More »

Ten things I think I know going into Loyola’s Sweet 16 matchup with Oregon Stateon March 26, 2021 at 9:06 pm

During the 1987 Chicago teachers strike, high school football games were being canceled left and right. Classes? Oh, yeah, those, too. But no football was outrageous! So we donned our jerseys, took to the streets and protested outside City Hall while William Bennett, Secretary of Education under President Ronald Reagan, glared into any television camera he could find and called the city’s public schools the worst in America.

All of which is to say I wouldn’t understand the mechanics of Ken Pomeroy’s renowned “Pythagorean expectation”-based college basketball ratings if you spotted me a slide rule, a scientific calculator and a pair of thick-rimmed glasses held together by strips of masking tape.

But even I am capable of grasping this: Loyola got jobbed.

Of the top eight KenPom teams heading into the NCAA Tournament, four were deemed No. 1 seeds by the selection committee, three were No. 2 seeds and the eighth was — wait, what? — a No. 8 seed. Yes, the Ramblers. If you believe in KenPom at all (and to be clear, I’m not smart enough to know if I do), you can plainly see that something here is amiss.

I didn’t think much about the Ramblers’ seeding when the bracket first came out. I was too excited about a potential second-round matchup against top-seeded Illinois. I wanted my two hours of college basketball lover’s bliss. I even wrote that the Ramblers and their supporters should let the disrespect roll right off their backs and just enjoy the moment.

But now that Georgia Tech and the Illini have been left in crumpled heaps, I’m seeing it: I was wrong. And that’s just one of 10 things I know as we get ready for Saturday’s Loyola-Oregon State tilt in the Sweet 16.

2. The hardest part for the Ramblers is over. As poorly as Illinois played in a 71-58 loss, it’s still unquestionably better than Oregon State, Syracuse and Houston, the other three teams left in the Midwest region.

That’s not to say getting all the way to another Final Four should happen. There are no “shoulds” at this point in the season. Everybody still alive is playing too well. Besides, we’re still on Planet Earth and any Loyola “W” in the tournament is still a huge deal in and of itself.

3. In a sense, the hardest part for the Ramblers has been over since a week before the season was scheduled to start. That’s when “the whole team,” as coach Porter Moser put it, came down with COVID-19, leading to a three-week pause. But there would be no derailing this group.

Loyola Chicago v Illinois — Aher Uguak shows how a close-out is done.

4. Senior center Cameron Krutwig is a tremendous player and an absolute delight, but his teammates still aren’t getting nearly enough attention. Lucas Williamson, Aher Uguak and Keith Clemons are the best defensive trio in the tournament.

As Illini coach Brad Underwood put it last weekend, “We tried everything in the bag.”

Until there was nothing left but lint.

5. ESPN’s Jay Bilas likened Illinois’ strangely passive defense against Krutwig to electing not to send a pass rush at Tom Brady. So Krutwig and Brady are basically equals now, in case you were wondering.

6. For the second straight game, the Ramblers will face an all-major-conference lead guard and a 7-footer in the middle. Not that the Beavers’ Ethan Thompson and Roman Silva are as good as Ayo Dosunmu and Kofi Cockburn — they aren’t — but that kind of one-two punch is always a lot to contend with.

7. His name is Tom Hitcho. He’s the longtime Loyola associate athletic director who pushes Sister Jean’s chair, sits with her during games and fist-bumps her after victories. And it’s high time America fell in love with him, too.

No, not really.

Oregon State v Oklahoma State — Beavers coach Wayne Tinkle with his best player, Ethan Thompson.

8. No one ever chased the dream more than Beavers coach Wayne Tinkle did as a player. He played professionally in Belgium, Sweden, Spain, Italy and Greece, made three stops in the former Continental Basketball Association and even logged time in the former International Basketball League.

As a coach, the 55-year-old took Montana to the Big Dance three times and, now, the Beavers twice. His wife and three kids all played big-time college ball, too. What a basketball story his life has been.

9. Some betting numbers: Oregon State is +700 to reach the Final Four, Syracuse is +500, Loyola is +170 and Houston is +115.

In case you were thinking of the Ramblers as the favorites now to come out of the Midwest, the answer is nope.

10. “It’s more than the wins. It’s the journey of spending time with a great group.”

Those were Moser’s words after the Final Four loss to Michigan in 2018. They’re as true as ever now. Win or lose Saturday and beyond, all the current Ramblers will come to this realization.

Ten things I think I know going into Loyola’s Sweet 16 matchup with Oregon Stateon March 26, 2021 at 9:06 pm Read More »