Loyola grabs the top spot. The Ramblers will host No. 2 Mount Carmel in Week 2.

Loyola has finished the season in the Class 8A state title game in six of the past nine years. The Ramblers won the state title in 2015-16 and 2018-19.

That isn’t news to any football fan, but is worth keeping in mind considering the next statement. This season the Ramblers have the most returning starters in coach John Holecek’s 15-year tenure.

That’s a scary thought for opponents, especially considering that several of Loyola’s top players are college-level talents, which isn’t always the case.

All that experience made the Ramblers an easy choice for the top spot in the Sun-Times’ preseason Super 25 football rankings.

Loyola has about 15 starters back, including quarterback JT Thomas (Denison) and running back Vaughn Pemberton (Ball State).

“That’s definitely a lot of experience back but nothing is perfect,” Pemberton, who rushed for 16 touchdowns last season, said. “There are definitely things we need to work on but I’m feeling pretty confident. Especially on defense, which is where most of the returning guys are.”

The Ramblers will be without offensive lineman Josh Kreutz this season. The Illinois recruit injured his knee and will miss all six games. But Pemberton has been especially impressed with one of his blockers in the first few weeks of practice, senior John Michael Talanges.

“I can’t wait to get back on the field Friday,” Pemberton said. “I’m so grateful we have a season. I just want to play with my friends and enjoy it.”

Loyola opens the season at St. Rita. Pemberton, a starter on the basketball team, says he hasn’t had any trouble making the transition between sports. But he isn’t sure what to expect after such a long layoff between football seasons.

“I think I’m faster,” Pemberton said. “But it’s hard to say what will happen in games. I just don’t know what my instincts will be like because it has been so long. Games are a lot different than practice.”

No. 2 Mount Carmel

Kirsten Stickney/For the Sun-Times

There’s a ton of talent back for the defending Class 7A champs, including quarterback Justin Lynch (Temple) and running back/linebacker Kenenna Odeluga (Illinois). The Caravan are 25-2 in Jordan Lynch’s two seasons as coach and could easily have grabbed the top spot in the rankings. They will have a chance to grab that honor when the travel to Wilmette to face Loyola in Week 2.

No. 3 Lincoln-Way East

Allen Cunningham/For the Sun-Times

The perennial power just reloads. There isn’t much experience at quarterback but the Griffins have running back Jamal Johnson (Bowling Green) and receiver Mason Pierre-Antoine (NIU) to lean on offensively. The offensive line is experienced and Matt Kordas (Bowling Green) will lead the defensive backfield.

No. 4 Batavia

Allen Cunningham/For the Sun-Times

The Bulldogs have lost to JJ McCarthy and Nazareth in the playoffs the last two seasons, but that won’t be a concern this year. Coach Dennis Piron has a stable of talented players, including linebacker Matt Weerts (Arizona), receiver Trey Urwiler (NIU), offensive linemen Jackson Heeringa (Northern Iowa) and Breyden Ford (Valparaiso) and tight end Jack Valente (EIU). The linebacker group, led by Weerts, is very experienced overall.

No. 5 Brother Rice

Quinn Harris/For the Sun-Times

Running back Willie Shaw (Toledo) is one of the area’s top talents and he’s surrounded by 15 other returning starters, including quarterback Jack Lausch.

Michael O’Brien’s preseason Super 25 high school football rankings

1. Loyola
2. Mount Carmel
3. Lincoln-Way East
4. Batavia
5. Brother Rice
6. Glenbard West
7. Marist
8. Homewood-Flosssmoor
9. St. Rita
10. Naperville Central
11. Warren
12. Bolingbrook
13. Nazareth
14. Maine South
15. Prairie Ridge
16. Hinsdale Central
17. Wheaton Warrenville South
18. Joliet Catholic
19. Cary-Grove
20. Montini
21. Oswego
22. Neuqua Valley
23. Phillips
24. Fremd
25. Huntley

Contributing: Mike Clark

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Nantz seemed to give the Illini the edge over the team nearest and dearest to his heart, Nantz’s alma mater and second-seeded Houston.

Illinois fans tend to be sensitive to perceived slights, but they should pay no heed to the CBS/Turner announcing assignments.

The top-seeded Illini’s first-round game Friday against Drexel (12:15 p.m., TBS) will be called by the great Kevin Harlan, who will be joined by analyst Dan Bonner and reporter Dana Jacobson. Afterward, the top crew of Jim Nantz, Bill Raftery and Tracy Wolfson will call Loyola’s game against Georgia Tech (3 p.m., TBS).

Deep breaths, Illini Nation.

Nantz’s crew isn’t calling any of the No. 1 seeds’ first-round games, and Harlan’s crew is one of the four that will call regional semifinal and final games. If the Illini last long enough, they’ll see Nantz and Co. eventually.

Besides, Nantz and Raftery had nothing but praise for Illinois in a Zoom conference with reporters this week. In fact, Nantz seemed to give the Illini the edge over the team nearest and dearest to his heart, Nantz’s alma mater and second-seeded Houston.

“I probably wouldn’t be as fortunate as I’ve been to be in broadcasting if it wasn’t for the University of Houston basketball program,” said Nantz, who graduated in 1981. “Coach Guy Lewis asked me to be the public-address announcer [1979-82] and the host of his television show, and that was my entry into working with a microphone.

“But if it’s a 1-2 regional final, I’d love to see it, I’d love to have the chance to call it and I would call it right down the middle, as I’m required to do. It wouldn’t surprise me to see Illinois win a national championship.”

After watching the Illini win the Big Ten Tournament, Raftery came away impressed with their depth and versatility. But he sounded most impressed with their camaraderie, which could be important during their isolation as part of COVID-19 protocols.

“The way they get along is something special,” Raftery said. “Not that all teams don’t get along, but they have a lot of juice and life, and they’re having a ball.

“I think the coach that’s gonna win this championship is either gonna be the best entertainer or band leader, and the reason I say that [is] there’s so much time that [the players are] gonna be alone. We talked with the staff of Illinois, they played poker, they brought their Pelotons, they did a little bit of everything to entertain themselves. I think that’s really gonna be the key to keeping them fresh, enjoying themselves, bonding together. That’s gonna be as big a challenge as game preparation.”

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To give you some idea, my personal Road to the Final Four, as the TV announcers call it, began in junior high. My buddy Don and I were apprentice basketball junkies, shooting buckets and getting into pickup games every afternoon. New Jersey kids, we became obsessed with the great Jerry West — “Zeke from Cabin Creek,” they called him — and his West Virginia Mountaineers.

There wasn’t much college basketball on TV back then, but we followed West’s exploits from WWVA radio in Wheeling, which came booming in after dark. West Virginia was to us a remote and fabled land. We reveled in tales of West’s carefree backwoods childhood, so different from our own. (Basically a fantasy, too: West had a troubled family and has struggled with depression all his life.)

After the games, WWVA played country music. I became probably the only kid in school to own three Hank Williams albums, not to mention Jim and Jesse and the Virginia Boys. By day, I listened to blues musicians like B.B. King and Bobby “Blue” Bland on WNJR in Newark. This led indirectly to my enrolling at the University of Virginia, to marrying an Arkansas coach’s daughter, and eventually following her home from school. Speaking of remote and fabled lands.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. West’s Mountaineers made it to the 1959 championship game, losing by one point to California. My own fascination with what’s now called March Madness, however, was only beginning. To me, the NCAA men’s college basketball tournament is the nation’s premier sporting event, and I’m so glad it’s back.

For sheer Americana, nothing tops it. I still feel great gusts of Woody Guthrie-style patriotism just reading the first-round matchups. The Creighton Bluejays vs. the Gauchos of Cal Santa Barbara: an Omaha Jesuit school playing an elite public university with its own beach. Or how about Iona College (New York) vs. Alabama (Tuscaloosa)? Oregon vs. Virginia Commonwealth? I could go on.

As somebody whose imagination has always functioned geographically, one of my favorite rituals is the pregame player introductions. I mean, how often does Muscatine, Iowa, see its favorite son (Joe Wieskamp, Iowa Hawkeyes) featured on national TV? He has three teammates from Cedar Rapids, one from the Bronx and another from London, England. “This land is your land, this land is my land … “

For no particular reason, I’ve always pulled for the Hawkeyes. Also the Kansas Jayhawks, Oklahoma Sooners, Rutgers and Virginia. For reasons I probably needn’t explain, I’ve always enjoyed watching Duke lose. By now I guess it’s clear that I watch more college basketball on TV than is entirely consistent with sanity. Always have. The good news is that the coach’s daughter thinks this is relatively normal behavior. It beats a lot of bad habits men are prone to develop.

For that matter, Razorback basketball did more than anything else to make me an Arkansas patriot. Back when we first moved to her hometown, I felt like a stranger on the sports page. It was all football, all the time. Twelve games a year, 353 days of talking about it. Snore. I wasn’t sure I could hack it living here.

Then coach Eddie Sutton arrived from, yes, Creighton University, and the local sporting culture has never been the same. He recruited three wondrously talented black Arkansas kids: Sidney Moncrief, Ron Brewer and Marvin Delph — the so-called “Triplets.” They soon made the cover of Sports Illustrated, and everything changed. And not just on the sports page. The basketball Hogs became the national team of Arkansas; I became a local patriot. Nobody here will ever forget U.S. Reed’s 1981 miraculous half-court buzzer-beater defeating defending national champion Louisville. Reed’s feat led to the diverting spectacle of Texas coach Abe Lemons — the sardonic Will Rogers of college basketball — “calling the Hogs” on national TV.

Nearly every serious fan of March Madness has similar memories. Here in Arkansas, of course, we still savor the 1994 national championship, all the sweeter for defeating Duke in the title game. I’d written a profile of Nolan Richardson for a local magazine, predicting big things for the then-embattled second-year coach whose first Arkansas team had struggled with players unsuited to his full-court style.My reasoning was simple: Having attended many basketball practices in my day, I found his well-organized and uniquely challenging. His physical presence and personal charisma made his players fear and love him. He knew talent when he saw it. Not everybody does. He’d won big everywhere else; he’d win big at Arkansas. Simple as that.

Anyway, it’s been years since the coach’s daughter and I have missed watching a Razorback game together. We even watched Arkansas win the 2000 SEC Tournament in a Manhattan hotel room, arriving fashionably late to my own book party. And if your team loses? Pick another. There are 68 of them, from sea to shining sea.

Send letters to [email protected].

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The last time I spoke with Illinois basketball radio analyst Deon Thomas, the Illini were preparing for the 2020 Big Ten Tournament. We talked about how coach Brad Underwood had rebuilt a team that went from losing 21 games to winning 21, how guard Ayo Dosunmu and center Kofi Cockburn had taken their games to another level, how the Illini were days away from their first NCAA Tournament bid since 2013.

I had a story written and ready to go March 12. But the coronavirus pandemic took hold, and the sports world stopped.

“After speaking with you, I was in my car heading to Indianapolis,” Thomas said this week. “And [radio producer Ed Bond called], ‘You can turn around and go back home.’ And I’m like, ‘Why?’ And he said, ‘The Big Ten just canceled the tournament.’

“I was like, ‘OK, this is for real. This is not gonna be good.’ “

It wasn’t. The next day, the NCAA Tournament was canceled, and with it went Illinois’ dreams – not to mention my story.

But losing that jumble of words paled in comparison to what the Illini lost. Fortunately, they’re getting another chance. On Friday, as the top seed in the Midwest Region, they begin what many believe will be a long run in the NCAA Tournament with a first-round game against Drexel (12:15 p.m., TBS, 890-AM).

So it seemed appropriate to speak with Thomas again for a story that would see the light of day.

Thomas, who played at Illinois in 1990-94 and is the school’s all-time leading scorer, has watched the program rebuild from the ground up. His first season as the radio analyst was former coach John Groce’s last, in 2016-17. He watched Underwood’s first two teams finish 11^th and 10^th in the conference before the third team was the charm, finishing fourth.

Thomas credits Underwood for the turnaround after the coach saw his pressure defense get dissected and his motion offense flounder, prompting him to go back to the grease board.

“The sign of a good coach is you make adjustments. The sign of a great coach is you make changes,” Thomas said. “And coach Underwood made a complete change of how he coached. He’s completely opened the floor [on offense].

“You look at the development of the players. Kofi, from one year to the next, he’s not even the same player. Ayo was a great player when he came in as a freshman; look where he is now. Trent [Frazier] was the scorer for us his freshman year, but you get guys to believe in the mission and they change. Now this puzzle has been put together beautifully, and those guys are playing together.”

Thomas marvels at the Illini’s depth, which he calls the best in school history. That includes his X-factor, Giorgi Bezhanishvili. Like Frazier deferring to Dosunmu, Bezhanishvili gave way to Cockburn. But that hasn’t diminished his value to the team.

“When Giorgi hits his stride, as you saw in that Ohio State game [for the Big Ten Tournament title], for a five-, seven-minute span, he took over offensively, defensively, on the glass and from an energy standpoint. He lifted that team. He has the ability to do that.”

Illinois also could get a lift from partisan crowds in Indianapolis, though not quite as reminiscent of the 2005 Illini Invitational, in which the team played its NCAA Tournament games in Indy, Chicago and St. Louis. But even with limited tickets available, Illinois fans figure to make the trip. Of the 8,000 in attendance for the Big Ten title game, Thomas estimated the crowd was 90/10 for the Illini.

After broadcasting regular-season games alongside play-by-play voice Brian Barnhart without fans, any crowd would please Thomas. He said it felt “eerie” calling games in empty stadiums, but he became so conditioned to the silence that actual crowd noise during the Big Ten Tournament was jarring.

“Brian and I talked about that before we went on the air,” Thomas said. “[During] the Purdue-Ohio State game, I was off in the media room grabbing coffee. And there was this roar that went out from the crowd, and I almost dropped my coffee.

“When I got back in there, I told Brian, ‘Man, isn’t it good to hear the roar of a crowd, to hear hands clap, to hear people cheer?’ The things we take for granted. You begin to sit back and look, like, ‘Oh, my gosh, this is amazing.’ “

And this year, the show will go on.

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When Lyric Opera of Chicago went COVID-dark on March 13, 2020, the next show was supposed to be Götterdämmerung, the fourth of four installments in Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, a.k.a. the Ring cycle. Lyric had doled out one opera per season for the past four, and after premiering Götterdämmerung, the company planned to loop back around to the beginning of the story and run all the productions in the space of a week, in three total cycles. Überfans travel around the globe for Ring cycles, like opera’s analog of Deadheads. Lyric estimated the cancellations cost it $15 million.

“Pivoting is an essential part of life,” says Anthony Freud, Lyric’s general director. But in opera, with each production often requiring five years of planning, companies pivot more like cruise ships than point guards. Which makes it all the more impressive to see Lyric return to in-person performance with Twilight: Gods, running April 28 and 30 and May 2. Or rather, in-vehicle performance. Twilight: Gods is a six-scene drive-through opera that Lyric developed jointly with Michigan Opera Theatre. Pods of eight or nine cars, windows rolled up, proceed from set to set in the subterranean Millennium Lakeside Parking Garage. People drive up to a scene, turn off their engines (but not the power), and listen to an FM transmission of the music performed outside their car.

The music and libretto distill 65 minutes from the five-hour Götterdämmerung (which translates to “twilight of the gods”), punctuated by original verse from local poet avery r. young, who serves as narrator and guide, a Virgil for the automotive audience. His contribution is for Chicago alone; a different poet filled this role at the show’s Detroit premiere in October. “It wasn’t about placing Valhalla on 63rd and Ashland,” young says. “It’s what I do with language and performance that is Chicago.”

Already in collaboration with Lyric on a new commission tentatively scheduled for 2023, director Yuval Sharon took on a position with the company to create pandemic-proper art; he also assumed the artistic directorship of Michigan Opera Theatre last fall. He marshaled the suddenly idle resources of both companies to grow a show from the germ of social distancing. Twilight: Gods reached its stage, such as it is, in about six months. “Opera can benefit greatly from a sense of spontaneity that the machinery of opera doesn’t always allow for,” Sharon says.

The show brings atypical intimacy. The barrier of the windshield and the sound arriving through the stereo may seem alienating, but they’re outweighed by the small size of the pods of vehicles and the physical proximity to the singers. “Even though you are in your car, Christine Goerke is nevertheless 10 feet away from you,” says Sharon, referring to the superstar soprano who sang Brünnhilde in the Detroit production of Twilight: Gods, as she was supposed to for Lyric’s Ring.

Catherine Martin, a mezzo-soprano who plays Waltraute, a Valkyrie, in the opening scene, had also been rehearsing for the Ring at the time of the March shutdown. She found participating in Twilight: Gods in Detroit surprisingly emotional; they are the only offline performances she’s done between the shutdown and now. “I didn’t know if I’d get to wear it again,” Martin says of her rich scarlet Ring costume. She felt intensely connected to the audience. “The first few sets of cars, you could see people just kinesthetically feeling this release,” she says. “I saw people burst into tears.”

Although Twilight: Gods will be recorded and Freud doesn’t rule out remounting it someday, perhaps alongside a future Ring, the show feels very much a denizen of this odd liminal time in history. When else will a roughly half-million-square-foot floor of a parking garage be free? When else will human connection feel so novel? It appears out of the mist and is gone. Which, come to think of it, is the essence of live performance.

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The man drove his Toyota Camry into the back of the ambulance while the ambulance was stopped in the 700 block of North Kedzie Avenue, Chicago police said.

Misdemeanor DUI charges were filed against a man who allegedly rear-ended an ambulance Wednesday while a 6-year-old boy rode in his car in East Garfield Park.

The 30-year-old drove his Toyota Camry into the back of the ambulance about 7:50 p.m. while the ambulance was stopped in the 700 block of North Kedzie Avenue, Chicago police said.

Neither the man nor the two Chicago Fire Department paramedics in the ambulance were injured, police said.

Police sources said there was a 6-year-old boy in the backseat of the Camry. The boy was not injured but taken to St. Mary’s Hospital as a precaution.

The man was charged with misdemeanor counts of DUI, driving without license, child endangerment and criminal damage to fire fighting equipment.

He was also cited for failing to reduce speed and driving an uninsured vehicle.

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Pieces of homes and twisted metal laid amid broken trees in the hardest-hit areas, but no one died and the region appeared to escape the kind of horrific toll many feared after ominous predictions of monster twisters and huge hail.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Storms that left splintered homes and broken trees across Alabama and Mississippi moved into Georgia and Florida on Thursday, rousing residents with early morning warnings as forecasters said the threat of dangerous weather would move up the south Atlantic seaboard.

About 20,000 homes and business were without power and the weather service said at least two people were hurt when an apparent tornado struck southwest Alabama, destroying a house. Pieces of homes and twisted metal laid amid broken trees in the hardest-hit areas, but no one died and the region appeared to escape the kind of horrific toll many feared after ominous predictions of monster twisters and huge hail.

“Overall, we have a lot to be grateful for, as it could have been much worse,” Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey said in a statement.

The National Weather Service office in central Alabama said teams were fanning out Thursday to assess damage in at least 12 counties where tornadoes may have touched down.

Forecasters issued a string of tornado warnings around the region where Alabama, Georgia and Florida intersect, but there were no immediate reports of major damage. A line of storms stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to West Virginia, and the Storm Prediction Center said other, isolated severe storms were possible from southern Ohio into the central Appalachians.

“Significant tornadoes, wind damage and large hail will be possible from morning into afternoon,” the center said. “Severe thunderstorms will also be possible from parts of the eastern Gulf Coast into the southern and central Appalachians.”

The metro Atlanta area was pelted by heavy rain with intense lightning and strong wind gusts of up to 50 mph. Morehouse College tweeted that it was delaying the opening of its campus until 11 a.m. and that faculty and staff should not arrive until after that time. All classes before then were to be held virtually, it said.

In South Carolina, the severe weather threat led the state Senate president to caution senators to stay home Thursday while urging staff to work remotely for their safety. House Speaker Jay Lucas said that chamber would meet less than an hour Thursday to take up routine motions in advance of a budget debate next week — then adjourn.

“If you are in a situation where it is perilous that you come, I’m asking you not to come,” Lucas said. “If you can come, give us a quorum and do these few things we need to do, we will be out of here in a hurry.”

Nearly all of South Carolina is under moderate risk of severe storms. The forecast led a number of the state’s school systems to call off in-person classes Thursday and have students and teachers meet online.

On Wednesday, possible tornadoes in Alabama knocked down trees, toppled power lines and damaged homes. Some of the worst problems were in rural Clarke County, where authorities said two people were hurt when a home was destroyed and several others were damaged.

Between Montgomery and Birmingham in Chilton County, a storm destroyed at least three homes including that of resident Jimmy Baker.

“Then about a minute before it got here, we jumped … in the hall closet, a little, small closet,” Baker told WSFA-TV. “And just we heard it. You know, the sound from the house coming down. We were saved. We thank the Lord for that,” he said.

In north Alabama, where forecasters said as much as 6 inches (15 centimeters) of rain fell, a woman who rescuers found clinging to a tree after her car was swamped by floodwaters in Morgan County was treated at a hospital, but details about her condition were not immediately available. Schools closed in neighboring Madison County because of flooding.

Roofs were yanked off homes in Moundville, south of Tuscaloosa. “There’s a lot of trees down. I guess it had to be a tornado; it got out of here pretty fast,” aid Michael Brown, whose family owns Moundville Ace Hardware and Building.

Additional damage was reported in Louisiana, Tennessee and Mississippi, where video showed an apparent tornado at Brookhaven. High winds blew down signs and trees in northeast Texas, and hailstones the size of baseballs were reported near the Alabama-Mississippi line, the weather service said.

More than 70,000 homes and businesses were without power at one point from Texas to Alabama, which was under a state of emergency, and communities across the South used social media to share the location of tornado shelters.

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In Episode 15 of Gourmet To-Go, a series on restaurants and chefs who’ve pivoted, we visit Sfera, a delivery and pick-up only restaurant in Avondale that offers hearty Sicilian street food.Read More

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