Tuscola hosted a high school basketball game on Friday. That’s a simple sentence and it used to be a common occurrence. But to fans all over the state it seemed incredibly unlikely just a week ago.

TUSCOLA, IL—Friday was my first trip to Tuscola. It’s a city of 4,000 people just a short drive south of Champaign, and it now has a permanent spot in the part of my brain reserved for high school basketball memories.

Tuscola hosted a high school basketball game on Friday. That’s a simple sentence and it used to be a common occurrence. But to fans all over the state it seemed incredibly unlikely just a week ago.

Illinois went 323 days without high school basketball. More than 19,000 residents have died from COVID-19 since the last game. Shockingly and suddenly, high school basketball is back. And Tuscola was ready to play almost immediately.

Ryan Hornaday, the athletic director at Tuscola High School, is the kind of guy that asks to shake your hand during a global pandemic. That boldness wasn’t surprising considering what Hornaday had pulled off. Only two schools, Tuscola and Flanagan, were ready to play this quickly.

“It’s all about [Hornaday],” Kevin Quinn, the grandfather of Tuscola star junior Jalen Quinn, told me at halftime. “He was ready to go whenever [the Illinois Department of Public Health and the Illinois High School Association] pulled the string on this. He’s amazing. It is awesome.”

Hornaday said Tuscola was actually ready to play on Thursday, but couldn’t find another team with the required seven practices. Arthur-Lovington-Atwood-Hammond (ALAH) was ready to go on Friday though.

Tuscola had local-bank sponsored bottles of hand sanitizer at the entrance, right next to the rosters. I used some after shaking Hornaday’s hand.

All the players and coaches wore masks during the game. The officials did not. The few spectators were spaced out in the bleachers in the gym’s balcony. No one sat within 20 feet of me.

There is a 50-spectator limit under the new guidelines. The first game was a hot ticket, so I was lucky to be invited. There aren’t normal entry procedures these days. Katie Wienke, the school social worker, saw me waiting outside and let me into the school.

High school sports are important in Chicago. But visits outside of the metro area drive home how crucial they are in smaller towns.

Shane Pangburn, a Tuscola grad that lives in Los Angeles, summed his hometown up in a tweet during the game: “No surprise that my high school would be the first in Illinois to restart basketball. It’s a good school with excellent admin and planning combined with a sports zealotry that haunts and shapes me to this day, twenty years out.”

The local newspaper’s photographer, Dan Chamness, offered to take pictures for the Sun-Times when he heard I was coming. Steve Fiscus, the Tuscola principal, came by in the fourth quarter to plan a post-game press conference. Tuscola is proud of what it accomplished on Friday.

“We are very blessed to be in this community,” Jalen Quinn said. “They did a really good job of giving us an opportunity to play.”

Quinn scored 18 points to lead the Warriors to a 58-43 win. Senior Grant Hardwick added 15 points and 10 rebounds.

Hardwick’s dad, Rob, said his son “kept level-headed and didn’t get too up or down” during the long period away from high school sports. Hardwick’s favorite sport is football, but he plays basketball because all of his friends do.

“I’m afraid things may slide backwards and they may say this is too much too soon and we have to pinch her back down,” Rob Hardwick said. “If that happens it may impact football season.”

I asked Hardwick if he was worried about his son playing high school sports. He paused for a second before answering, it was clearly something he’d considered.

“I’m not worried,” Hardwick said. “[Grant] has a good head on his shoulders. He doesn’t want to get sick either.”

The game was sloppy, as high school games usually are early in the season. That felt like a return to normal.

ALAH sophomore Kaden Feagin dunked in the third quarter. Normally, the crowd would have erupted. I’m guessing that Knights fans watching on the live stream at home did.

There wasn’t an audible reaction in the gym, but it sent a shock through me. Everything up until that point was awkward, odd and socially-distanced. Feagin’s dunk was the first bright reminder that high school basketball, something so many of us love dearly, was back.

“We take a lot of pride in the fact that we were able to do this safely and successfully,” Tuscola coach Justin Bozarth said. “That is a testament to our administration for having a plan in place and the confidence in all of us. The amount of behind the scenes work that went into this to make tonight happen is just tremendous.”

Daniel L. Chamness/For the Sun-Times

Did they pull it off safely? It is too soon to know. That same experiment is about to be attempted in cities all over the state.

There will be programs shut down after positive COVID-19 tests. That’s inevitable. Is it smart to be gathering inside for sports right now? The jury is still out on that.

It’s a cliche that you don’t know how much you value something until it is gone. This past year, that happened to high school sports fans in Illinois. There was no state basketball tournament. There wasn’t a football season this fall.

Pro and college sports figured out ways to start up fairly quickly after COVID-19 hit. It’s been a long, political and emotional process to get high school sports back. I don’t know if it is smart to be playing, that’s not my area of expertise. But I know how much the return of high school sports means to communities, from the West Side to Tuscola. And so does Jalen Quinn, who never considered moving across the border to play in a neighboring state back in November.

“I never thought about it one time,” Quinn said. “I grew up here and I love this community.”

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Chicago Cubs Rumors: Tom Ricketts increases player payroll for 2021 by Jordan Campbell

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(Photo by Sam Wasson/Getty Images)

It is relatively surprising to see the Chicago Bears roll it back with general manager Ryan Pace and head coach Matt Nagy for another season. Neither Pace nor Nagy has been particularly impressive with the team and allowing Pace to lead another offseason could hurt this organization in a big way down-the-line.

That being said, Pace is clearly on thin ice and is unlikely to be around much longer unless he can inject some serious life into this franchise. With his job on the line, do not be surprised to see Pace and the Chicago Bears get aggressive this offseason, especially in the draft. In this seven-round 2021 NFL mock draft, we are going to try to get aggressive and find an opportunity for the Bears trade up from their pick at No. 20 overall and land a potential legitimate franchise quarterback.

The Chicago Bears make an aggressive move up the board for Trey Lance in the first round of this 2021 NFL mock draft.

Without further ado, let’s take a look at a complete seven-round 2021 NFL mock draft for the Chicago Bears.

Note: This 2021 NFL mock draft was completed using The Draft Network’s Mock Draft Machine.

Bears Get

2021 NFL Draft pick: Round 1, 10th overall

2021 NFL Draft pick: Round 4, 139th overall

Cowboys Get

2021 NFL Draft pick: Round 1, 20th overall

2021 NFL Draft pick: Round 2, 52nd overall

2nd round 2022 NFL Draft pick

Round 1, 10th overall

1

Trey Lance

QB North Dakota State

With Trevor Lawrence, Zach Wilson and Justin Fields going off of the board within the first four picks of this 2021 NFL mock draft, Trey Lance quickly stood out as the premier trade target for the Chicago Bears.

After trying to make a move up with a few other teams to acquire Lance, the Bears finally get the Dallas Cowboys to bite at No. 10. In exchange for moving up to No. 10 from No. 20, the Bears send Dallas two second-round picks (one in 2021 and one in 2022) and receive a fourth-round selection from the Cowboys. An aggressive move up like this could be exactly what Pace needs to do to save his job.

Lance is the exact kind of player who could come in and give the Chicago Bears some hope. He is an incredibly gifted quarterback prospect whose combination of size, arm talent and athleticism is legitimately special.

Lance can make any throw on the football field and is a dangerous weapon with the ball in his hands. His dual-threat ability is exciting and makes Lance a strong fit for the modern NFL. Lance’s decision-making needs some work and his accuracy is inconsistent, but with proper coaching and stable development, he has a chance to become an absolute star at the next level.

The Chicago Bears would be wise to make an aggressive move up for Lance and then bring along slowly. Build an offensive attack around his strengths as a player and allow him to develop behind Nick Foles or Mitchell Trubisky for at least the first half of his rookie season. Once Lance is ready, they can unleash him, and the young quarterback would give this franchise some much-needed hope.

Next: Filling a major need up front

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Chicago Bears trade up for franchise QB in 7-round 2021 NFL mock draft by Dan Schmelzer

While the Ricketts family may be loosening up the purse strings a bit, the Chicago Cubs are clearly still working within a tight budget this offseason. If they are going to make significant improvements over the offseason, they are going to have to take a chance on undervalued players who bring some high upside to the table.

The Cubs have consistently been connected to low-cost starting pitchers who come with plenty of risk, but could get back on track and help the team immediately. Guys like Jake Arrieta, Chris Archer, Jeff Samardzija and Carlos Rodon all fit the bill here, and each makes plenty of sense for the team, but Mike Foltynewicz stands out as the most logical target for the Cubs.

Chicago Cubs should set their sights on an ideal pitching target.

Foltynewicz is a former top prospect who had a lot of success with the Atlanta Braves early in his career. His best season came with the Braves in 2018, where Foltynewicz started 31 games, had an ERA of 2.85 and struck out 202 batters in 183 innings pitched. Foltynewicz was an All-Star in 2018, but it has all been downhill ever since.

At his peak, Foltynewicz consistently threw his fastball in the high 90s but his velocity has consistently dipped the last two seasons. This has led to back-to-back poor seasons for the young right-hander and the Braves designating him for assignment last summer. If Foltynewicz cannot get his velocity back (seems unlikely at this point), he has to learn how to get batters out in other ways.

Foltynewicz threw for MLB teams on Friday and was reportedly hitting 90-92 on the radar gun. Not bad for the middle of winter. If Foltynewicz can get that fastball up just a bit more and learn how to use his sinker and change-up as more effective weapons, he certainly has a chance to get his career back on track.

Next: Huge mistakes that have lead to Cubs’ rebuild

When it comes down to it, Foltynewicz is only 29-years-old and the Chicago Cubs undoubtedly have innings available to give him a chance to get his career back on track. He is far from a perfect free-agent target, but Foltynewicz stands out as a strong bargain bin option for the Cubs.

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Chicago Cubs: Mike Foltynewicz stands out as ideal free-agent target by Dan Schmelzer

The Chicago Blackhawks went into the 2021 season with a big question mark in goal. It looked like Malcolm Subban and Collin Delia would split the net with a spot start for Kevin Lankinen here and there. However, Delia and Subban were pretty bad to start the season so Lankinen got a chance earlier than we thought and has stolen the show. He is making a case for himself to be the team’s number one goalie for the rest of the season and potentially beyond.

The Chicago Blackhawks had a chance to beat the Columbus Blue Jackets with Kevin Lankinen.

The Chicago Blackhawks ended their five-game point streak with a 2-1 loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets. It was the only game on the NHL slate so all hockey watching eyes were on this game. It was a game that Kevin Lankinen and Joonas Korpisalo dominated as the goaltenders for each team. The Blue Jackets went up 2-0 which made it unreachable for the Blackhawks. It is hard for them to score in bunches and if their top line or power play doesn’t dominate, they don’t win.

The power play did get one in this game to make it 2-1. Dylan Strome scored a goal assisted by Patrick Kane and Dominik Kubalik. Those are three guys who you want to see on the scoresheet as much as possible but it can’t be all of them. The forward depth on this team is probably its biggest weakness at this point. It is good to see this team’s power-play succeeding a little bit because it has been so bad in recent years.

In order to beat a team like Columbus, you need to outwork them. Well, the Hawks worked well against them but they fell one goal short. It was a nice defensive battle but Chicago wasn’t able to get that second goal. They came close a few times at the end of the game but it wouldn’t go.

Kevin Lankinen has been strong enough to keep them in games. He is now 2-1-2 with a 2.16 goals-against average and a .930 save percentage. Those are great numbers and the Blackhawks can only hope that he keeps that up. Each of those numbers will probably come down to earth a little bit but he is clearly a guy that you can rely on. Against Columbus, he made 25 saves on 27 shots and one of the goals given up was on the power play.

Hot: It is time for the Blackhawks to consider trading Patrick Kane

The good news for Chicago is the fact that they have another chance at the Blue Jackets on Sunday night. We don’t know for sure yet who will be in the net but they need to be this good. When you are a team that doesn’t score enough you need great goaltending and defense. As this game showed, sometimes that isn’t even good enough. The Blackhawks are going to be pesky this season but it isn’t always going to be enough.

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I’ve Got The Hippy Shakes

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Fifty years later, Joni Mitchell will still make you feel “Blue”

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By Howard Moore,
today at 9:26 am

It’s coming on Christmas,
They’re cutting down trees.
Putting up reindeer
Singing songs of joy and peace,
Oh, I wish I had a river I could skate away on.

Two years ago, I was getting on a bus to go see “Remember My Name”, the David Crosby documentary. The person I was sharing my seat with was starting to put in some earbuds to listen to something. He stopped, looked at me, and asked if I knew the song “River”, by Joni Mitchell. That led to a fifteen-minute conversation about Joni, her music and some of the other musicians from that era.

In a more than four-decade career that encompassed nineteen studio albums, “River” is the song that may be most associated with Joni. It certainly is her most discussed. Is it a Christmas song? Is it a song about the despair of a broken romance? Yes and yes…it’s both. The song has become so popular that in the last fifty years, it’s been covered more than two-hundred times.

The album “River” is on, “Blue” is full of these types of songs. It’s ten songs full of Mitchell’s angst due to ended relationships, a daughter she gave up at birth, her disillusionment with the music business, her need to get away from California and her need to come back to her California home. When you finished listening to “Blue”, you felt you knew the 1970 version of Joni Mitchell’s life. She didn’t leave much out. When asked about “Blue”  in 1979, Mitchell said:

 “The Blue album, there’s hardly a dishonest note in the vocals. At that period of my life, I had no personal defenses. I felt like a cellophane wrapper on a pack of cigarettes. I felt like I had absolutely no secrets from the world and I couldn’t pretend in my life to be strong. Or to be happy. But the advantage of it in the music was that there were no defenses there either.”

As painful as “Blue was to make, that’s why it’s acclaimed as one of the best albums ever made. The original reviews show nothing less than five-stars. I found fifteen different polls that have it in their top ten greatest albums of all-time.
The album’s sales were great, too. “Blue” was certified as platinum for having sold more than one million albums.

How does “Blue” hold up fifty years after its release? When Rolling Stone magazine revisited their list of The 500 Greatest of All-Time, they moved “Blue” up twenty-seven spots to number three. The pain that you felt for Joni in 1971 can still be felt when you listen to the album in 2021. Maybe that’s why when you get on a bus, a stranger wants to discuss “River”, “Blue”,  Joni Mitchell and her music. Fifty years later, it’s still relevant. I’m sure it still will be fifty years from now.

I’m so hard to handle
I’m selfish and I’m sad
Now I’ve gone and lost the best baby
That I ever had
I wish I had a river I could skate away on

Related Post: Does Janis Joplin’s album “Pearl” still hold up at fifty years old?

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• Fifty years later, Joni Mitchell will still make you feel “Blue”

  from I’ve Got The Hippy Shakes by Howard Moore
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• Local Beer Review: Revolution Coffee Eugene

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  posted Friday at 11:11 pm

• Comparing soccer and hockey imagery

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• Time for a QAnon Congresswoman to pack her bags

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• Joyful third grader at last freed from public school prison

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The nation’s No. 2 high school point guard is getting a head start with the Irish. She joined the team this week and could make her debut Sunday.

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Future Notre Dame quarterback Tyler Buchner might not even be the most prominent early enrollee to hit campus this month.

Olivia Miles, the nation’s second-ranked high school point guard and generally considered a program-altering personality on and off the floor, joined first-year coach Niele Ivey’s Fighting Irish women’s basketball team this week after completing the mandatory quarantine.

Her senior season at northern New Jersey’s Blair Academy delayed by statewide COVID-19 restrictions, Miles instead got a head start on her highly anticipated college career.

“I had never thought that this was even an option until one of my [high school] teammates did it,” Miles said Friday on her 18th birthday. “This is such a great opportunity. I love the girls at Blair. I love my team. It was definitely hard. But I was doing something for myself that could really benefit me in the long run.”

Miles’ debut is set for Sunday at Syracuse in the Carrier Dome. Her first home game won’t happen until Feb. 18 in the rematch with the Orange.

Thanks to the NCAA’s decision in October, winter-sports athletes get to play this season without burning a year of eligibility, regardless of whether their season is affected by the pandemic. Even though Miles would suit up for at most only seven regular-season games, she still could make an impact for an Irish team that’s tied for fifth in the ACC at 6-4 and is 8-6 overall.

A crowd-pleasing passer and long-range shooter who has modeled her game after Steph Curry and Trae Young on the men’s side along with WNBA stars Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi, Miles is a throwback who waxes just as poetic when recounting the passing abilities of Magic Johnson and Steve Nash.

“Olivia is an impact player; she’s a program-changer,” Ivey said. “When you see her and she steps on the floor, she has that ‘it’ factor. She’s got a flash to her game. She’s great in transition, and she’s got vision we’ve probably never seen in this program.”

Considering Ivey played and coached for Notre Dame national championship teams on either side of her WNBA playing career, that’s high praise. The lead recruiter for more than a decade under her Naismith Hall of Fame mentor Muffet McGraw, Ivey returned to campus upon McGraw’s retirement last April.

A former national championship point guard herself, Ivey moved quickly to secure Miles’ commitment within two days of being announced as Notre Dame’s coach. Until the pandemic shut down the 2019-20 NBA season, Ivey was a Memphis Grizzlies assistant who had a key role in molding NBA Rookie of the Year Ja Morant.

Ivey first saw Miles play as an eighth-grader, and her recruitment began in earnest the next year.

One of McGraw’s first text messages upon announcing her retirement was to Miles, who had been strongly considering Notre Dame, Stanford and North Carolina. Along with her parents, Maria and Yakubu — chemical and software engineers, respectively — Miles prioritized academics over basketball in her recruitment.

“Just an amazing family — a very humble, very well-grounded family,” Ivey said. “They have done a phenomenal job raising a great young lady. I’m blessed they gave me the opportunity for her to come early and trusted me with my vision and everything I’m going to try to do for Olivia.”

The coaching change proved to be well-timed in terms of Miles’ decision.

“With Muffet, I loved her, but I felt such a more deep connection with Niele,” Miles told the podcast. “The amount of power in her personality and her voice and what she wants the culture to be and how she wants to run things and how she wants to speak up — that I was inspired by right away.”

While McGraw, 65, was at the end of a long and storied career, the 43-year-old Ivey is just getting started. Her son Jaden is a freshman guard at Purdue, so relating to college-age players comes naturally.

Miles has said talking to Ivey — about life, basketball and their shared commitment to social-justice issues — is “so easy.”

No one should be surprised if Miles makes the transition to the college game look just as smooth.

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SOPHIE, the Grammy-nominated producer and recording artist who had worked with the likes of Madonna and Charli XCX, has died following an accident in the Greek capital of Athens. She was 34.

LONDON — SOPHIE, the Grammy-nominated Scottish disc jockey, producer and recording artist who had worked with the likes of Madonna and Charli XCX, has died following an accident in the Greek capital of Athens. She was 34.

In a statement, U.K. label Transgressive said the musician, whose full name was Sophie Xeon, died in the early hours of Saturday morning.

“Tragically, our beautiful Sophie passed away this morning after a terrible accident,” the statement said. “True to her spirituality she had climbed up to watch the full moon and accidentally slipped and fell.”

SOPHIE, who was born in Glasgow, began releasing music in 2013 and worked with Vince Staples as well as Charli XCX and Madonna.

Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for Coachella

She first used her own image and vocals for the October 2017 single “It’s Okay To Cry.” The recording paved the way for SOPHIE’s debut album, “Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides.” Released in June 2018, it received a Grammy nomination for best dance/electronic album.

Tributes have poured in from across the LGBT community for an artist widely considered one of the most pioneering in the music industry.

French singer/songwriter Christine and the Queens described SOPHIE as a “stellar producer, a visionary, a reference,” who rebelled against “the narrow, normative society by being an absolute triumph, both as an artist and as a woman.”

She added: “We need to honor and respect her memory and legacy. Cherish the pioneers.”

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The Beeronaut

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Local Beer Review: Revolution Coffee Eugene

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By Mark McDermott,
today at 11:11 pm

Tonight I’m up to my chin in freelance multi-language typesetting. I’m also watching for that second big snowstorm barreling toward the Chicago region. Time for a beer.

For disclosure: I bought this myself because it looked interesting. It’s Coffee Eugene, from Chicago’s Revolution Brewing. This is an extension of their Eugene, a nearly black porter named after labor activist Eugene V. Debs. The beer is, as noted on their website, infused with whole bean coffee from neighboring roasters: either Sip of Hope, Dark Matter, or Metropolis. As it turns out, this can I’m sampling has Metropolis coffee, as helpfully printed on the bottom of the can, along with the canning date of December 8. It’s listed at 6.8% abv, same as the base Euguene, and 28 IBU.

As I poured it for the photo up top, I saw a brown beer pour that became nearly black in the glass, with a spongy, thick head. The coffee nose is close to an espresso roast, helped along no doubt by the chocolate roast malts in the base porter beer.

I’m finding the taste has the coffee upfront, of course, but it’s almost equal to the roasty malts. There’s also some malt sweetness to go with the coffee taste. Just a little sweetener, otherwise, is straight black dark coffee. Its relatively normal alcohol makes this more drinkable. It would be a great substitute for after-dinner coffee, or that morning coffe Coca-Cola people are getting all hopped up about. And certainly one to keep alert when there are weather alerts coming in.

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About 8:15 p.m., the SWAT team was sent to the building in the 100 block of East Delaware Place after people inside the building reported hearing a gunshot, and found a bullet that had flown into an apartment, Chicago police said.

The SWAT team was responding to an incident at the John Hancock Center Friday after gunfire was reported in the residential area of the building.

About 8:15 p.m., the SWAT team was sent to the building in the 100 block of East Delaware Place after people inside reported hearing a gunshot, and found a bullet that had flown into an apartment, Chicago police said.

No injuries have been reported so far, police said.

Further information was not immediately available.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

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