College Volleyball Notebook: Radford U and Yale are Among Emerging Small School Teams

While our last entry was on teams in the ACC, a conference with three nationally-ranked programs, we now turn our attention to two smaller schools which are having great years.

The first one is Yale University. The Bulldogs' Mollie Rogers (pictured top) was named co-Ivy League Player of the Week along with Alexis Censke of Penn. With home weekend straight-set wins over Columbia and Cornell, Yale also won their fourth consecutive Ivy League with two remaining games in the season. Brittani Steinberg of the Bulldogs had 15 kills in the win over Columbia.

Meanwhile, Radford University (the alma mater of the blog editor), is gradually pulling ahead in the Big South Conference with one remaining weekend of play, which will include two games on the road.

For the Highlanders, Rachel Wiechecki (pictured bottom) was named Big South Player of the Week. She led her team to a home victory over Campbell University with 22 kills and 19 digs in a game that went to the full fifth set. Additionally, she had 20 kills on Saturday when the Highlanders won another home game in straight sets over High Point University.

Here are weekend scores for the Ivy League, Big South and other east coast games.

Friday:

Big South:

Radford 3 Campbell 2

Winthrop 3 Gardner-Webb 0

High Point 3 Liberty 2

UNC-Asheville 3 Presbyterian 2

Other scores:

Yale 3 Columbia 0

NC A &T 3 Savannah State 0

Wofford 3 Elon 1

Saturday:

Big South:

Radford U 3 High Point 0

Winthrop 3 UNC-Asheville 2

Liberty 3 Campbell 0

Other Scores:

Penn 3 Harvard 2

Furman 3 Elon 1

UNC-Greensboro 3 Wofford 1

Princeton 3 Dartmouth 2

Brown 3 Columbia 0

Yale 3 Cornell 0

Sunday:

Univ. of Rhode Island 3 George Washington 1

Soccer Week (8 of 8): Suppose They Gave a Soccer Game in Cyprus, and No One Cared (plus 11 European teams you've never heard of)

Hmm....we were going to post a photo of Trabzonspor's Turkish soccer player Yusuf Erdogan, but what we got were photos of Turkish Prime Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is about as popular amongst Turks abroad as Porky Pig cartoons are in Dubai (forgive the political humor).

At any rate, this image is of Marco Streller, the Swiss international and captain of the Swiss team Basel, which is ranked 51st in UEFA club standings. He kicked the winning goal for Basel in the Champions League. Basel went into London on Tuesday and shocked the global soccer community with a 2-1 win over Chelsea.

Our lead though is in reference to today's soccer game in Limassol, Cyprus, between traditional Turkish soccer power Trabzonspor and Appolon Limassol, the team that surprised Europe last year by reaching the quarter-finals of the UEFA Champions League.

Even though Cyprus is just across the sea from Turkey, Trabzonspor traveled quite a ways for the game as Trabzon is located in northwestern Turkey.

For those who feel asleep in your history class at Cornell University (next time we'll pick on Princeton), Turkey and Greece had a short, but ugly war over Cyprus in 1974. Even though I was four years old at the time, I remember the Cyprus War quite well, or at least as well as the Vietnam War, for my late father Mehmet Gokbudak hailed from Turkey.

Thankfully, no one on either side of my family died in Famagusta or Hanoi.

Before we get to the ten European soccer teams you've never heard of, let's look at some scores that will help you the blog-reader get through this entry:

UEFA Champions League:

Sociedad (Spain) 0 Shkhar Donesk (Ukraine) 2

Chelsea 1 Basel 2

Benfica (Portugal) 2 Anderlecht (Belgium) 0

UEFA Europa League:

Apollon 1 Trabzonspor 2

Dynamo Zagreb (Croatia) 1 Odessa (Ukraine) 2

PSV Eindhoven (Netherlands) 0 Ludogorets (Bulgaria) 2

Standard Liege (Belgium) 1 Esberg (Denmark)  2

Freiburg (Germany) 2 Liberec (Czech) 2...........tie game

Rubin Kazan (Russia) 5 Maribor (Slovenia) 2

Now here on the 11 teams you've never heard of:

1. Shakhtar Donetsk (Ukraine): This was considered the second biggest upset in the Champions League. Brazilian international Alex Teixeira scored both goals for the Ukrainian club in their 2-0 win in Spain).

2. Basel (Switzerland)

3. Benfica (Portugal): They are seemingly a team which always sneaks up on other teams in European play.

4. Anderlecht (Belgium)

5. Apollon Limassol (Cyprus): "The Daily Hurriyet," an English-langauge newspaper in Turkey said Trabzonspor won in 'Greek Cyprus,' but we don't like to get into politics here. Well, at least, not when we are writing about soccer. Gaston Sangoy (Argentina) scored for the Cypriot team in the team's close loss to Trabzonspor.

6. Trabzonspor (Turkey): This squad is one of only two teams outside of Istanbul that has won a Turkish domestics championship; Bursasapr from Bursa is the other team.

7.Dyanmo Zagreb (Croatia)

8. Ludogorets (Bulgaria): Amazingly enough Virgil Misidja a Dutch international player for this Bulgarian team kicked in the second goal in his native country today to help Ludo upset PSV Eindhoven 2-0.

9. Esberg (Denmark): Not to be confused with Swedish team Elfsborg, which is also in the Europa League, this Danish squad celebrated a road win in Belgium thanks to the game-winning goal from Musaga Bakenga, a Norwegian player of Congolese heritage.

10. Rubin Kazan: This team which plays in the Tartar region  of Russia boasts Gokdeniz Karadeniz, one of Turkey's better exports. Today, he scored a goal today in their win over Maribor of Slovenia.

11. Maribor (Slovenia): Today's lop-sided loss to Rubin Kazan was apparently closer than the score sheet indicates. Maribor is a competitive team from the former Yugoslavia and today the team saw a goal from Slovenian national Martin Milec.



http://www.turkeyfootball.blogspot.com

http://www.turkish-football.com

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com

http://www.trabzonspor.org.tr (in Turkish)

http://www.russianfootballnews.com

http://www.apollo.com.cy

http://www.uefa.com

High School of the Week- Ithaca High School (New York state)

Today's High School of the Week is Ithaca High School in Ithaca, NY. The collegetown, which also features Cornell University, is home to the high school where Don Mills has been the principal since July 1, 2009.

Ithaca High School's mascot is the little brown bear (hence the image here), and the school has an enrollment of approximately 1, 675.

Among the school's famous alumnus is actress Mary McDonnell, who is known for being Kevin Costner's love interest in "Dances with Wolves" and one of the stars of the updated version of the cult tv classic "Battlestar Galactica."

March Marchness with Mapquest (for Thursday Games)

This could arguably be one of the craziest series of posts I've done in a while (the sister entry is on our other blog 'Politics, Culture and Other Wastes of Time.')

For this particular entry, we will focus on the distances between the towns of the college teams that advanced to the Sweet 16 for the Thursday night sessions.

The Syracuse-Butler game will take place in Salt Lake City, Utah, as will Kansas State-Xavier (Ohio) game.

The other two Thursday games will be held in Syracuse, NY, where Syracuse University will ironically not play. But, nearby Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, will face top-seeded Kentucky in Syracuse which also where West Virginia University will take on the University of Washington.

To figure out the distances, we arbitrarily found some nifty places on the web in each of the college towns. Should the University of North Carolina have qualified for the NCAA Tournament, we would have mentioned Chapel Hill Comics in Chapel Hill, NC, where my friend Andrew Neal will find you the latest issue of....well, we better not make any promises.

As one might fully expect West Virginia University located in Morgantown, WV, also home of the Sahara Bar (a hookah lounge), is 2,596 miles from the Cherry Street Coffee House in Seattle, the city which is home to the University of Washington. According to MapQuest.com, that makes for a 39 hour, 13 minute drive. At least for Mountaineer fans, the trek to Syracuse is much closer!

As for Syracuse University, the city of Syracuse is 647 miles from Indianapolis, which is the home of their opponent Butler University. Of course, Salt Lake City where they will play the Sweet 16 game is much farther for both schools.

Syracuse is also the home of Syracuse Stage which is currently producing the acclaimed play "Almost, Maine" (alas Syracuse is also quite far from Greensboro, NC, where I live or I'd go up there to see the play!). And, Indianapolis is a city which features the Claddah Irish Pub (part of a regional chain) located at 234 South Meridian Street downtown. We should note that we believe the image here is of Syracuse player Wes Johnson.

There is no actual radio station called WKRP in Cincinnati which was where the late'70s/early '80s sitcom "WKRP in Cincinnati" took place (the show is a personal favorite of my friend Moviezzz's who has a great blog on tv and movies). But, there is a WKRQ in Cincinnati (also known as Q-102.

Cincy is also home of the Xavier Muskeeters. Though they will face the Kansas State Wildcats in Utah, Cincy is 713 miles from Manhattan, Kansas, where one can also find Kite's Grille and Bar at 615 North 12th Street.

Lastly, Ithaca- home of the Cornell Big Red is 682 miles (a virtual 11 hour drive) from Lexington, Ky. In Ithaca, one can probably find a J.D. Salinger novel at Autumn Leaves Used Books. While in Lexington, one can probably find a nice oak desk at Blue Grass Antique Market on 801 Winchester Road.

My mother incidentally sells antiques in Lexington, Va., at Duke's Antique Mall, but I'm not sure if she has a big oak desk and if she did then advertisiting it here might be a conflict of interest (not that we really care about such things!)

The Smart Boys from Cornell Are in Sweet 16

Until yesterday, probably half the country, myself included, wasn't exactly sure what the nickname for Cornell University Athletics was. The answer is in fact: Big Red!

I knew the school in Ithaca, NY, was renown for its academians including the late astronomer Carl Sagan, but this year Cornell's men's basketball team became the first Ivy League team to advance to the Sweet 16 since the Penn Quakers in the late
'70s (a team which ended up going to the Final 4).

Cornell got their proverbial ticket punched yesterday when they defeated the fourth-seeded Wisconsin Badgers by a 87-69 margin. The Big Red won the game, which was played in Jacksonville, Fla., through the efforts of senior Louis Dale (pictured here) from Birmingham, Ala., who scored 26 points.

Senior forward Ryan Wittman added 24, and senior Jeff Foote and sophomore Chris Wroblewski scored 12 points each.

Dale told Ann Ju of the Cornell University student newspaper "The Chronicle" that the win was a team effort:

"We have so many unselfish guys on this team," Dale said. "Nobody really cares how it gets done and we come out and make big plays."

Cornell will play top-seeded Kentucky which destroyed our local team Wake Forest by a 90-60 margin on Saturday night.

Here are my picks for the Sweet 16 games, but keep in mind, I picked Georgetown to win it all, and apparently do did political commentator David Brooks of "The New York Times."

No. Iowa over Michigan St.

Tenn. over Ohio St.

Syracuse over Butler

Kentucky over Cornell

Duke over Purdue

WVU over Washington

St.Mary's over Baylor

Kansas St. over Xavier (Ohio)