Latest news with #SweetSixteen
Toronto Star
19 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Toronto Star
Toronto's top Jamaican patty: Only four flaky favourites remain
Editor's note Voting for Round 3, the semi-finals, of the Star's Patty Week Bracket is now closed. Thanks to everyone who cast their vote. Click here to vote in round 4 and help crown Toronto's best Jamaican patty. We'll continue tallying daily results until we crown winner on Aug. 1, just in time for the Toronto Caribbean Carnival. Catch up on the bracket so far: Round 1: Sweet Sixteen Round 2: Elite eight It's the third day of voting in the Star's Patty Bracket, where we asked readers to help crown Toronto's top Jamaican patty by choosing from 16 beloved bakeries across the GTA.
Black America Web
07-07-2025
- Sport
- Black America Web
Ballin' Like My Sister: Angel Reese Celebrates Her Brother, Julian, Signing With The Lakers
Source: Prince Williams / Getty WNBA star Angel Reese has another reason to celebrate, and this time it's the success of her little brother, Julian Reese. The younger Reese baller went undrafted but scored a free agent contract with the Los Angeles Lakers. Delayed but not denied! Julian was a standout at the University of Maryland and helped carry his team to the Big 10 Tournament. The Terapins were defeated by the Michigan Wolverines on a last second layup in the Sweet Sixteen. Nonetheless, three players from the No. 4 seeded team are headed to the NBA alongside the six-foot-nine power forward Reese. He has some pretty big shoes to fill as his sister, Angel, has already etched her name in WNBA history books, and it's only her second season. Reese has set the record for double-doubles and continues to add to her scoring skillset while dominating below the basket and leading the league in rebounds. She has also leveraged her skill on the court into countless brand deals across several industries. But she's also excelling in her role as big sister by giving Julian some much-needed game as he makes the jump from college to the pros. 'You've got to maximize it because you don't get these opportunities twice. I told him to show up first and make sure you're at the front of the line for drills,' she told reporters during a press conference. 'He doesn't have the opportunity to slack off. He has to maximize it and really push through and really show his all, because it's now or never. I think he has a really great opportunity, especially with the Lakers and what they need in the front court. I text him everyday… I'm really happy for him and proud of him.' There haven't been many brother-sister WNBA and NBA duos, in fact there are only three active ones in the leagues today and only six-ever. The Reese siblings have an opportunity to make big bucks in business deals by leveraging their family basketball story. The pair's mother was also a dominant collegiate athlete who, undoubtedly, passed down her love of the game to her talented children. Julian will have a chance to start proving himself during the NBA's annual Summer League games as the Lakers are set to take on several teams with top ranked rookies including the Utah Jazz, Dallas Mavericks and Golden State Warriors. Reese will face-off against the No. 1 pick, Cooper Flagg, and will have the chance to suit up with his teammates Bronny James and Dalton Knecht, who will also be part of the Lakers' Summer League roster. What remains to be seen is whether or not Reese will play alongside NBA legend Lebron James when the next season commences. Rumors have been swirling that the future Hall of Famer could be headed out of Los Angeles in search of another Larry O'Brien trophy for his award case. If true, the elder James could be playing for his fourth team before his career ends. Nonetheless, we are excited to see Angel's courtside looks at Staples Center when she shows up to cheer on her baby brother! The post Ballin' Like My Sister: Angel Reese Celebrates Her Brother, Julian, Signing With The Lakers appeared first on Bossip. SEE ALSO Ballin' Like My Sister: Angel Reese Celebrates Her Brother, Julian, Signing With The Lakers was originally published on
Scroll.in
06-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Scroll.in
‘Volcano': Eunice de Souza's poems invite deeper reflections despite their seemingly light surfaces
The first poem in Volcano, Eunice de Souza's collected poems, 'Catholic Mother', which appeared in her debut collection, Fix, lands like a quiet but devastating punch. Its brevity doesn't dilute its force. Instead, de Souza uses silence and subtlety to deliver a critique more potent than rhetoric. In 'Marriages Are Made', she lays out a cynical checklist for what constitutes a 'marriageable' woman, and the loaded title does not escape notice. 'Feeding the Poor at Christmas' and 'Sweet Sixteen' are fine examples of how she wields humour as both shield and sword. I recall reading 'Sweet Sixteen' a few years ago and marvelling at how de Souza turned adolescent innocence on its head, skewering societal expectations with piercing wit. Her endings, often abrupt, are like trapdoors – pulling the reader into deeper reflections beneath seemingly light surfaces. Fierce satire In 'Idyll,' barely 17 lines long, de Souza writes, 'When Goa was Goa / my grandfather says / the bandits came / over the mountains / to our village / only to splash / in cool springs / and visit Our Lady's Chapel.' This poem was published at a time when Goa was still a Union Territory. In his Introduction, Vidyan Ravinthiran writes that de Souza doesn't repeat but frames (critiques, palpates both diagnostically and cherishingly) the structure of anecdote. He goes on to explain how the word 'idyll' was originally, returning to Theocritus – not a pastoral heaven, but a poem about such a place, a literary genre. He draws attention to how another voice rises, ironical, impatient with the rose-tinting of the past, and serves as a resistance to the present mode, a mode of disapproval. In the poem, 'Mrs Hermione Gonsalves', through the monologue of a woman obsessed with her fading beauty and her dark-skinned husband, de Souza paints a portrait of racial and class prejudice. The poem's closing, almost comic in tone – where women flee from the sight of Mr Gonsalves, thinking the devil himself had arrived – is satire in its most unrepentant form. De Souza seeks neither sanction nor sympathy; her satire stands independent, fierce, and undiluted. We mustn't forget that, teaching as she did in Bombay University as early as 1969, de Souza occupied a unique space in a transforming India – one where educated, working women still had to navigate deeply entrenched patriarchal norms. In the poem 'My Students', she addresses this with characteristic humour. Ravinthiran observes how even his own students at Harvard University found her voice startlingly fresh and contemporary, despite its decades-old origins. Her poems repeatedly challenge religious piety and passive femininity. In 'Bequest', she turns the lens inward, revealing her vulnerability. She longs to be a 'wise woman,' smiling endlessly and emptily like a plastic flower. In all candour, she suggests that self-love must become an act of radical charity – bequeathing one's heart like a spare kidney, even to an enemy. The poem's startling self-awareness points to the deeper struggle: the real enemy is often within, and the absolution lies in confronting ourselves honestly. Unsentimental and pragmatic This leads one to question: Can de Souza's work be classified as confessional poetry? While I am against reading a poet's work as autobiography, it's difficult to ignore how her poems draw from fiercely individual insights. In the poem 'Advice to Women', one reads, 'Keep Cats / if you want to learn to cope with / the otherness of lovers. Otherness is not always neglect / Cats return to their litter trays / when they need to.' Stripped down of any emotional drama, this poem in its sane voice says how 'the stare of perpetual surprise / in those great green eyes / will teach you / to die alone.' One encounters her refusal to sentimentalise or philosophise unnecessarily. 'Forms without ache are futile,' she states in 'Otherness/Wise', quoting a painter friend, before admitting she'd rather it weren't so. The hard-to-miss image of de Souza, whom I have known only through her poems, is that of her gazing long to the light beyond the window, a parrot perched on her head. Therefore, a particularly vivid memory is piqued, reading her 2011 poem, 'Pahari Parrots' where, 'At the sight of Campari the parrots make / little weak-kneed noises / Toth pulls the glass one way / Tothi the other/both hang on when I pull / It's a regular bar-room brawl.' This balance between detachment and empathy, irony and affection, is what sets her poetry apart. Even in the face of loss and mortality, de Souza resists sentimentality. In 'Mid-Sentence', she peels down language to its core: 'Finis. Kaput. Dead.' It is blunt, almost jarring in its simplicity, particularly within the landscape of Indian English poetry, where death is often draped in spiritual abstraction. In 'My Mother Feared Death', she writes: 'Alive or dead, mothers are troubling / Mine came back and said, 'I'm lonely.'' It's an honest, unsentimental recognition of grief – painful, yes, but also clear-eyed and unsparing. Reading de Souza's poems is also deeply personal, reminding me of the conversations with my atheist father, who with his wise humour and sharp sarcasm pierced through pretences. Her poem 'Sacred River' offers a mundane, almost absurdist portrayal of a river visit, far from the ornamental spirituality often associated with prayer rituals at the ghats. One does not miss her empathy for animals. I am yet to come across a pregnant half-starved stray dog in a poem. She deploys language as easily as a shovel when she says 'a white man playing at being a sadhu/ top knot and all,' concluding 'nothing stops faith/ it will be heaven to get out of here.' Few poets have confronted romanticised symbols as bracingly as de Souza. Take, for instance, where she admonishes: 'Koel, stop those cries/ I can't take it this morning/ We'll survive somehow.' The line encapsulates so much of de Souza's ethos: unsentimental, pragmatic, and dryly humorous. Ravinthiran writes that de Souza's poems are essential to him for their tight technique, the speech rhythms in them that never cloy, but mostly for the push-and-pull they evince, outlining piecemeal, a personality pursuing an impracticable equilibrium. Melanie Silgardo, who had known de Souza for more than forty years, first as a student, then publisher and friend, says about de Souza's poems that 'she honed and whittled till she got to the nub of things. Her language was always precise, her cadence colloquial, her punctuation minimal, her ear exact.' Volcano prompts a reflection on the many silences – literary and personal – I've allowed to persist. Eunice de Souza's work doesn't ask for admiration; it demands attention. And in doing so, it reshapes how we think about truth, satire, womanhood, faith, and poetry itself. It is not without reason that one chances upon Arvind Krishna Mehrotra's 'Elegy for E': 'She's dead / you still dial her number / You dial Fix / You dial Dutch Painting / you dial Almond Leaf / It always connects / She always answers / The phone herself / How does she do it / Line after line?'
Fox News
29-06-2025
- Sport
- Fox News
Angel Reese ecstatic as her brother Julian signs with Lakers after going undrafted
Angel Reese is one proud sister after watching her brother Julian accomplish his own professional basketball goal. Julian Reese, the former forward for the Maryland Terrapins, was signed as an undrafted free agent to the Los Angeles Lakers on Friday following the two NBA Draft rounds in prior days. The Terrapins celebrated the signing with a post of their own on X, and Angel Reese hopped in to congratulate her brother. She also encouraged her little brother to take advantage of what was ahead. "OPPORTUNITY," she wrote over Maryland's post. "COME ON JU." The younger Reese, who goes by "Juju," played four seasons at Maryland, where he tallied 1,488 points over his career. He also had 1,015 rebounds, which made him one of only two players in Terrapins history to have 1,000 points and 1,000 rebounds in their career. Kevin Willard, Maryland's head coach, spoke about Julian Reese's impact on the program back in February. "I really believe one day Julian's number will be hanging from the rafters," he said, per 247Sports. "Because in an era where kids showed no loyalty, kids get up and go anytime they want, money this and that, this young man didn't transfer." The Terrapins made it to the Sweet Sixteen this past NCAA Tournament after Reese averaged 13.3 points and nine rebounds per game during his senior campaign. He earned All-Big Ten honorable mention honors for the third straight season. Now, Reese will be joining the Lakers' Summer League roster, where he will team up with players like Bronny James and Dalton Knecht with hopes of impressing Los Angeles coaches enough to make the roster, or at least land with their G-League team. Follow Fox News Digital's sports coverage on X, and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter.
USA Today
28-06-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
Rob Pelinka: Lakers considered Adou Thiero a first-round talent
On Thursday, the Los Angeles Lakers traded up from the No. 55 pick in the NBA draft in order to gain the rights to Adou Thiero, a forward from the University of Arkansas. It took two trades to do so, but plenty of people feel the team may have gotten a steal. Thiero is one of the most athletic players in this year's draft class and is an outstanding finisher who attacks the basket strongly. He is a poor outside shooter and needs to refine his defense, but he could have the potential to become a legitimate rotation player or even a starter down the road. Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka told Spectrum SportsNet that the team's scouts considered the 6-foot-8, 220-pound wing to be a first-round talent. 'We were super aggressive to begin the day knowing that we didn't have a first-round pick. Adou was projected by our scouts as a first-round talent and so we were able to turn 55, which is a late-second round pick to a high second-round pick to pick a player that we had projected in the first round. So it's almost like having the first-round pick that we traded out. Tons of credit, thankful for the support of Jeanie [Buss] to allow us to be aggressive and use resources to win at the margins, move up in the draft and get a player that we really think is gonna dimensionalize our roster. We just felt like one of the things we need to address was to get younger and more athletic on the wings. Being able to get a player like Adou that can catch lobs from the corner when Luka [Doncic] is making paint decisions I think is gonna be really special. And then he's just got big shoulders, big chest, a guy that's gonna play defense and add some physicality and athleticism to our roster. So super excited about that. '... I think all of us watched the playoffs and just the way the game is being officiated now, there's a lot more physicality in the game. So being able to add a young man like Adou, who's just gifted. He's a beast. I think obviously we're gonna get him in the weight room and get him conditioned. But I think the tools that he has, you can really see a vision for him to be one of those really elite, physical, athletic wings that are so necessary to winning in the league.' One thing that may have scared other teams out of taking Thiero is a hyper-extended knee he suffered in February. He returned in the Sweet Sixteen round, but he played just five minutes as the Razorbacks lost in overtime to Texas Tech University. Still, he averaged 15.1 points, 5.8 rebounds and 1.6 steals a game and shot 54.5% from the field this past season. He gets to the free throw line often, and he may be able to improve his 3-point accuracy since his shooting form doesn't look broken. In three years of college basketball, he made just 28.4% of his attempts from beyond the arc.
