After an offseason spent in limbo, college basketball received a dose of clarity on Wednesday. The NCAA Division I Council reached a comprehensive agreement that, among other protocols, announced the 2020-21 season will start on Nov. 25. Jon Rothstein of CBS Sports was the first to report the news.
The season was originally scheduled to get underway on Nov. 10, with Michigan slated to host Georgia State for the opener.
The Daily took a closer look at what went right for Davis during his breakout campaign and where there’s room for improvement entering his last go-around.
With Zavier Simpson graduating in May, it’s time for someone else to carry the point guard baton. Enter Zeb Jackson.
The Wolverines need Dickinson, a four-star center and the 42nd-ranked recruit in the 247Sports composite rankings, to contribute right away. Two-year starter Jon Teske graduated in the spring, leaving Dickinson and fifth-year senior Austin Davis — who has yet to start in his collegiate career — as the only centers on the roster.
At 5:30, the team gathered again. The morning’s joy had turned into melancholy, grins wiped away by long faces. Daley briefed his players on the afternoon’s news — due to the unrelenting COVID-19 pandemic, the Big Ten had postponed all fall sports.
As others his age embarked on their final year as college students last August, Nadav Aaronson set foot on campus for the first time. The native of Ramot Hashavim, Israel was a wide-eyed freshman — at 21 years old.
Aaronson found himself surrounded by new classmates who, at three years his junior, were the same age as his younger sister, and all had mostly followed the same linear path. High school bled into college, one a stepping stone for the next.
It’s a path Aaronson wasn’t offered. Instead, the Israeli Defense Force beckons.
The ball was often makeshift, a few paper bags knotted together or a pile of folded clothes tightly wound by rubber bands. The children kicked it around with their bare feet, the bottoms caked with dust and sand. The street was their pitch, and the kids scurried in and out of oncoming traffic.
It wasn’t perfect. But it was soccer. For junior forwards Umar Farouk Osman and Mohammed Zakyi, this was how their careers started.
Bryan Finnerty gazed across the table and saw himself.
It was late last October, and he was out to lunch in Ann Arbor, in town for that night’s men’s soccer game between Michigan and Wisconsin. Bryan was catching up with one of his fraternal twin sons, Owen, who doubled as the Wolverines’ backup goalkeeper.
In the middle of Thursday’s practice, Carol Hutchins’s phone rang.
It was Michigan Athletic Director Warde Manuel.
Right away, Hutchins knew the phone call wouldn’t be an easy one.
She was cognizant of the other mandates that had trickled in across the collegiate landscape throughout the day — the PAC-12 and ACC had both cancelled all sporting events until further notice. So when Manuel called, Hutchins knew what was coming.
Todd LaNeave had a question.
It was the 2017 FHSAA Class 9A Florida softball state championship game and LaNeave’s West Orange team was locked in a scoreless pitchers’ duel with Palm Harbor. With one out in the bottom of the sixth inning, West Orange’s most prolific hitter, outfielder Lexie Blair, was due up.
LaNeave trusted his pitchers to keep Palm Harbor’s offense at bay through the next few frames. All his team needed to take home the title, he believed, was a run of its own.