Blog about Danielle

Hello again. I’ve just returned from a rather long vacation. This is the time of year to take it on this beat, because there’s not a whole lot going on. Spring sports like track, baseball and men’s and women’s golf are all doing quite well right now, but they don’t quite move the needle like football and basketball.

If it weren’t such a slow time, I might not even mention this. But the Orlando Sentinel today listed possible candidates for the vacant Orlando Magic coaching job in this story, and lo and behold we find Rick Pitino’s name included.

Now, you never say never when it comes to coaching searches; who would have thought in early January that Bobby Petrino would be with the Atlanta Falcons (or that in early 2001, Pitino would be at Louisville)? But this speculation, and it appears it is just random speculation, seems ludicrous for the following reasons:

— Pitino has consistently said since he returned to the college game that this is where he belongs and that he wouldn’t be interested in returning to the pros. Some of you will no doubt point out that he has contradicted himself in the past. But he certainly sounds sincere about wanting to finish his career in college.

— Pitino just signed a contract extension that will pay him up to $2.5 million a year and includes a $1.75 million loyalty bonus due this July 1, $3.6 million if he’s still the U of L coach in 2010 and another $3.6 million in 2013. It’s true that contracts are virtually meaningless in college sports, and the Magic would probably be able to offer more money than Louisville. But fired Magic coach Brian Hill reportedly was making $3 million a year, not significantly more than Pitino. And Pitino clearly doesn’t need the money, especially with the cash he made from the Celtics.

— Pitino just hired his son, Richard, as an assistant coach last month. Surely there’s no way he leaves without ever getting a chance to work with him, unless he were to take Richard to Orlando.

— Pitino might have his best U of L team coming back next season, one that’s expected to be ranked in the top 10. He appears to be genuinely close to many of the players, such as Terrence Williams, David Padgett and Edgar Sosa, and said after the season that he could never leave those guys because they are “my family.”

— What, exactly, would interest Pitino about the Magic? They have one potential superstar in center Dwight Howard, whose offensive game is still raw. The rest of the roster is full of cast-offs, projects and role players, especially with the expected retirement of oft-injured Grant Hill. The Magic got the No. 8 seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs, which was a pretty good accomplishment for their talent level, but it also kept them out of the draft lottery. In fact, the Magic don’t even have a first-round pick this summer. So unless they are somehow able to land some big free agents, the prospects for improvement, even in the woeful East, seem dim. Pitino, from his Celtics tenure, knows as well as anyone that you only go as far as your players take you.

— It’s not too difficult to picture Pitino in New York or L.A. or even Miami, where he owns a house. But Orlando? Really?

Obviously, we’ll keep an eye on this story to see if there’s any substance to it. But it sure seems like idle summer chatter at this point.

Have a great Memorial Day weekend.

APPLETON, WIS. — Lawrence University sophomore Kyle Traska will reprise his winning performance Sunday, April 22 for Wisconsin Public Radio's Neale-Silva Concert of Young Musicians at Madison's Chazen Museum of Art after earning first-place honors in the recent 12th edition of the annual competition.

The concert will be broadcast live statewide as a special edition of “Sunday Afternoon Live from the Chazen” from 12:30 - 2 p.m. on the WPR's classical music network.

Traska, a percussionist from Oregon, Wis., was named one of five winners in the WPR-sponsored competition. Finals were conducted Saturday, March 31 in Madison. It was the seventh time in the past nine years that a Lawrence student has won or shared top honors in the event.

The competition is open to instrumentalists and vocal performers 17-26 years of age who are either from Wisconsin or attend a Wisconsin college. This year's competition attracted 25 soloists and ensembles. Eleven individuals and one ensemble were invited to perform as finalists.

Playing the marimba, Traska performed Aldir Guinga's “Unha & Carne” and “Melodia Branca,” Federico Chueca's “Los Paraguas,” and “Mvt. 1″ by Toshimitsu Tanaka in the competition finals. He is a student of Associate Professor of Music Dane Richeson. In addition to the radio broadcast, Traska received $300 for his winning performance.

Six other Lawrence musicians joined Traska in the competition finals. Sophomore Garth Neustadter competed in two categories, violin and voice, while the Lawrence wind quintet of juniors Sheri Muneno (flute) and David Meichle (horn) and sophomores Charles Ging (clarinet), Robert Furlong (bassoon) and Cayden Milton (oboe) also qualified as finalists.

Joining Traska as 2007 first-place winners were percussionist Daniel Paul Pingrey, UW-Madison, vocalist Mary Elizabeth Mackenzie, Manhattan School of Music, pianist Erik Saunders, UW-Madison and Shorewood High School student Yisha Chen, who plays the Chinese guzheng.

The Neale-Silva Young Artists' Competition was established to recognize young Wisconsin performers of classical music who demonstrate an exceptionally high level of artistry. It is supported by a grant from the estate of the late University of Wisconsin Madison professor Eduardo Neale-Silva, a classical music enthusiast who was born in Talca, Chile and came to the United States in 1925.

1. “The most sadistic reality game show ever.”

2. “The Brotherhood of Timber Workers”

3. “The Bush administration has withheld a series of e-mails from Congress showing that senior White House and Justice Department officials worked together to conceal the role of Karl Rove in installing Timothy Griffin, a protégé of Rove’s, as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas.”

4. “A majority of Iraqi lawmakers have endorsed a bill calling for a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops and demanding a freeze on the number of foreign troops already in the country, lawmakers said Thursday.”

5. “Short lesson: At some point (preferably today), liberals must learn to be concerned about news orgs other than Fox. In the past two weeks, [MSNBC] hosted two debates– one for Dems and one for Reps. And please recall the remarkable questions which opened those two debates:

BRIAN WILLIAMS, OPENING QUESTION (4/26/07): Senator Clinton, your party’s leader in the United States Senate, Harry Reid, recently said the war in Iraq is lost. A letter to today’s USA Today calls his comments “treasonous” and says if General Patton were alive today, Patton would wipe his boots with Senator Reid. Do you agree with the position of your leader in the Senate?

CHRIS MATTHEWS, OPENING QUESTION (5/3/07): In the NBC-Wall Street Journal poll, just 22 percent believe this country is on the right track. Mayor Giuliani, how do we get back to Ronald Reagan’s morning in America?”
6. “This isn’t exactly news (and it’s more than a bit simplistic) but the presses at the Federal Reserve are running full bore right now. Every hint of weakness in the economy or financial markets is being monetized away, partially because we need to pay for Iraq. This drives up the price of everything, including stocks. Remember, a nation’s stock market almost always rises when its central bank inflates; the performance of the U.S. market in the 1970’s was the exception and not the rule.”

7. “From 2000 to 2005, drug maker payments to Minnesota psychiatrists rose more than sixfold, to $1.6 million. During those same years, prescriptions of antipsychotics for children in Minnesota’s Medicaid program rose more than ninefold.

“Those who took the most money from makers of atypicals tended to prescribe the drugs to children the most often, the data suggest. On average, Minnesota psychiatrists who received at least $5,000 from atypical makers from 2000 to 2005 appear to have written three times as many atypical prescriptions for children as psychiatrists who received less or no money.”

8. [Apparently the Family Research Council doesn’t have any members who are, say, black or disabled. Here’s a quote from a recent FRC email:]

This [hate crimes] bill creates a caste system within American society where those who fit a certain category - ranging from race, disability, gender to sexual orientation and transgendered - would be seen as deserving special legal protection. The bill is most notable for the millions of Americans it leaves out, meaning if you or I are a victim of a violent crime - we matter less.

—
Update:

9. “For the first time ever, when UNO pollsters asked what “the biggest problem facing New Orleans” was, more people replied government dissatisfaction than crime.

“University of New Orleans Political Scientist Dr. Susan Howell expressed surprise that crime was not the number one issue. ‘Ever since 1988 when we have been doing these quality of life studies, crime has been overwhelmingly the biggest problem, but today, after Katrina, dissatisfaction with city government equals crime from the residents.’”

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