Wade Korpi doesn’t remember the ball that nearly killed him. Last April, the then-Notre Dame pitcher threw a two-strike fastball to Rutgers shortstop Dan Betteridge, who hit a line drive back at Korpi at more than 100 mph. The ball caromed off the left side of Korpi’s forehead and landed by first base.
We’ve finally reached the end of my 2009 mock draft. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Remember to compare my mock draft to the actual draft, which begins at 4 p.m. Saturday.
When the time came for Ronnie Hulewicz to decide where he wanted to play college tennis, he had no scarcity of options. An All-State, blue-chip recruit from Tequesta, Fla., Hulewicz had several elite schools knocking on his door, including Florida.
The MSU men’s basketball team will take the floor with North Carolina for the third time in a calendar year and for the second consecutive year in the Big Ten/ACC Challenge. The two teams will meet in Chapel Hill, N.C. on Dec. 1 in the 11th rendition of the weeklong event that pits teams from each conference against one another.
While offense took priority during the latter third of the first round, the middle is dominated by defensive prospects. Only four of the 12 players selected during this segment of my mock draft play offense. Find out if the Detroit Lions are one of those teams and stay tuned tomorrow for my top 10 picks.
After waiting 15 minutes for her at bat, freshman infielder Ali Grant only needed a few seconds to end the game for her team. Playing through rain and wind the entire game, the MSU softball team was forced to take a break from its game against Bowling Green to wait for nearby lightning to pass.
The No. 20 MSU women’s golf team practiced through gusty winds, occasional rain spurts and hailstorms Tuesday afternoon, but they didn’t let the bad weather get in the way of preparing for its biggest tournament of the season — the Big Ten Championships hosted by Purdue at Kampen Course.
With the NFL Draft looming, members of the MSU football team will have a chance to enter their names in a draft before ever considering going pro. Designated captains will embark on the first step of the annual spring Green and White Game today when they select players for each team by draft process.
Sick and tired of all the pointless dribble spewed by those self-proclaimed NFL Draft experts? Well, flip over to 2A for the Sudoku page.
The MSU softball team is trying to get better, head coach Jacquie Joseph said. It’s just running out of chances to do it.
In his final regular season match, MSU men’s tennis senior John Allare refused to go down without a fight. After getting “run off the court” in the first set Sunday against Illinois star Roy Kalmanovich, Allare knew he would need to reach deep to mount a comeback in the second set.
The MSU baseball team had its undefeated record at home ended abruptly Sunday in its 9-2 loss to Michigan. Between Oldsmobile Park and McLane Baseball Stadium, the Spartans were a perfect 10-0 at home before the loss, their best home start since 2004, when they won 12 straight at home before dropping an 8-7 game to Ohio State.
Entering Sunday’s game against Michigan, the MSU baseball team had already captured a weekend series against the Wolverines for the first time since 2002. But the Spartans weren’t satisfied taking only two of three games — they wanted to repay the Wolverines for sweeping them the past two seasons.
The MSU baseball team chose its most hectic and crucial week of the season to turn out its longest game of the year on Friday. But they aren’t complaining. In a game that lasted nearly three and a half hours and went for 11 innings at McLane Stadium in the middle of a five-game week, the Spartans put together two late-inning comebacks to cap off an 8-7 win against Michigan that could serve as the turning point in their season.
Oldsmobile Park is technically the Lansing Lugnuts’ home field. But on Thursday, the MSU baseball team firmly stood its ground on the diamond it has occasionally called home in commanding fashion against a most formidable opponent.
The State News talked with junior Charlie Gantt, the Spartans’ starting tight end. He has scored four touchdowns so far in his MSU career, with 19 passes for 302 reception yards.
Coming off the biggest comeback of the season, a 7-6 extra-innings win over Central Michigan, the MSU softball team is looking to use the confidence from the victory to push it to the first Big Ten win this season.
Junior linebacker Greg Jones is willing to play anywhere to help benefit the MSU football team. Jones originally was recruited to MSU as an outside linebacker but played several positions last season including the MIKE, or middle linebacker position, where he had great success and is starting to get more comfortable.
For the better half of the decade, the secondary has been one of the MSU football team’s primary concerns. The Spartans have finished in the lower half of the Big Ten in pass defense in five of the past six seasons. Perhaps not coincidentally, the Spartans also finished in the lower half of the Big Ten most of those seasons.
Often shot put gets classified as simply big guys throwing heavy things. But this assumption couldn’t be further from the truth. To throw the shot put takes precise footwork, extreme strength and phenomenal balance.