With a gritty 3-1 win over Bowdoin this weekend, the men’s hockey team has skated to the cusp of its first regular season NESCAC championship in three years.
With the postseason looming on the horizon, the sixth-ranked men’s basketball team continues to make adjustments and build confidence for the final stretch of the season. In addition, the past few weeks have tested the Jeffs’ composure against enemy crowds, as seven of their last eight games have come on the road. The last two trips took place over the last week, as Amherst went up against conference foes Bates and Tufts on Friday and Saturday, respectively.
A seven-year gap is not long enough for Alexander Payne to erase his penchant for contemporary satire nor alter his signature style. With “The Descendants,” his first directorial feature since the now legendary independent hit “Sideways,” an Academy-Award winning black comedy released in 2004, the Payne formula seems to be working again. The question is: Have we had enough?
Despite my appreciation of music and almost-unhealthy habit of listening to it while doing just about anything, I am often accused of not appreciating newer music enough. However, my complaint is not with new music in general; I just wish that the most popular artists were also the best. Unlike in the 1960s and early 1970s, when the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan, Marvin Gaye, the Rolling Stones and Black Sabbath were among the biggest artists in the world as well as the best, nowadays it seems that one has to cut through much more in order to find the diamonds in the rough.
Feb. 3, 2008. As America watched, the New York Giants accomplished the unthinkable. Making the vaunted Patriots offense — the same offense that had put together the best season in NFL history — look decidedly average, the Giants defense gave Eli Manning, then regarded as overrated, a chance late in the fourth quarter. The rest is history. The biggest pro sports upset in recent memory left quite a psychological mark on a — dare I admit it? — entitled Boston fan base fresh off three championships in four years.
While an 8-1 loss to No. 12 Middlebury evoked shades of a similarly feeble performance earlier in the season, the men’s squash team managed to put together a solid weekend of play, finishing 3-1 and earning fifth place at the NESCAC Championships.
Although they’ve already played 22 regular season games, traveled to Las Vegas and back, won by 70 points in a single game and had two players eclipse the 1000-point barrier, the women’s basketball season is far from over.
And, even though they haven’t lost a game since Jan. 11, 2011 (41 games) or at home since Jan. 31, 2009 (58 games), this team’s success will be measured by what starts now. With two home games remaining before the NESCAC and NCAA tournaments, the Jeffs are about to see what they are really made of.
