By Kevin Lonnquist
Publisher
The Queen of Disco Donna Summer was just her stage name. She was actually born LaDonna Adrian Gaines back on New Year’s Eve 1948.
Summer’s speaking voice actually didn’t match what you would think it would be after hearing her sing. That strong Northeastern accent was there.
That power created an influence to where she became one of the most well-known voices in the 1970s and early 1980s. Thanks to meeting producers Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte, they quickly turned her into a star.
When the height of Summer’s popularity faded, she still maintained her international fame. Concerts in Europe were sold out.
In her career, she collected 42 hit singles including 14 that reached the Top 10. Summer had a hit single reach the charts between 1975-84.
Sadly, she lost a battle to cancer in 2012 at the age of 63. She said it was due to the fallout of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 that led to her contraction. The contents and chemicals of the debris.
Now, the RJB has had Summer up previously when we ran MacArthur’s Park a while back. But for this selection, we’ll use the one from the 1997 movie, “The Full Monty” where six unemployed steel workers become male strippers.
It was a pretty funny movie. The iconic scene is when they’re in a line and this Summer hit come on over the loudspeaker. All of them start grooving to it.
Enjoy.
****
I’ll make a full confession to you. When Baylor got turned upside down at Texas Tech on Feb. 16, 83-73, I was really concerned about where the rest of this season was heading.
It was the game after losing Jonathan Tchamwa Tchatchoua to a season ending knee injury on Feb. 12 against Texas. The Bears were also playing without their leading scorer LJ Cryer with a chronic foot problem. He actually played that night in Lubbock playing 15 minutes and scoring six points. But that was it.
So the idea of playing for the Big 12 championship was alive but iffy. Kansas looked in control of the race and it was a matter of playing out the remainder of the schedule. Following that Tech game, Baylor trailed Kansas by 1½ games with five to play.
But if you ever wonder what the heartbeat of an elite program is, we learned that in the final 2-plus weeks. Not only was Baylor was alive, it actually led the league for a couple of days in the final week. It then settled for sharing the conference title with the Jayhawks and cut down the nets early Saturday evening in the Ferrell Center for the first time in school history.
Culture matters. It’s at the center of why a program remains in contention year after year after year.
Baylor’s National Championship team changed so many faces this year. Yet the binding element is Drew. He’s grown into one of the game’s elite over the last four years.
He just understands what it takes to create a setting that while the players come and go, the results won’t change. Drew has immersed himself into a process that has become one of the biggest in college basketball.
There will be a day when he will be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. But beyond winning the national championship last year, just look at the rise.
Now, the goal is to win the program’s first Big 12 conference tournament championship. Remember, the Bears have never won it, even though they have been to the finals three times.
While that’s secondary, it is something that probably needles Drew to an extent after winning a national championship as well as a conference championship. We remember what happened last year when the Bears reached the conference tournament semifinals and were eliminated by Oklahoma State.
For a team that then seemed to be poised to go for the tri-fecta of regular season, conference tournament and national championship, those plans were disrupted on that Friday night in Kansas City.
Well, this team has a chance again to push for that tri-fecta again. While sharing the conference title may not have the same pizazz that winning an outright title does, no one really cares when you and your players are on a ladder with scissors ready to do some trimming. After all, it all counts, doesn’t it?
It starts with Oklahoma at 6:00 p.m. Thursday in the quarterfinals. I’ll get into the tournament later in the week. But suffice to say that while the Bears swept the Sooners, Oklahoma did cause some fits both in Waco and in Norman.
****
Baylor’s football weekend at the NFL Combine in Indianapolis did nothing more than to build its brand.
You could argue that the explosive 40s run by Kalon Barnes, Tyquan Thornton and JT Woods along with just the other work put in by the others was probably the second-best recruiting tool Dave Aranda’s program could have used following the 12-2 Big 12 and Sugar Bowl championships.
You’ve read enough stories in the last couple of Blitzes to know that there is a change in the type of recruits Baylor is attracting. Oh, don’t get me wrong, Baylor will still make a name for itself because it will always find those “Who is that?” recruit.
Look no further than the combine of when “Who is that?’’ evolves. Let’s be clear that when Jalen Pitre was the lone commit to the 2017 class, many likely looked him and thought, “Well, he’s only going to Baylor because he doesn’t have anywhere else to go.”
Probably true. But you still don’t go to a P5 school out of sympathy. Matt Rhule could have encouraged him to be successful somewhere else. Rhule believed in Pitre’s ability. Then Aranda capitalized on it and took it to the next level.
Now, you’re reading mock drafts that forecast Pitre going somewhere late in the first round or early in the second round.
While the scars of sexual assault scandal are still being clung to by the fiercest of Baylor opponents, I would venture to say that many of them still use that criticism out of frustration and disbelief of Baylor’s run of success. An athletics program that appeared to be burning to the ashes has rebounded far beyond what many could have believed.
You’ve already seen a video podcast elsewhere discussing that.
If anything, the scandal became a rallying point. Obviously, the acknowledgement of the horror and pain caused could be used as the determination to not only never let this kind of thing happen again but use it as a tool to become better for it.
We’re Americans. We generally believe in giving others second chances until those who need the second chance prove they just don’t want it. Well, Baylor has shown over the last four years it has been worthy of the second chance.
Recruits and coaches seem to think so.
****
Many of you know how much of an MLB fan I am. But I have found myself drifting ever so slightly away from it being my favorite because the game has generated a disconnect for me.
It started Dec. 2. Now, we’re 100+ days into a lockout to where spring training is pretty much wiped out, more than the first two series of the season are canceled and more of the season is threatened to be purged. More and more fans look at this battle of millionaires vs. billionaires and simply ask, “What’s the matter with you?”
The audacity of both sides to sit there through the winter and not negotiate anything until the hair on fire event of the season’s arrival is total nonsense. That’s the way this has worked since the MLBPA was created in the 1970s.
I’m sure once they come to some agreement over the luxury tax, player minimum and playoff format, I’ll be the person playing the role of “Battered Baseball Fan Syndrome” and come back with some enthusiasm. However, I can assure you that it is no longer unbridled enthusiasm.
****
Now, let’s take a look at other Baylor sports…
> Johnny Keefer shot an 8-under 63 on Tuesday, helping the Bears to a third-round 276 and a 12th-place finish at the Cabo Collegiate.
BU improved its score each round as a team, resulting in a 9-under 843 for the week.
Keefer became the first Baylor golfer to shoot 63 since Garrett May did it in 2017 and is just the third player in program history to do so. Starting on the 10th-hole, Keefer made the turn at 3-under par with a birdie at the par-4 18th. That birdie was the start of a stretch of five in a row and nine birdies overall in his final round.
The Bears will compete in the All-American Intercollegiate March 21-22 at the Golf Club of Houston in Humble.
> No. 4 Baylor men's tennis bested No. 58 Illinois with a clean 4-1 win in the Atkins Tennis Center on Friday night.
The Bears improve to 15-1 on the season while the Illini fall to 3-7 after BU posted four straight-set victories to take the match after losing the doubles point. The Bears head to Arizona to face Arizona State on March 9 and then Arizona on March 11.
> No. 1 Baylor acrobatics & tumbling continued its winning ways against No. 3 Oregon on Sunday afternoon in the Ferrell Center, winning 281.505-275.495 over the Ducks on Feb. 27.
The Bears improved to 3-0 on the season with the defeat of Oregon, and improved the record to 18-13 over their green counterparts.
BU overtook Oregon in every event, only dropping two heats in UO's favor. The Bears had scores all over 9.4 in compulsory, finishing with a total of 38.80, besting Oregon's 36.35. Baylor will travel to Florida to take on Saint Leo on Tuesday.
> No. 5 Baylor equestrian (6-6) finished its regular season with a 13-7 win at UC Davis Saturday afternoon at the UC Davis Equestrian Center in Davis, Calif.
After the two sides split the first two events of the day and took a 5-5 tie into the half, the Bears dominated after the break in 8-2 fashion to seal the victory.
Baylor is set to compete in the Big 12 Championship, beginning Friday, March 25, at Diamond Creek Ranch in Burleson and hosted by TCU.
>Baylor women's golf shot a three-day total of 21-over 873 to finish in a tie for fourth with the University of Texas at the Darius Rucker Intercollegiate on Wednesday.
Playing in the final group for the second day in a row, BU came to the final hole of the tournament in a tie for third with Arizona State and Texas, but ASU's Calynne Rosholt holed a chip shot to equal Baylor's third-round total of 295 and edge the Bears by one for a third-place finish.
Baylor will head west for the Northrop Grumman Regional Challenge March 13-15 at Palos Verdes Golf Club in Palos Verdes, CA.
> Baylor softball split its Saturday doubleheader with Texas A&M Corpus Christi at Getterman Stadium, falling to the Islanders 2-1 in game one and bouncing back for a 5-3 win in game two.
> No. 20 Baylor (9-4) got a pair of wins Sunday afternoon at Hurd Tennis Center. The Bears started the day with a 4-0 win over North Texas. They then followed that with a 6-1 win over ACU. No. 20 Baylor opens Big 12 play against TCU at noon on Thursday at Hurd Tennis Center.
> Baylor track and field will be sending 14 Bears to the 2022 NCAA Division I Indoor Track and Field Championships next week in Birmingham, Ala., the committee announced last Monday.
Ackera Nugent, Howard Fields III, Mariah Ayers, Johnny Brackins, Dillon Bedell, Matthew Moorer, Nathaniel Ezekiel, Kavia Francis, Imaobong Uko and Aaliyah Miller all qualified for the meet with Jayson Baldridge, Hasani Barr, Demitra Carter and Gontse Morake joining as relay substitutes.
The championship meet is set for March 11-12, with action streamed on ESPN3 live from the Birmingham CrossPlex. ESPNU will re-air the competition Sunday night, March 13.
Let’s make it a great week!
Publisher
The Queen of Disco Donna Summer was just her stage name. She was actually born LaDonna Adrian Gaines back on New Year’s Eve 1948.
Summer’s speaking voice actually didn’t match what you would think it would be after hearing her sing. That strong Northeastern accent was there.
That power created an influence to where she became one of the most well-known voices in the 1970s and early 1980s. Thanks to meeting producers Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte, they quickly turned her into a star.
When the height of Summer’s popularity faded, she still maintained her international fame. Concerts in Europe were sold out.
In her career, she collected 42 hit singles including 14 that reached the Top 10. Summer had a hit single reach the charts between 1975-84.
Sadly, she lost a battle to cancer in 2012 at the age of 63. She said it was due to the fallout of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 that led to her contraction. The contents and chemicals of the debris.
Now, the RJB has had Summer up previously when we ran MacArthur’s Park a while back. But for this selection, we’ll use the one from the 1997 movie, “The Full Monty” where six unemployed steel workers become male strippers.
It was a pretty funny movie. The iconic scene is when they’re in a line and this Summer hit come on over the loudspeaker. All of them start grooving to it.
Enjoy.
****
I’ll make a full confession to you. When Baylor got turned upside down at Texas Tech on Feb. 16, 83-73, I was really concerned about where the rest of this season was heading.
It was the game after losing Jonathan Tchamwa Tchatchoua to a season ending knee injury on Feb. 12 against Texas. The Bears were also playing without their leading scorer LJ Cryer with a chronic foot problem. He actually played that night in Lubbock playing 15 minutes and scoring six points. But that was it.
So the idea of playing for the Big 12 championship was alive but iffy. Kansas looked in control of the race and it was a matter of playing out the remainder of the schedule. Following that Tech game, Baylor trailed Kansas by 1½ games with five to play.
But if you ever wonder what the heartbeat of an elite program is, we learned that in the final 2-plus weeks. Not only was Baylor was alive, it actually led the league for a couple of days in the final week. It then settled for sharing the conference title with the Jayhawks and cut down the nets early Saturday evening in the Ferrell Center for the first time in school history.
Culture matters. It’s at the center of why a program remains in contention year after year after year.
Baylor’s National Championship team changed so many faces this year. Yet the binding element is Drew. He’s grown into one of the game’s elite over the last four years.
He just understands what it takes to create a setting that while the players come and go, the results won’t change. Drew has immersed himself into a process that has become one of the biggest in college basketball.
There will be a day when he will be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. But beyond winning the national championship last year, just look at the rise.
Now, the goal is to win the program’s first Big 12 conference tournament championship. Remember, the Bears have never won it, even though they have been to the finals three times.
While that’s secondary, it is something that probably needles Drew to an extent after winning a national championship as well as a conference championship. We remember what happened last year when the Bears reached the conference tournament semifinals and were eliminated by Oklahoma State.
For a team that then seemed to be poised to go for the tri-fecta of regular season, conference tournament and national championship, those plans were disrupted on that Friday night in Kansas City.
Well, this team has a chance again to push for that tri-fecta again. While sharing the conference title may not have the same pizazz that winning an outright title does, no one really cares when you and your players are on a ladder with scissors ready to do some trimming. After all, it all counts, doesn’t it?
It starts with Oklahoma at 6:00 p.m. Thursday in the quarterfinals. I’ll get into the tournament later in the week. But suffice to say that while the Bears swept the Sooners, Oklahoma did cause some fits both in Waco and in Norman.
****
Baylor’s football weekend at the NFL Combine in Indianapolis did nothing more than to build its brand.
You could argue that the explosive 40s run by Kalon Barnes, Tyquan Thornton and JT Woods along with just the other work put in by the others was probably the second-best recruiting tool Dave Aranda’s program could have used following the 12-2 Big 12 and Sugar Bowl championships.
You’ve read enough stories in the last couple of Blitzes to know that there is a change in the type of recruits Baylor is attracting. Oh, don’t get me wrong, Baylor will still make a name for itself because it will always find those “Who is that?” recruit.
Look no further than the combine of when “Who is that?’’ evolves. Let’s be clear that when Jalen Pitre was the lone commit to the 2017 class, many likely looked him and thought, “Well, he’s only going to Baylor because he doesn’t have anywhere else to go.”
Probably true. But you still don’t go to a P5 school out of sympathy. Matt Rhule could have encouraged him to be successful somewhere else. Rhule believed in Pitre’s ability. Then Aranda capitalized on it and took it to the next level.
Now, you’re reading mock drafts that forecast Pitre going somewhere late in the first round or early in the second round.
While the scars of sexual assault scandal are still being clung to by the fiercest of Baylor opponents, I would venture to say that many of them still use that criticism out of frustration and disbelief of Baylor’s run of success. An athletics program that appeared to be burning to the ashes has rebounded far beyond what many could have believed.
You’ve already seen a video podcast elsewhere discussing that.
If anything, the scandal became a rallying point. Obviously, the acknowledgement of the horror and pain caused could be used as the determination to not only never let this kind of thing happen again but use it as a tool to become better for it.
We’re Americans. We generally believe in giving others second chances until those who need the second chance prove they just don’t want it. Well, Baylor has shown over the last four years it has been worthy of the second chance.
Recruits and coaches seem to think so.
****
Many of you know how much of an MLB fan I am. But I have found myself drifting ever so slightly away from it being my favorite because the game has generated a disconnect for me.
It started Dec. 2. Now, we’re 100+ days into a lockout to where spring training is pretty much wiped out, more than the first two series of the season are canceled and more of the season is threatened to be purged. More and more fans look at this battle of millionaires vs. billionaires and simply ask, “What’s the matter with you?”
The audacity of both sides to sit there through the winter and not negotiate anything until the hair on fire event of the season’s arrival is total nonsense. That’s the way this has worked since the MLBPA was created in the 1970s.
I’m sure once they come to some agreement over the luxury tax, player minimum and playoff format, I’ll be the person playing the role of “Battered Baseball Fan Syndrome” and come back with some enthusiasm. However, I can assure you that it is no longer unbridled enthusiasm.
****
Now, let’s take a look at other Baylor sports…
> Johnny Keefer shot an 8-under 63 on Tuesday, helping the Bears to a third-round 276 and a 12th-place finish at the Cabo Collegiate.
BU improved its score each round as a team, resulting in a 9-under 843 for the week.
Keefer became the first Baylor golfer to shoot 63 since Garrett May did it in 2017 and is just the third player in program history to do so. Starting on the 10th-hole, Keefer made the turn at 3-under par with a birdie at the par-4 18th. That birdie was the start of a stretch of five in a row and nine birdies overall in his final round.
The Bears will compete in the All-American Intercollegiate March 21-22 at the Golf Club of Houston in Humble.
> No. 4 Baylor men's tennis bested No. 58 Illinois with a clean 4-1 win in the Atkins Tennis Center on Friday night.
The Bears improve to 15-1 on the season while the Illini fall to 3-7 after BU posted four straight-set victories to take the match after losing the doubles point. The Bears head to Arizona to face Arizona State on March 9 and then Arizona on March 11.
> No. 1 Baylor acrobatics & tumbling continued its winning ways against No. 3 Oregon on Sunday afternoon in the Ferrell Center, winning 281.505-275.495 over the Ducks on Feb. 27.
The Bears improved to 3-0 on the season with the defeat of Oregon, and improved the record to 18-13 over their green counterparts.
BU overtook Oregon in every event, only dropping two heats in UO's favor. The Bears had scores all over 9.4 in compulsory, finishing with a total of 38.80, besting Oregon's 36.35. Baylor will travel to Florida to take on Saint Leo on Tuesday.
> No. 5 Baylor equestrian (6-6) finished its regular season with a 13-7 win at UC Davis Saturday afternoon at the UC Davis Equestrian Center in Davis, Calif.
After the two sides split the first two events of the day and took a 5-5 tie into the half, the Bears dominated after the break in 8-2 fashion to seal the victory.
Baylor is set to compete in the Big 12 Championship, beginning Friday, March 25, at Diamond Creek Ranch in Burleson and hosted by TCU.
>Baylor women's golf shot a three-day total of 21-over 873 to finish in a tie for fourth with the University of Texas at the Darius Rucker Intercollegiate on Wednesday.
Playing in the final group for the second day in a row, BU came to the final hole of the tournament in a tie for third with Arizona State and Texas, but ASU's Calynne Rosholt holed a chip shot to equal Baylor's third-round total of 295 and edge the Bears by one for a third-place finish.
Baylor will head west for the Northrop Grumman Regional Challenge March 13-15 at Palos Verdes Golf Club in Palos Verdes, CA.
> Baylor softball split its Saturday doubleheader with Texas A&M Corpus Christi at Getterman Stadium, falling to the Islanders 2-1 in game one and bouncing back for a 5-3 win in game two.
> No. 20 Baylor (9-4) got a pair of wins Sunday afternoon at Hurd Tennis Center. The Bears started the day with a 4-0 win over North Texas. They then followed that with a 6-1 win over ACU. No. 20 Baylor opens Big 12 play against TCU at noon on Thursday at Hurd Tennis Center.
> Baylor track and field will be sending 14 Bears to the 2022 NCAA Division I Indoor Track and Field Championships next week in Birmingham, Ala., the committee announced last Monday.
Ackera Nugent, Howard Fields III, Mariah Ayers, Johnny Brackins, Dillon Bedell, Matthew Moorer, Nathaniel Ezekiel, Kavia Francis, Imaobong Uko and Aaliyah Miller all qualified for the meet with Jayson Baldridge, Hasani Barr, Demitra Carter and Gontse Morake joining as relay substitutes.
The championship meet is set for March 11-12, with action streamed on ESPN3 live from the Birmingham CrossPlex. ESPNU will re-air the competition Sunday night, March 13.
Let’s make it a great week!
