To put it bluntly, Anthony Tarke wasn’t prominent on the basketball radar a year ago. Nobody is blunter with that assessment than Tarke himself.

The last of the scheduled visitors Mike and Gina Farrelly planned to welcome at their Long Island home last Sunday afternoon rang their doorbell at 5 PM. He was the only one to show up as scheduled — and the only one who wasn’t arriving to get a tour of the house Gina had spent the last several days cleaning and preparing for potential suitors.

When a student attends school for the first time one of their earliest lessons is the ABCs. They provide the foundation on which virtually everything else is built.

A fanbase spoiled by 15 years of storybook coaching tales began dreaming of another one Jan. 31, 2009, when Speedy Claxton returned to the David S. Mack Sports & Exhibition Complex — dubbed by some as “The House That Speedy Built” when it opened as Hofstra Arena in January 2000— to have his no. 10 retired and raised to the rafters. 

Like thousands of fathers across the country, Martin Inglesby’s bond with his sports-loving son has grown one morning at a time. But neither he nor his son really enjoyed what the daily ritual evolved into over the last few months.

Twenty-eight teams are gone from the 2021 Women’s NIT field, leaving just four in the Memphis area vying for the championship. 

The goal for Illinois is to be the team cutting down the nets on the first Monday of April — something that obviously did not work out — so head coach Brad Underwood’s opening statement following the top-seeded Fighting Illini’s 78-49 win over no. 16 Drexel in Friday’s NCAA Tournament Midwest Regional opener was about as bottom-line and businesslike as possible.

Axe throwing, go-kart racing, and a trip to Daytona Beach — it’s not Spring Break for Bellarmine basketball. This week is much more special than that.