Final 4: Men's NCAA Basketball Tourney Whittled Down From 68 Teams
Kansas’ Malik Newman holds the trophy after defeating Duke in a regional final game in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament Sunday in Omaha, Neb. Kansas won 85-81 in overtime.
Charlie Neibergall/AP
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Charlie Neibergall/AP
After weeks of play, four teams are left standing: Villanova, Kansas, Michigan and Loyola-Chicago.
The Villanova Wildcats and Kansas Jayhawks aren’t really a surprise — they were both top seeds heading into the tournament.
They will play each other on Saturday in San Antonio, Texas, and then only one top seeded team will remain. The other semifinal game features No. 3 Michigan Wolverines and No. 11 Loyola-Chicago Ramblers.
The Ramblers may have a bit of an edge. After all, they have Sister Jean Delores Schmidt. If you’ve seen any of their games on TV, the 98-year-old nun is hard to miss.
Sister Jean serves as the chaplain of the basketball team and apparently is a mighty good luck charm and a marketer’s dream.
ESPN reports that Loyola-Chicago officials have asked Sister Jean for permission to license her name and image as demand from licensees came in to the school’s athletic department.
“We weren’t going to do anything until she gave her blessing,” said Tom Sorboro, a senior associate athletic director at the school.
“She didn’t ask for anything for herself,” including compensation, Sorboro said.
“So far, Loyola has approved more than 25 Sister Jean T-shirts from a variety of companies including Fanatics, which made a Final Four shirt with her phrase, “Worship. Work And Win.”
The school also promises more Sister Jean bobbleheads in June — supplies have been depleted for now.
Loyola-Chicago got to the Final Four by defeating Kansas State over the weekend — becoming only the fourth No. 11 seed to reach the Final Four.
As Quinn Klinefelter of member station WDET reports for NPR’s Newscast unit:
“Loyola-Chicago faces a Michigan team whose big men Moe Wagner and Duncan Robinson helped the Wolverines squeeze past Florida State.
It took overtime and a career game from Malik Newman for Kansas to get past Duke to reach the semifinals — they came just short of the past two years.
They meet Villanova, a team of prolific scorers that relied on defense to out-muscle Texas Tech.”
Villanova won the national title two years ago. Juniors Jalen Brunson and Mikal Bridges were on that championship team. They are now the Wildcats leading scorers.
In 2008, Kansas won the championship. Since then, they have been seeded No. 1 five times but failed to make the Final Four any of those times.
Michigan State last won the title in 1989. They had a 13-game winning streak this season which is only second to Loyola-Chicago which won 14 straight.
The last time Loyola-Chicago won the championship was in 1963.
A NASA Astronaut Stays In Orbit With SpaceX And Boeing
Sunita Williams conducts routine maintenance aboard the International Space Station. The astronaut now helps Boeing and SpaceX develop private spacecraft.
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Sunita Williams wasn’t the kind of kid who wanted to be an astronaut when she grew up. She wanted to be a veterinarian. But she managed to achieve the former kid’s dream job, anyway.
Williams, 52, has completed two missions to the International Space Station, spending over 11 months orbiting the Earth in total. She holds the record total cumulative spacewalk time by a female astronaut, having spent 50 hours and 40 minutes outside the International Space Station. She’s continued her career in space on Earth as a member of NASA’s Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap), a group of veteran astronauts that works with privately-held companies like Space X and Boeing to develop spacecrafts.
Part of her job is to verify that the companies’ spacecraft can launch, maneuver in orbit and dock to stationary spacecraft like the ISS. NASA announced the CCtCap in 2015 as part of “the Obama Administration’s plan to partner with U.S. industry to transport astronauts to space, create good-paying American jobs and end the nation’s sole reliance on Russia for space travel.”
“This is really different from my old job, you know,” Williams said. When she became an astronaut, the shuttle was already laid out. “It was all documented and out there, and [I] went through classes to understand all the systems,” she said. “The plan was there, and you had to get this, this and this done before you could go fly out in space.”
Her path to the stars began with the Navy. Williams graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy with a bachelor’s in physical science in 1987. After graduation, she was designated a Basic Diving Officer at the Naval Coastal System Command. She was designated a Naval Aviator in 1989, and went on to log more than 3,000 flight hours in more than 30 different aircraft.
Williams received a master’s degree in engineering management from the Florida Institute of Technology in 1995. In 1997, she, along with more than 100 other people, applied for a position as an astronaut. After more than a year of interviewing, she was selected by NASA in June 1998. Williams spent five months training for her first mission, and received intensive instruction in shuttle and ISS systems, and water and wilderness survival techniques. Williams also spent nine days underwater in NASA’s undersea Aquarius laboratory.
Williams took her first ride into space on Dec. 9, 2006 aboard the STS-116. “We were hootin’ and hollering,” Williams said of her first takeoff. “It is like the best roller coaster ride you’ve ever been on.”
“You take your gloves off, your gloves start to float,” she recalled. “It’s a whole different mindset. It’s pretty spectacular.”
Williams served as Expedition 14/15’s flight engineer, and returned to Earth on June 22, 2007. On July 14, 2012, Williams returned to the ISS as part of Expedition 32/33 to conduct general research abroad the orbiting laboratory. She returned to Earth on November 18, 2012.
For Williams, every day at the International Space Station was different. “One day you might be cleaning the toilet, next day you might be doing some potentially Nobel Prize-winning science,” she said.
Williams says that during her two long stays aboard the ISS, she and her fellow crew members worked to keep a normal earthbound schedule and a sense of regularity to their days. “We get up at 6 o’ clock or so, and there’s daily planning conferences with control centers all over the world,” she said.
Sunita Williams performs maintenance during a spacewalk outside the International Space Station in 2012. The astronaut has spent more than 50 hours “spacewalking”.
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On Fridays, the astronauts would indulge in films from both Russia and the United States. Williams recalled that Groundhog Day was a favorite, given how repetitive the days aboard the ISS could feel. By the time she returned permanently to Earth in 2012, she had spent 322 total days in space — at the time, her combined stints were the longest on record for women astronauts.
Since the discontinuation of NASA’s Space Shuttle program in 2011, U.S. astronauts have had to rely on Russian shuttles to get into orbit — which Williams and her internationally sourced crew did during her 2012 mission. Compared to its heyday, publicly funded space travel in the U.S. was no longer a hugely viable option for those wishing to explore space — but as it turned out, private space travel was.
Privately funded companies such as Space X and Boeing have made it their business over the past two decades to take over some parts of space travel from NASA. That business is booming — just last month, Space X successfully launched the most powerful rocket in decades. The launch was one small step toward Space X founder Elon Musk’s ultimate vision: a colony of a million people living on Mars.
In order to achieve those otherworldly ambitions, Space X and other private companies need the right kind of people working for them — people like Williams.
The space machinery of private companies that Williams now supports are still works-in-progress. “They don’t really have training systems established for them yet,” she said. “We’re sort of creating that right now with the folks at the companies.” That means deciding what things are important for astronauts to know — “classic things like getting in your seat, reach[ing] all the controls,” she said. “We’re establishing all that with the companies right now.” Her contributions have helped to build the Boeing CST-100 Starliner and SpaceX Dragon.
Williams’ work has also provided transportation for NASA astronauts to her old base, the ISS. And more broadly, Williams says that private space companies just want to keep learning and exploring. Though she works with familiar components and protocols, she says her new job feels like a new frontier. Williams hopes to revisit the ISS in the future on the very spacecraft she’s helping to develop.
“We want to keep finding the next thing,” she said. “And this type of exploration with a common goal, a common good of looking at something farther and bigger than ourselves. It totally opens the door for collaboration and cooperation for people from all over the world.”
NPR’s Noor Wazwaz helped to produce this story for broadcast.
Idaho Joins Other States With Informed Consent For 'Abortion Reversal' Procedures
Dr. Daniel Grossman shares his concerns with NPR’s Sarah McCammon about so-called abortion reversal procedures and state laws mandating that doctors inform women about them.
SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST:
Idaho has become the latest of a handful of states to pass a law promoting a medically-controversial technique called abortion reversal. Idaho doctors who prescribe medication to end a pregnancy must now inform patients the procedure can be stopped if they change their mind. Here’s State Senator Lori Den Hartog, a sponsor.
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LORI DEN HARTOG: It simply enhances our informed consent language to allow pregnant mothers to be aware of and provided information about potential lifesaving opportunities for their unborn child if they have changed their mind after the initiation of a drug-induced abortion.
MCCAMMON: Many medical groups have come out against the procedure. One opponent is Dr. Daniel Grossman of the University of California, San Francisco. I asked him to explain how medication abortion works.
DANIEL GROSSMAN: A medication abortion involves the use of two drugs – first, Mifepristone, which blocks the progesterone receptor, and then a second medication, Misoprostol, which is given to open the cervix and cause uterine contractions. These medications are very effective. It’s used up to about 10 weeks of pregnancy. And a growing number of women are choosing this as an option. The latest data are about 45 percent of all eligible abortions end up with medication abortion.
MCCAMMON: And this is different – right? – from the morning after pill, for instance. This is actually ending a pregnancy once it’s begun?
GROSSMAN: Correct.
MCCAMMON: So granting that this is not a well-established procedure at this point, what is the typical protocol like for women who ask for an abortion reversal?
GROSSMAN: They all involve progesterone of some sort, either given by injection or vaginal administration or by pills. And the thought there is that because Misoprostol – the first pill of medication abortion – blocks the progesterone receptor, if you just then flood the body with progesterone, you could somehow limit the effect or reverse the effect of that first pill. And that kind of makes sense on some level. At the same time, it’s important to recognize that in a normal pregnancy, the body is already flooded with progesterone, and it’s unclear that adding more progesterone would actually make a difference. So if, you know, there’s a case where a woman – in a very rare case – that a woman decides to change her mind after taking the first medication, really, the standard of care now would be just to watch and wait and see what happens after taking the first medication.
MCCAMMON: And you’ve looked closely at this research that examines the effectiveness of abortion reversal. What stood out to you from that analysis?
GROSSMAN: There’s just very little data that’s been published in the literature. There is one case series of seven women who received this treatment, one of whom was lost to follow-up. And there’s just a lot of missing information from this report. The most concerning thing to me is that there’s no evidence that this research – which, it really was research – there’s no evidence that it was conducted under the supervision of an institutional review board or some sort of ethical review panel to make sure that patients received informed consent and that they were aware of the potential risks and that they were participating in research. And there’s really no evidence to indicate that some sort of treatment will increase the likelihood that the pregnancy will continue.
MCCAMMON: But there are doctors who will do this – right? – who will give women progesterone in an effort to stop medication abortion. What, if any, risks does that entail?
GROSSMAN: Well, because this hasn’t been studied, we don’t know what the risks are.
MCCAMMON: Do you suspect that there would be risks to the fetus, you know, trying to terminate a pregnancy and then reversing that?
GROSSMAN: The best evidence that we have indicates that Mifepristone by itself does not increase the risk of the baby having a birth defect if the pregnancy continues. So I don’t have a lot of concerns about the fetal risks, but I think it really needs to be studied. And I’m very concerned that this is now being advocated and, you know, really being put forward by state legislatures with so little evidence.
MCCAMMON: What are the ethical implications of requiring doctors to tell women that this abortion reversal procedure is available?
GROSSMAN: Well, I find this very concerning. I mean, for a long time, states have been forcing abortion providers to give women inaccurate information about the risks of abortion. Women have to be told in some states about potential association with breast cancer.
MCCAMMON: Which the American Cancer Society says is not an actual risk, correct?
GROSSMAN: Exactly. It’s not an actual risk. But I find this next level with these laws requiring providers to give information about this so-called abortion reversal even more concerning because now it’s state forcing doctors to tell their patients about a treatment that is completely unproven and experimental. I think this is particularly concerning because, you know, the majority of abortion patients are women of color and low-income women. And our country really has a very dark history of experimentation on people of color. And I’m concerned that these patients are not being adequately informed that this is really research.
MCCAMMON: Dr. Daniel Grossman is a professor of gynecology and reproductive sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. He joined us from our member station KQED in San Francisco. Dr. Grossman, thank you.
GROSSMAN: Thank you.
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