Excitement Brewing in Milwaukee

 As the keys clatter this chilly noon, the Milwaukee Brewers are preparing to open the 2024 season on Thursday in New York against the Mets. That's IF the weatherman cooperates, and it doesn't look like he will. If that's the case, Opening Day gets pushed back to Friday.

Doesn't matter. For those of us in Wisconsin, the REAL Opening Day comes on Tuesday April 2nd, when the Brew Crew hosts those pesky Minnesota Twins in a 3:10p home opener. Got my tickets and parking pass (am Old School. Like to have physical tickets for a scrapbook, plus I currently don't have a cell phone. So those electronic tickets aren't an option).

This is a young, young team that first time manager Pat Murphy will lead. He knows these players well, and they know him, since he served as bench coach for Craig Counsell, now managing the hated Chicago Cubs.

Led by 20-year-old Jackson Chourio, who will no doubt be our Opening Day centerfielder (after Garrett Mitchell went on the injured list with a broken bone in his hand), the Brewers, by my count, only have three of their top 11 every day players above the age of 29 -- Christian Yelich (33), newcomer Rhys Hoskins (31) and Willy Adames (29). The average age of the rest? 24.75 years. That's a group that includes Chourio, William Contreras, Bryce Turang, Sal Frelich, Joey Ortiz, Mitchell, Andruw Monasterio and Joey Weimer. Eight guys who, with the exception of catcher Contreras, don't have a whole lot of big league playing time behind them.

And that group of every day players doesn't factor in young pitching, which, with the loss of premiere closer Devin Williams for several months, will be counted on even more to help carry the load.

This might be one of the best groups to "come up together" since the Prince Fielder group.

Murphy says they'll play hard, and I don't doubt it. It will certainly be an exciting group to watch grow up in 2024.  Because they don't know any better, the "kids" may just play themselves into wild card contention in a somewhat weak NL Central.

My thoughts? An 86-76 record would be great. Playing meaningful baseball in September? Even better.

The National Football League is seldom away from the headlines for very long. This week, tweaking the rules made the news as the NFL outlawed a couple of tackles (next up, flag football??) and changed the way we will see kickoffs in 2024. Won't go into the lengthy details, but in essence The Shield wants to bring more player safety to kickoffs while getting more returns in the deal. Will it work? It might for the Packers, who resigned kick returner ace Keisean Nixon.

Green Bay is also bringing in former Minnesota Vikings kicker Greg Joseph to provide competition for second-year man Anders Carlson, who struggled mightily in his final 10 games but still has the potential to be The Man in Green Bay.

What does the future hold for Wisconsin Badger men's basketball coach Greg Gard? Good question. After the team's meltdown in the opening round of the NCAA tournament, an unforgivable performance against James Madison University, the chair Gard is sitting on is getting pretty warm and the ice it is on thinner and thinner. Gard hasn't gotten the Badgers out of the first round since 2017, and that run was with Bo's guys.

Add in the transfer portal (already three guards have entered it) and the NBA draft (bye bye A.J. Storr) and you see a program that is on the rocks. Athletic Director Chris McIntosh has some interesting questions to ponder. Is Wisconsin just content to be competitive in the Big Ten? Do fans want to challenge for a national title? Does the department save money and keep Gard since the buy-out would be costly?

We're all waiting to hear.

Fixing The WIAA Basketball Tournaments

 How can we fix both the boys and girls basketball tournaments? Well, I'm glad you asked -- even if you didn't.

Watched some of the very entertaining tournaments. Was especially taken by that 4OT game between Neenah (in a state-high 30th trip to the tourney) and Hartland Arrowhead. A shame either team had to lose.  Arrowhead posted a 99-95 win, combing with Neenah to set a state tournament scoring record with 194 points. The previous record? Set back in 1967 in the Class A quarterfinals when Milwaukee Lincoln topped La Crosse Central 109-71. Lincoln (25-1) would beat Wausau (23-2) for the championship 61-56.

But back to fixing the state tournaments. Growing up in rural Wisconsin, attending a small high school (only one class of enrollment back then, soon to expand to three and, ultimately, to the five now) -- well, it was an us against them mentality in high school sports.

Now for rural schools it's an us against THEM situation. Or rather, public schools jockeying for position against private schools that can recruit the best area talent and stack the deck. In the boys tournament, eight of the 20 competing teams were private schools, with six of those in the smaller divisions (D-5, D-4 and D-3). And with the exception of Mineral Point winning in D-4, every other champion crowned represented a private school.

The numbers weren't quite as bad in the girls tourney, where only five of the 20 teams was a private school, and only one (Madison Edgewood, beating Appleton Xavier) claimed a title.

Just how fair is that for the small, rural schools of Wisconsin to go against schools that can recruit? Take a team from the neck of the woods where I grew up, Almond-Bancroft, making its first ever trip to the state tournament. This might well be the best collection of area athletes they will ever assemble, while Madison Abundant Life will be able to recruit from Madison and Dane County.

My solution? While the divisions are based on enrollment, I would bump the private schools up one division when it comes to playoffs. Leveling the playing field, so to speak, for small rural schools and giving them a better chance to at least make it to Madison (and Green Bay, for the girls tourney).

While we're at it, let's expand the D-1 back to eight teams from four and make it more interesting the the Big Guys. Winning three games in three days is tough to do. Hell, playing a 4-Overtime game on Friday night, then turning around and playing Saturday night, had to be very challenging for Arrowhead. It showed in their loss to Milwaukee Marquette.

Speaking of making it interesting, the WIAA did just that for eventual D-2 champion Wisconsin Lutheran, didn't it? Shipping some schools over to the Madison Sectional, the WIAA split up conference foes Wisconsin Lutheran and Pewaukee. Both met in the title game, with Lutheran winning, but certainly giving them a little bit better path to Madison.

Former LSU coach Dale Brown, who succeeded Press Maravich in 1972 and led the Tigers for 25 years, once reportedly charted every shot Maravich took in college and found that had there been a 3-point line, Maravich would have averaged 57 points per game.

So another publisher has bought Sports Illustrated and intends to continue with the print magazine. Happy to hear it, but how much the subscription for six issues or so will be remains to be seen.

Farewell To "Wisconsin Royalty"

 The news that Cherry Starr, 89, passed away following a long battle with cancer last week saddened me. I consider her and her late husband, Green Bay Packers quarterback Bart Starr, to be the closest thing we had to royalty here in Wisconsin.

Bart, who died in 2019, may have enhanced his reputation with five NFL championships in seven seasons for those great Vince Lombardi teams, but Cherry was just as instrumental as she "quarterbacked" giving back to the Wisconsin community in a big way.

In the 1960s, the Starrs help found the Rawhide Boys Ranch to help at-risk and troubled youth. It still thrives today. We've donated cars to Rawhide over the years, and I know others who have as well.

The Starrs were beloved in Wisconsin for many reasons, and loved the Green Bay Packers. For years, Bart would phone (on his own) the players the team had drafted, to welcome them to "the family". I've heard that Cherry was doing the same after Bart's passing. They were proud members of the Green & Gold.

Many times, NFL teams will honor fallen members of the organization with their initials on a helmet or jersey throughout the season. If anyone deserves that honor, it's Cherry Starr. There are currently 147 members of the Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame, and I can't think of non-player more deserving of that honor than Cherry Starr.

RIP Cherry. You and Bart were one of a kind, and real ambassadors for the Green & Gold and the state of Wisconsin.

Caitlin Clark is doing the right thing, passing up on a fifth season at Iowa to turn pro. Beyond padding her stats and possibly chasing a national championship, what else does the leading scorer in NCAA women's basketball history have to accomplish? Glad to see that, as a purist, her scoring record will be established in four years of college ball.

Learned this week that here NIL (Name-Image-Likeness) money has been negotiated for her by an agent and is not coming from the Iowa collective. Most colleges has a collective that is paying NIL to it's athletes, and those contracts terminate when the player leaves the school.

For Clark, that's a different story. Her NIL money will follow her to the WNBA, where her rookie contract is limited to $70,000 a season. She'll make a LOT more than that in endorsements alone, and will make that money up on her next contract. She's a Larry Bird-esque talent and a great draw for the WNBA.

She also passed Pistol Pete Maravich as the all-time leading scorer in NCAA basketball history, though the marvelous scorer from LSU will remain the men's leader. Maravich did his damage in just 83 games, while thus far Clark has played in 130.

It's a darn shame that the top three teams in Wisconsin girls basketball for Division 1, Verona, Hartland Arrowhead and Oregon, all were funneled into the same WIAA sectional.

For Oregon, a team that won 27 games in a row, the marvelous season ended with a loss to Arrowhead. That's still an historic season here, despite not finishing with a trip to Green Bay for the girls' state tournament.

Just seems like maybe the WIAA powers that be could have figured out a better system.

Although, if a recent piece in the Wisconsin State Journal is accurate, they did so on the boys' side, moving several teams over to the Madison Sectional, freeing up a path for Wisconsin Lutheran -- what gives with that, WIAA?