May 2009 blog archives
Posted on
May 28, 2009 by Ryan Gavin
The Mizzou softball team lost 7-3 to Arizona State in the Tigers’ first game of the double-elimination College World Series.
Marla Schweisberger led Mizzou at the plate, going 2-for-3 with a home run, an RBI and two runs scored. Rhea Taylor scored a run and drove in another, and Micaela Minner had the other RBI.
Senior Stacy Delaney replaced starter Chelsea Thomas in the third inning, going four innings and allowing one unearned run.
Mizzou next plays Saturday at 11 a.m. Central time against Georgia in a game televised on ESPN and online at ESPN360.com. For the full bracket, click here.
Posted on
May 28, 2009 by Karen Pojmann
Reduce, reuse and recycle while you hunt for treasures.
The Tiger Treasures Rummage Sale starts at 7 a.m. (6 a.m. if you’re an early bird) Saturday, May 30, on the east side of Faurot Field at Mizzou.
Novelty lamps were among the great finds at last year’s sale. Photo by Shane Epping.
Students who recently vacated Mizzou’s residence halls, student apartments and fraternity/sorority houses have donated their stuff — electronics, athletic gear, books, clothes, thingamajigs — to be sold to fellow Columbians. The event helps bargain shoppers get great deals and keeps reusable items out of landfills.
Want to get a jump on the shopping competition? Show up at 6 a.m., and pay a $5 fee for early admission. Proceeds from early-bird charges are donated to the Heart of Missouri United Way, an umbrella organization serving area nonprofit groups.
See what was sold last year.
Posted on
May 26, 2009 by Ryan Gavin
Lindsey Ubrun, pictured against DePaul in the NCAA Regional, was dominant at the plate in Sunday’s College Word Series qualifier. She went 3-for-3 and drove in six RBI in the 9-1 victory. Photo by Shane Epping.
During Memorial Day weekend, the Mizzou softball team advanced to the College World Series, while the baseball team finished second in the Big 12 Tournament and earned a seventh consecutive trip to the NCAA tournament.
Softball
The softball team was in Westwood, Calif., playing UCLA in one of eight Super Regionals. Winning two of three games qualified the team for the CWS.
In the first game, the Tigers won a pitchers’ duel 2-1 on the arm of freshman Chelsea Thomas (16-4). It was Mizzou’s first win against the Bruins, snapping UCLA’s nine-game win streak while extending Mizzou’s to eight games.
The Bruins struck back in the second game, surviving a seventh-inning rally by the Tigers to win 5-2. The final game, in which a trip to Oklahoma City for the CWS was on the line, was hardly dramatic. Mizzou crushed UCLA 9-1 in six innings; the game ended early because of the run rule. (The run rule is invoked when a team leads by at least eight runs at the end of an inning.)
Senior pitcher Stacey Delaney got the start and win, allowing two hits and striking out four in the complete game effort. But the bats were just as hot; three Tigers went 3-for-3 in the game. Left fielder Kathryn Poet (three runs scored), third baseman Gina Schneider (home run, four runs) and first baseman Lindsey Ubrun (six RBI) made Mizzou an unstoppable force.
In the CWS for the first time since 1994, the Tigers (50-10) first play No. 10 seed Arizona State at 2 p.m. Thursday in a game to be broadcast on ESPN. For the full CWS bracket, visit the NCAA site.
Baseball
For the seventh consecutive season, the Mizzou baseball team has made the NCAA tournament. After finishing second in the Big 12 Tournament, the Tigers (34-25) had a strong NCAA résumé. Eight Big 12 schools made the tournament.
Mizzou is the No. 2 seed in the Oxford, Miss., Regional and first faces Western Kentucky at 3 p.m. Friday. Ole Miss, the host of the regional, plays Monmouth at 7 p.m. Check out the full bracket.
Each of the 16 regionals features four teams playing a double-elimination format. The regionals are scheduled to take place Friday to Monday (if necessary). Selection of the eight super-regional hosts will be announced at approximately 10 p.m. Central time Monday on ncaa.com.
The 63rd Men’s College World Series begins play Saturday, June 13, at Rosenblatt Stadium in Omaha, Neb.
Posted on
May 11, 2009 by Karen Pojmann
Team NearBuy wins RJI iPhone application contest
Photos by Karen Stockman
Journalism student Tony Brown and computer-science student Peng Zhuang present NearBuy, their competition-winning iPhone application.
A housing search tool has opened the door to software development for a group of Mizzou students.
An interdisciplinary team of computer-science and journalism majors has won the Reynolds Journalism Institute iPhone Student Competition with an application called NearBuy. Users of the location-based iPhone app can both search and post listings accessed through the Web’s most comprehensive databases of real estate classifieds — Craigslist, Google Base, Oodle — and sort out their options using interactive maps, neighborhood photos, mortgage/rent calculators, virtual tours and area residents’ reviews.
For their efforts, the team members — Tony Brown, Zhenhua Ma, Dan Wang and Peng Zhuang — win a free trip to next month’s Apple Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco.
They’re also raking in job offers from companies in the Sunshine State and close to home.
All in a year’s work
The four winning students were among about five dozen to embark on the iPhone-application-development journey set in motion early in the 2008-09 school year with a “speed dating” session in which students connected with like-minded peers to flesh out their ideas. By Thanksgiving, a panel of judges had narrowed down the number of competing teams to five, all of whom took a trip to California to visit the Apple headquarters. By April, three teams had successfully completed and uploaded their applications into the iTunes Store.
One of the three final teams — Chris Stein, Kevin Karsch, Mary Beth Bergsieker and Brian Grinstead — won the People’s Choice Award determined by online voting. Their application, NewsFlash, uses the iPhone’s spatial technology to deliver location-based news results with customizable features.
Both apps are a hit with users. By May 5, about 300 people were downloading NewsFlash daily, and more than 20,000 people had downloaded NearBuy in the previous month.
Branching out
Contest organizers say perhaps the most valuable outcome of the exercise is growth in interdisciplinary collaboration. Students and faculty in the School of Journalism and the College of Engineering found common ground.
Along with technological innovation, the projects evoked students’ awareness of user preferences and marketing trends. The NearBuy presentation to judges, for example, drew on popular iPhone commercials, replicating the audio effects with targeted music choices dead-on voiceover by team member Tony Brown. Even the techies got caught up in consumer awareness.
“We were not thinking about the most sexy technologies,” said Peng Zhuang. “We were thinking about how to deliver the right features to the right user at the right time. That’s the greatest thing I’ve learned from this competition.”
The NearBuy app makes it possible to post and research real estate listings using a iPhone.
Contest judges included Lex Akers, associate dean of in the MU College of Engineering;
Mike Bombich, Apple Systems Engineer; Mark Glaser, executive editor for MediaShift.org;
Ben Kruse, director of higher-education mobility for AT&T Business Services; and Jane Ellen Stevens, and RJI fellow 2008-09 and associate faculty in the Knight Digital Media Center at the University of California-Berkeley. Technical and financial support for the projects came from RJI, Apple, AT&T and the MU Interdisciplinary Innovations Fund.
Posted on
May 8, 2009 by Ryan Gavin
The 2008-09 season has been one of the most successful in recent history for Mizzou on the field, with championships in football (Big 12 North), men’s basketball (Big 12 Tournament), women’s soccer (Big 12 Tournament) and softball (Big 12 Tournament).
Add another title to the list. The NCAA released its Academic Progress Rates for all sports, and the Tigers have become the unofficial league champion yet again. Five of Mizzou’s 20 sports led the Big 12 in APR — a tie with Oklahoma State for most in the league. Fourteen of Missouri’s its 20 programs ranked among the Big 12’s top three overall. Additionally, all but two of MU’s men’s and women’s sports ranked above the All-Division I national average.
The five leaders for MU were women’s golf (APR of 1,000), women’s basketball (995), women’s swimming and diving (993), women’s indoor track and field (989) and men’s swimming and diving (975). The highest APR score possible is 1,000.
Here’s the list of schools with the most APR leaders in their respective sports:
T1. Mizzou (5)
T1. Oklahoma State (5)
3. Nebraska (4)
T4. Kansas (3)
T4. Baylor (3)
T6. Iowa State (2)
T6. Texas (2)
8. Oklahoma (1)
The APR was developed by the NCAA in 2004 to measure the academic progress and performance of students in athletic programs at member institutions. The multi-year average for the latest Academic Progress Rate Report covers the last four years, and institutions are awarded points when a student-athlete remains academically eligible for competition and when he/she either returns to the institution the following semester or graduates. A maximum of two points per student, per semester is awarded.
“We are very encouraged and proud of the latest results,” Director of Athletics Mike Alden said. “The academic success and progress toward graduation of our student-athletes supports our core value of academic integrity here at Mizzou. We salute the classroom efforts of our student-athletes, our coaches and our academic staff.”
In addition to the five Big 12 leaders, the Tigers ranked second overall in men’s cross country, football, women’s gymnastics and women’s outdoor track and field, while the Tiger baseball, men’s golf, men’s indoor track and field, women’s cross country and softball teams each ranked third. The football program finished just one point out of the Big 12 lead with its score of 951.
The NCAA does not penalize institutions for student-athletes who remain academically eligible but did not return to the institution due to circumstances beyond the student’s and/or institution’s control. Examples include student-athletes who leave to pursue professional athletics, suffer from incapacitating physical or mental illness, or experience extreme financial difficulties as the result of a specific event, such as a death in the family.
Complete information on the APR Report can be found at the NCAA’s Web site, www.ncaa.org.
Mizzou Men’s Sports
Team (Big 12 Rank) — APR — All-Division I Average
Baseball (3) — 961 — 946
Basketball (5) — 959 — 933
Cross Country (2) —995 —964
Football (2) — 951 — 939
Golf (3) — 988 —963
Swimming and Diving (1) —975 —967
Track: Indoor (3) — 957 —953
Track: Outdoor (4) — 957 —954
Wrestling (4) —957 —948
Mizzou Women’s Sports
Team (Big 12 Rank) — APR — All-Division I Average
Basketball (1) —995 — 962
Cross Country (3) —995 —971
Golf (1) —1000 —976
Gymnastics (2) —991 —983
Soccer (7) —971 —973
Softball (3) —981 —968
Swimming & Diving (1) —993 —979
Tennis (6) —971 —974
Track: Indoor (1) —989 —965
Track: Outdoor (2) — 989 — 966
Volleyball (6) —973 —97
Posted on
May 7, 2009 by Shane Epping
Photos by Shane Epping
Symbolizing their exit from the university, seniors ran and walked through the Columns on Francis Quadrangle this afternoon. Following Tiger Prowl, a ceremony hosted by the Mizzou Alumni Association, festivities continued on the Carnahan Quad with food, drinks and entertainment.
