Recent Comments

Iconic quote. Hope we can convince him to stay next season.

I think he was referring to her taking a long rest at Shaktoolik and not pushing forward aggressively. Jessie Holmes moved aggressively across the ice and Matt Hall went out to the shelter cabin that is on that little point of land (I had forgotten that there was a shelter there) although he did stop and rest there. She had a good strong run, but is not trying to push the dogs further. The dogs probably wanted to run fast.

When Jessie pulled into Koyuk, they noted that he looked pretty tired and beat up. They initially thought he would push through to set up an easy run to Elim next, but he was laying out straw for the dogs and so they assume he will stay at least a couple of hours to rest. The benefit of Koyuk is you can look down on the ice and see the teams coming in. This gives him the chance to play things by ear to decide when to leave if he sees Matt Hall approaching. Or he could just run whatever normal rest cycle he was planning.

You're right about that. I grew up in east Tennessee. Some people don't have a lot going for them and the Vols are their entire identity Monday to Saturday.

At 3:23 east coast, Matt and Paige are both on the water. Matt the main Sound and Paige on Reindeer Cove, so they are not running together. Holmes is approaching Koyuk and is visible on the camera zooming in on him.

Having live fee from Koyuk with the analysts. Their comments have been:

It is likely Jessie's race to lose. Has 31 mile lead on Matt Hall and 34 mile lead on Paige. They think he will pull through Koyuk and try and camp ~15 miles past the checkpoint. That would position him to have a long rest camping and will be set up for his next run to go into Elim.

Thought is that Matt needs to have a long run all the way to Elim to have much of a chance. He had a long rest and might be able to.

Paige seems to have backed off with the rest in Shaktoolik. Feels unlike that she will press the team.

No one further back expected to have a chance to win unless the top 3 teams all falter or bad weather closes down the trail. However, the dogs on all the lead teams look strong and there is no prediction of bad weather. It is clear and sunny. Winds 12-15 mph. Not light, but not bad at all for Norton Sound.

And Jessie just pulled in at 3:31 PM east coast according to my computer.

Hoffman is creating a nice career for himself for a UDFA.

His reputation for being a dick (or an "alpha" if I'm being nice) has followed him to the NFL (Link Here).

Again, we're not just talking about the almighty Dukes and the lowly NIT VT's of college basketball - we're talking every single P5 team in the nation who looked at him said "nah, we're good". A lot likely didn't even look at him before passing on him. Most ACC schools weren't even interested in a walk-on role for him.

His choices were literally Davidson, VCU, and Winthrop. There was zero indication he would become the player he did, and again, at VT maybe he doesn't even become that player, 6' tall and 160lbs was going to take a beating in the ACC or B1G - at the time, before he finished growing he was built for a mid-major.

Counterpoint: Steph Curry maybe would have never become what he is today if he had been gifted a scholarship to an ACC school based on who is dad is.

He was skilled out of HS, but undersized (he even acknowledges that he was a late bloomer, physically). He was maybe 6' by the time he finished HS. It's not like any other P5 program was after him. His HS coaching talking about ordering uniforms:

"We got brand new uniforms, and this might have been his sophomore or junior year, and when you're ordering basketball jerseys, you just don't order very many mediums, much less smalls," Brown said. "He probably needed a small, but we were able to kind of fit him into a medium pair of shorts. All we had for a jersey top was large. I guess you could say it hung a little bit loose on him. It kept bouncing and shaking around whenever he was running.

Hot take: Greenberg made the right call with the information he had in front of him, without the benefit of hindsight

Further back, it looked like Emily Ford was going to run away with the rookie of the year award as the first rookie to finish. But Samantha LaLonde has passed her and is now the lead rookie, running 12 dogs 747 miles in/381 to Nome. Emily is 739 miles in/388 to Nome with 13 dogs.

Ran the tracker back and re-watched the two of them. Emily was way ahead but stopped for a long time before Grayling1 and in Grayling. Also stopped for a long time after pulling out of Eagle Island2. Samantha did her 8-hour in Eagle Island2 and, even with the layover, has been able to catch and pass Emily on the trail to Kaltag2. Emily has been stopping and starting a lot since leaving Kaltag1.

I'll have to try and review some of the videos this evening to see if (1) Matt and Paige planned to cross Norton Sound together and (2) if Emily was having troubles causing her to stop so much.

Who did we take instead of Curry? Nigel Munson? how is he doing? Does he have a huge global shoe brand and multiple NBA MVPS?

Looks like Paige just left Shaktoolik 5 minutes ago (1:30 EST), 30 miles behind Jesse who is still running.about 20 miles short of Koyuk, I assume he will almost surely push straight through to Koyuk now that hes out on the sea ice. Matt Hall is resting on the trail about halfway between the two, probably right before the open sea ice starts.

The SEC has been strong in softball for a very long time.

Latest GPS @ 11:20 AM east coast shows Jessie Holmes out in the middle of Reindeer Cove before the start of the main sea ice crossing. Matt Hall is 3 miles behind him and approaching the shore. Paige has the team resting in Shaktoolik 10 miles behind Matt. Unless Matt stops short of the coast and waits for Paige, I assume all 3 will cross as individuals. The nearest team behind Paige is now Michelle Phillips and she is 40 miles back. Would be many hours before she catches up and she'd probably need to rest her team before the crossing anyway.