Culture
In a Twist, Carlos Correa Heads North to the Minnesota Twins
Carlos Correa, the star shortstop who helped lead the Houston Astros to a now tainted 2017 World Collection title, has discovered an surprising residence: the Minnesota Twins.
As a substitute of touchdown the huge long-term deal that was as soon as predicted for him, Correa agreed to affix the quickly rebuilding Twins on a three-year $105.3 million contract. The main points of the contract had been confirmed by a private acquainted with the negotiations who was not licensed to debate it publicly as a result of it was pending a bodily examination.
Whereas the deal is much smaller in size and whole worth than some handed out earlier than the lockout, the advantages to Correa are clear: It has opt-outs after every of the primary two years, permitting Correa to re-enter the market as quickly as subsequent season, and it has a mean annual worth of $35.1 million, which supplants the deal Anthony Rendon of the Los Angeles Angels signed two years in the past, which was beforehand the best mark for an infielder.
Solely pitchers Max Scherzer ($43.3 million) and Gerrit Cole ($36 million), and outfielder Mike Trout ($35.5 million), have greater common annual values of their contracts than Correa, in line with Cot’s Baseball Contracts.
Whereas Correa’s new staff had not formally introduced his arrival as of Saturday morning, Correa modified the photograph on his Twitter profile to one among Goal Discipline, the Twins’ residence stadium in Minneapolis.
Correa, 27, joins a staff that has been overhauled this low season. After an 89-loss 2021 season, the Twins entrance workplace remade the staff’s infield by buying and selling away Josh Donaldson and Isiah Kiner-Falefa to the Yankees for catcher Gary Sánchez and third baseman Gio Urshela. Additionally they traded for beginning pitcher Sonny Grey.
And now the Twins went far bigger, including the top-ranked free agent of this low season and among the best total gamers in baseball. A cornerstone of an Astros infield that led the staff to a few American League pennants in 5 years, Correa had maybe his finest season in 2021.
He hit .279 with 26 residence runs and an .850 on-base plus slugging proportion, whereas additionally main the key leagues in defensive wins above alternative, in line with Baseball Reference. He gained the A.L. Platinum Glove, an annual award given to the most effective defender in every league, no matter place.
Whereas accidents slowed Correa at occasions all through his seven years in Houston, he hit .277 with an .837 O.P.S. and smashed no less than 20 residence runs in 5 seasons. He was a vocal staff chief, dwelling as much as his hype as the primary total choose within the 2012 draft.
Correa’s brief and versatile contract in Minnesota stands in sharp distinction to the one Corey Seager obtained when he agreed to depart the Los Angeles Dodgers this winter. Seager, a extra polished hitter than Correa who’s a far much less achieved defensive participant, landed a 10-year $325 million take care of the Texas Rangers.
The information of Correa’s departure reverberated by the Astros’ spring coaching facility in West Palm Seashore, Fla., on Saturday morning. First baseman Yuli Gurriel, who was Correa’s teammate for six years, stated Correa was “very energetic” sending messages to Astros gamers on Friday night time and that Correa was having hassle sleeping given the large determination on his plate.
Gurriel stated Astros gamers had been stunned they usually had hoped that Correa would return. He stated he by no means imagined Correa would find yourself in Minnesota however he understood the enterprise aspect of the game.
“We’re going to overlook him,” Gurriel stated. “He helped me lots right here, not solely on protection however with a variety of facets that I wanted to get higher at, like sabermetrics.”
Astros Supervisor Dusty Baker stated he heard the information from his spouse on Saturday morning. He didn’t need to discuss it a lot till Correa’s deal was formally introduced, however he stated, “It’s not very nice information if it’s true.”
Martín Maldonado, the Astros catcher and a fellow Puerto Rican like Correa, stated he talked to and visited Correa usually all through the free company course of.
“He knew after the lockout it was going to be onerous to get these years that he needed,” Maldonado stated, referring to the 99-day work stoppage that froze all transactions from Dec. 2 to March 10 and compelled many remaining free brokers to signal throughout a delayed and abbreviated spring coaching.
Maldonado stated the opt-outs within the deal had been one thing Correa “actually needed.” He continued, “He’s betting on himself once more. I do know he’s going to go on the market and have a monster 12 months and hopefully exit to free company and obtain that aim of a 10-year deal.”
Say this for the Phoenix Suns: They have one of the NBA’s most creative front offices when it comes to finding new and different ways in which to mortgage their future. Never mind that this strategy hit its peak two years ago and it has long since been time to turn this ship around; they’re still plowing full steam ahead and throwing lifejackets overboard as they go.
Sorry, I was in the midst of complimenting the Suns before I got sidetracked. In their way, Phoenix made a creative trade on Tuesday by sending an unprotected 2031 first-round pick to the Utah Jazz in return for three other first-round picks in 2025, 2027 and 2029. These picks aren’t likely to be nearly as valuable, and I’ll explain why in a minute. But in essence, the Suns broke a dollar bill into three quarters to improve their immediate trade flexibility, and The Athletic reported late Tuesday that there is rising optimism that Miami Heat star Jimmy Butler is closer to reaching his desired destination — Phoenix — as a result.
Of course, it’s that same impulsive habit under owner Mat Ishbia — chasing short-term sugar highs while burning the future to the ground — that motivates teams like Utah to enthusiastically participate in these deals.
In the last 18 months, the Brooklyn Nets, Houston Rockets, Memphis Grizzlies, Washington Wizards, Orlando Magic and Utah Jazz all have made bets of some size that the Suns will be terrible between 2026 and 2031. So far, so good: It’s early 2025, and Phoenix is an old, average team with zero cap flexibility and few draft assets.
The thing about having three quarters instead of a dollar bill, however, is that you can give one quarter to one team and one quarter to another team. The Suns essentially split the baby on their most valuable (not to mention only) remaining asset, that 2031 pick,. The obvious way that might matter is if they are involved in a multi-team trade that requires them to send draft capital to two different teams.
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In this particular case, it also allows the Suns to sidestep around the Stepien Rule, named for former Cavaliers owner Ted Stepien, who had a penchant for trading all his draft picks and leaving the team high and dry for the future. I can’t think of any other recent examples of that.
The Stepien Rule prevents teams from trading first-round picks in consecutive years by requiring that they have at least one pick certain to convey in every two-year window. However, the loophole for Phoenix is that it doesn’t have to be a team’s own picks. (Side note: We’re definitely getting an “Ishbia Rule” at some point in the next two collective bargaining agreements.)
Thus, having already traded their firsts in 2025, 2027 and 2029, and pick swaps in 2026, 2028 and 2030, the Suns couldn’t trade any future firsts aside from that 2031 choice. The picks they got from Utah will likely be at the back end of the first round — the worst of Cleveland or Minnesota’s pick in 2025 (so, likely 29th or 30th) and the worst of Cleveland, Utah or Minnesota’s in 2027 and 2029.
Sidesteppin’ Stepien means everything is back on the table now. The Suns can trade one or more of their swapped picks in 2026, 2028 and 2030, or they can trade one or more of the new picks they got from Utah in 2025, 2027 and 2029. They still can’t move picks in consecutive years, but Phoenix could conceivably mix and match and, for example, trade its swapped pick in 2026 and the pick it received in the Utah trade in 2029,
I bring this up because it could matter for trades that don’t involve Butler. As in, the Suns could send out Jusuf Nurkić and a pick in one trade to get something back, and Grayson Allen and a pick in another trade to get something back.
It’s just hard to believe that’s the actual reason they’re doing this — for two reasons. First, no team, no matter how badly run, is going to make a trade like this and then just say, “Well, now maybe let’s see what we can do?”
They already know the answer. You’re not doing a trade like this on spec; you’re doing it to satisfy a particular need that has already been communicated by another trade partner.
Second, Phoenix probably wouldn’t do this unless it was doing something big, because this is the Suns’ last chip. I can’t emphasize this enough since the Suns keep coming up with deals to squeeze more out of their diminishing draft-pick stock: This is where it ends.
Suns owner Mat Ishbia poses for a photos with Devin Booker, Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal before the start of the 2023-24 season. (Mark J. Rebilas / USA Today Sports)
No, they can’t rinse, lather and repeat a year from now. Because of repeatedly going over the CBA’s second apron, the Suns’ 2032 pick will be frozen and they can’t trade it. Ditto for every pick after that until they get their payroll under control.
Sure, they’ll likely trade their 2032 second-rounder within minutes of gaining access to it, but it’s not going to bring back much. The same goes for trading “swaps of swaps” to get access to more seconds, especially now that they’ve already done this on three different picks.
At this point all roads lead to Butler, obviously, given that he is the one glittery, shiny object on the trade market, and the Ishbia-era Suns cannot resist shiny objects. The fact that Phoenix went through with this Utah trade is a sign we’re getting warm, and not necessarily on a two-team deal.
Most notably, a trade involving Bradley Beal going to Milwaukee, Butler going to Phoenix and at least one other team being involved besides Miami, seems highly plausible, based both on reporting by my intrepid colleagues at The Athletic and the common sense of looking at a cap sheet.
The logistics are hairy but not insurmountable: The Bucks have to send out at least $58 million in salary to take back Beal’s $50.2 million salary and stay below the second apron once they backfill the roster for all the empty slots on what is likely a four-for-one or five-for-one deal. Beal would also have to waive his no-trade clause; presumably the teams involved would ascertain whether this was a realistic possibility before marching headlong into a deal.
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If we assume Giannis Antetokounmpo, Damian Lillard and Brook Lopez are off limits, getting to $58 million basically requires the inclusion of Khris Middleton, Bobby Portis, Pat Connaughton and two other low-salary players, possibly MarJon Beauchamp and Chris Livingston. Backfilling the roster with three minimum deals and keeping the roster at 14 the rest of the season would leave the Bucks about a half million dollars below the threshold.
This is where the deal likely takes some time to get to the finish line: All that salary flotsam has to go somewhere, and it’s not in particularly high demand. Multiple teams would likely get involved, and the Heat might end up with only one or two of those Bucks mentioned above. (One interesting sidebar, for instance: Could the Suns possibly stuff a Nurkić-for-Portis sidebar into it? Seems unlikely, but surely they would ask.) From Miami’s perspective, most notably, a deal that ends up with the Heat under the luxury tax is probably a lot more palatable given the fairly minimal draft compensation likely coming their way; a Butler-for-Middleton swap gets them there, but the other Bucks would have to go elsewhere.
And that, in turn, is likely why the Suns made their trade in the first place. A two-team deal with Miami wouldn’t require them to break their bill into coins like this; a multi-team trade, however, likely compensates Miami with one or two of the firsts and then sends the other(s) to compensate other teams for taking unwanted contracts.
Either way, we’ll end up where every Suns deal ends up: They’ll be slightly more competitive in the short term, but they’re Stepien even deeper into the abyss in the long term. I say “long term,” but that doom cycle is basically 24 months away even if everything breaks right, and very possibly more like four months.
Butler, or some other star, would help win a few more games this year, but it won’t change the Suns’ overarching reality: Their best player is 36, they have no draft picks, they have no good young players, and they can’t sign any free agents above the minimum.
Basically, the fields have been salted through 2031. All that’s left to do now is starve. No wonder everybody wants to trade for Phoenix’s picks.
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(Top photo of Jimmy Butler, Bradley Beal and Kevin Durant: Megan Briggs / Getty Images)
The author and lawyer Scott Turow has never forgotten a harrowing conversation he had long ago with the mother of a young man charged with murder. Turow had successfully defended him in an earlier, less grave case, but this time he was clearly guilty.
It was a tragedy on many levels. But what struck Turow about the conversation was the mother’s fierce, primal love for her son despite everything. “She was just torn apart,” he said.
That memory was floating in the back of his mind as he conceived his latest novel, “Presumed Guilty,” about a high school student accused of murdering his girlfriend on a camping trip gone awry. The plot was inspired, too, by the 2021 murder of Gabby Petito, killed by a boyfriend whose parents closed ranks to protect him.
“I’ve always been struck by how terrible it is, what a shattering experience, for a parent when a child gets accused of a serious crime,” Turow said. “They think, ‘Is my love for this child so huge that I can’t recognize that he or she is a monster?’”
“Presumed Guilty” is Turow’s 13th novel, and the third to feature the former prosecutor (and now former judge) Rusty Sabich. Fans of Turow’s emotionally astute, legally complex and compulsively readable novels will remember meeting Rusty for the first time in the 1987 blockbuster “Presumed Innocent,” widely considered the gold standard for the modern courtroom thriller. (He’s also been in a 1990 movie and a 2024 mini-series, played by Harrison Ford and Jake Gyllenhaal, respectively.)
Turow has been praised for writing popular books that rise to the level of literature, much as John le Carré elevated the espionage novel to an art form. Most of his books are set in Kindle County, a stand-in for Chicago, and many of his characters return later in different books, evoking a bustling fictional community. His work has been translated into more than 40 languages and sold more than 30 million copies worldwide.
Why resurrect Rusty, last seen suspended in a cloud of misery in the 2010 novel “Innocent”? Turow doesn’t think of his characters as people, exactly, but keeps their continuing stories tucked inside his imagination and felt a little uneasy, leaving Rusty hanging like that. “I feel a certain personal loyalty to him, because he’s the man who changed my life,” he said.
He was chatting at his part-time home in Naples, Fla., where the neighborhood has large houses on small lots and athletic senior citizens in tennis visors power-walking on the sidewalks. He spoke precisely, thoughtfully and almost encyclopedically. You got the feeling he remembered the details of every legal case he’d ever been involved with, whether fictional or real.
“Presumed Guilty” sends Rusty back to the courtroom, defending the son of his fiancée in a twisty murder trial — this time in the rural Midwestern community to which he’s retired. In classic Turow fashion, the truth of the case is withheld until the very end. The emotional complications of this scenario notwithstanding, the book gives Rusty, 77, a poignant shot at the domestic happiness that has always eluded him.
“Can you remake your life,” Turow said, “when you have a sense of your own mistakes and your own role in your prior unhappiness?”
At 75, Turow has considered that question and exudes his own hard-won contentment. He’s mostly retired from the law, though he’s working on a lingering pro bono case. In 2008 he and his first wife, Annette, divorced after nearly 40 years together — it was “incredibly painful,” he said, but the right thing to do — and eight years after that, he got married again, to Adriane Glazier, a bank executive.
The humorist Dave Barry, a friend of Turow’s for some 30 years and his bandmate in the writers’ rock group the Rock Bottom Remainders, officiated.
Turow may come across as a serious, even grave person. But he isn’t really. Barry said the author cheerfully acceded to an on-the-spot instruction to incorporate lines from the song “Wild Thing” — including “Wild Thing/I think I love you” — into his marriage vows.
Turow has been known to sing lead vocals when the band plays the song, sometimes wearing an inexplicable novelty wig. “We are a very bad band, and I am the most untalented member,” he said.
“One of the reasons we love having him in the band is that he will abandon his dignity and do pretty much anything we ask him to,” Barry said via email.
Turow and his wife divide their time between their houses up north — in Evanston, north of Chicago, and in rural Wisconsin — and Florida. The population down here is generally more conservative than they are, and many of their friends are Canadians fleeing south for the winter. The house is light and airy, with golf gear in the garage and, on a recent Friday, a large English cream golden retriever lying companionably in the living room.
An assistant was working in a nearby office; Adriane, now retired from her corporate job, was volunteering at the local Humane Society shelter; the family’s second retriever was out getting some exercise. The dogs’ names are Doug and Brian, though Turow prefers Brian’s nickname, Monkey.
“Adriane happens to like the idea that the dogs should have human names,” he said, laughing. “I’m not keen on it, personally.”
Turow was born on the north side of Chicago, in a Jewish neighborhood he describes as almost claustrophobically close-knit. His grandparents were Yiddish-speaking Belarusian immigrants.
His father, a doctor, was verbally abusive and had a deep-seated, explosive anger. Though Turow believes that everyone “has not only a reason for their shortcomings, but a point of view about the world founded on those things,” he said, his father’s foundational troubles did not excuse his behavior. “I was always terrified as a child,” he said.
Turow’s father wanted him to be a doctor, but he wanted to be a novelist. He studied writing at Amherst, began publishing short stories and won a coveted teaching-and-writing fellowship to Stanford. Working on a (never published) novel about a tenants’ rent strike, he unexpectedly found himself excited by housing law — and by law itself, which felt like a curative to the emotional chaos of his childhood.
He enrolled in Harvard Law School and distinguished himself while still a student by publishing the nonfiction book “One L,” an instant classic that was almost novelistic in its portrayal of the emotional and intellectual turmoil of the first year of law school.
Turow took a job at the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago and plunged into high-profile trial work, successfully prosecuting a Cook County judge charged with mail fraud and extortion, among other cases.
His deep understanding of the law and panoptic attention in the courtroom have informed his fiction ever since. “He’s listening to what the witness is saying, what the defense attorney is doing, what the judge is doing, how the bailiff is rolling her eyes, how the jurors are looking at each other — all the things that make his books so good,” said his friend Julian Solotorovsky, who met him when they shared an office back then.
He began writing “Presumed Innocent” for half an hour each day on his morning commute. It took him eight years, and it would be hard to overstate the almost electric excitement that greeted the book’s publication — the paperback sale, the film sale, the laudatory reviews, how it seemed that everyone was reading it on the train. Turow’s next book, “The Burden of Proof,” leaped to No. 1 on the New York Times hardcover best-seller list when it came out — even as “Presumed Innocent” was No. 1 on the paperback list.
Turow’s father put “Presumed Innocent” on a shelf in his office, where his patients could see it, but couldn’t bring himself to praise it. When Turow asked him if he’d read it, he responded, “Yeah, but I still think you could have gone to medical school.”
More books followed, with Turow, now a partner at a big Chicago law firm, switching to a part-time role so he would have more time to write, even as he took on more pro bono work.
He shares with many members of his profession an alarm about the direction the courts are taking in the United States. “Of course, it makes me worried about the stability of democracy when you have a Supreme Court that is gaily tearing down some of the most important guardrails we have,” he said.
Turow is two years younger than his most famous character; they’ve aged in tandem. “We’re both fortunate in not suffering, you know, debilitating physical problems,” he said. But he’s not too preoccupied with his age. (It might help that his wife is 16 years younger.)
In any case, they have a marriage “in which we default to kindness,” he said, and are lucky that everyone in their extended blended family — her ex-husband, his ex-wife, everyone’s new partners, a total of five children and (so far) eight grandchildren — gets along.
With “Presumed Guilty,” he says he’s ready to leave Rusty Sabich behind. But though the character’s arc is complete, the author’s is not. He’s working on a new book that begins when an old lawyer is startled to read an obituary for a man he believed his client had murdered 50 years earlier.
“I took a few months to ask if I wanted to write another novel, since it would be natural to feel I’d brought everything full circle,” he said. “But yes, I do. I have too much fun to stop willingly.”
Mikayla Blakes timed her jump perfectly, grabbed the rebound off the front of the rim and tipped the ball in with 0.8 seconds left on the clock. Moments later she was celebrating Vanderbilt’s first win against rival Tennessee since 2019.
Then something funny happened.
“After the handshake line, I was like, ‘Who is this bald head on the court? I swear I’ve seen this reaction before,’” she said of a passionate Vanderbilt fan who stormed the court. “I was like, ‘Who is this? I know him.’
“Then I got closer and was like, ‘Wow. My dad just made it to the court. Where did he come from?’”
Monroe Blakes, a former player and member of the Hall of Fame at Division II St. Michael’s College in Vermont, is typically more reserved by nature. The Blakes are a humble family and the idea of her dad blowing past security to storm the court had Mikayla cracking up. But Monroe couldn’t help himself Sunday when his daughter, the Commodores’ freshman phenom, hit the game-winner in the biggest moment of her college career.
Just like he couldn’t contain his emotions on Saturday, either, when Mikayla’s older brother, Stanford guard Jaylen Blakes, drove the length of the court at the Dean E. Smith Center and knocked down a game-winning stepback jumper from the left wing against North Carolina with 0.9 seconds remaining.
Two kids, two buzzer beaters in two days, one elated dad on hand to see both in person.
“The word I keep using is ‘Amazing. Blessed.’ And I’m not sure if that does it justice,” Monroe Blakes said. “I started playing basketball when I was 13, so I’ve been playing it for 40-plus years. … But the two of them have taken me to new heights and new memories that in my previous 40 years I hadn’t experienced.
“What are the odds that brother and sister would do (that) back-to-back?”
The face of a proud dad 🥹
Mikayla Blakes and brother Jaylen Blakes both hit game winning shots within 24 hours of one another.#AnchorDown https://t.co/jJZZnnXulp pic.twitter.com/mCSB9OxHe1
— Vanderbilt WBB (@VandyWBB) January 19, 2025
MIKAYLA BLAKES WITH THE PUT BACK DORES UP BY ONE#AnchorDown pic.twitter.com/uCXnEgAiXw
— Vanderbilt WBB (@VandyWBB) January 19, 2025
Jaylen, who spent three years at Duke before transferring to Stanford as a graduate for his final season of eligibility, was no stranger to playing at the Dean Dome. He went 2-1 in three games in Chapel Hill with Duke and dreamed about having his own big moment at one of the sport’s most celebrated venues.
The night before Stanford took the court, Jaylen spent some time thinking about former Blue Devils guard Austin Rivers, whose iconic game-winning shot against UNC in 2012 still lives in Duke lore. He also flashed back to Wendell Moore’s game-winning put-back at the Smith Center in 2020 that gave Duke the win over the Tar Heels in overtime.
“That’s just something that I was dreaming about,” Jaylen said. “And to be able to be in that moment was something special.”
With Stanford trailing 71-70 with seven seconds remaining, Jaylen inbounded the ball under the Cardinal’s basket. He got the ball right back and streaked down the left sideline.
“I had a very good defender on me in Seth Trimble. So I was like, ‘All right, he’s gonna cut me off,’” Jaylen said. “And as soon as he cut me off, I felt his momentum going backwards so I decided to step back and make the shot.
“It was unbelievable. It was an unbelievable moment. One thing about when you take that shot, it’s not just you that’s taking that shot. It’s everybody that has supported you along the way on that journey.”
From the stands, Monroe felt as though he was watching the play develop in slow motion. It took him a second to comprehend what he’d just seen.
“That ball went in. That went in,” he recalled thinking. “That’s the game-winner.”
In Nashville, Mikayla had just gotten out of practice and was watching the game on her cell phone before heading over to Memorial Gymnasium to see Vanderbilt’s men’s team take on Tennessee later that afternoon. She missed the shot in real time because her stream kept freezing. But when an influx of text messages and phone calls started to come in, she presumed Stanford won and rushed to the locker room for better service to rewind the feed.
“I saw that he hit the shot and I was just over the moon excited,” said Mikayla, a former five-star prospect who leads all freshmen nationally in scoring at 20.2 points per game. “I started FaceTiming my dad and then started calling my brother because by that time, he had already made it to the locker room. So I was just calling my brother’s phone and texting him, just so excited.”
Jaylen and Mikayla Blakes. (Vanderbilt Athletics)
The next day, Monroe flew into Nashville, where his wife Nikkia joined him, for Mikayla’s game. The Blakes, who live in New Jersey, made a pact that at least one of them would do everything possible to be at every one of their children’s games — no small feat, considering Jaylen and Mikayla play on opposite sides of the country.
When Vanderbilt lost a 10-point lead in the fourth quarter and it became clear the game would come down to the wire, one of the Blakes’ friends said the quiet part out loud.
“It was funny, somebody who was with us said to us, ‘What if Mikayla hits the game-winner?’” Monroe said. “I’m like, ‘No, I don’t think that can happen again twice. That can’t happen.’”
Jaylen, back on campus in California, watched the entire game from Stanford’s training room while receiving treatment. He, too, was dubious his family could be so lucky in one weekend.
“I was thinking, ‘There can’t be any way that we both hit a game-winner back-to-back days.’ And it came down to the final play,” he said. “I saw the missed layup and she trailed it and made it and when I realized she made it, I ran around the training room screaming like, ‘Oh my goodness, oh my goodness.’ It was special.”
In the moments after Monroe stormed the court to celebrate, Jaylen FaceTimed his parents to join in on the fun. Mikayla would later learn from her mom that the moment brought tears to her dad’s eyes. By the time Mikayla got back to the locker room, she had six missed calls from Jaylen.
“I picked up on the seventh call,” she said.
“I’m just lucky to have her as my sister,” Jaylen added. “Lucky to be her big brother.”
This week, Monroe has finally responded to the approximately 100 text messages he received as he continues to ride the high of what Mikayla joked might be the best moment of his life.
From all the times he rebounded for his kids in the yard or Nikkia helped pull them apart when one-on-one games got too competitive, this was a moment the Blakes family will never forget.
“One of the things that I love about my kids is they have a very competitive streak,” Monroe said. “They compete against each other but love each other, so it makes each one of them better. It was just an amazing dynamic — that love and support of each other.
“They talk all the time, they give each other tips. She called him after the game when he hit his game-winner and he gave her a call and that’s why I’m so proud. They just put a lot of work in and I’m just happy for them in that moment.”
(Top photos: Grant Halverson / Getty Images; Andrew Nelles / USA Today Network via Imagn Images)
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