The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Sports & News
Wednesday, January 27, 2016 — 7A

Behind the mask

Freshman guard’s 

protective gear 
dates back to 
high school

By CHRIS CROWDER

Daily Sports Writer

Sunday, 
in 
the 
Michigan 

women’s 
basketball 
team’s 

matchup 
against 
Nebraska, 

freshman 
guard 
Boogie 

Brozoski entered the game with 
5:10 left in the first quarter. 
Multiple players on the floor 
were 
sporting 
headbands, 

but Brozoski’s headwear was 
different.

She was wearing a clear, 

plastic mask. It was her first time 
donning 
the 
face-protecting 

accessory as a Wolverine, but 
Brozoski has worn it in the past.

During her high school days 

in New York, Brozoski broke her 
nose twice. Injuries are nothing 
new to her — she also fractured 
her hip in eighth grade. 

But despite the two nose 

injuries, she never missed a game 
in high school. Brozoski was able 
to play through the injury and 
after-effects of the pain because 
of the mask. Playing with it on 
wasn’t simple, though, and she 
had to get used to it.

“I had to get used to sweating 

a lot, keeping it on when it’s 
sweaty, and taking it off really 
quick and wiping it off,” Brozoski 
said. “Visibility was something I 
had to get used to as well, but it 
was a smooth adjustment (this 
week).”

In practice Friday, Brozoski 

was hit in the face by as 
inadvertent elbow. She describes 
her current injury to her nose as 
a small fracture, and she chose 
to wear the mask for protection 
from further injury on the court.

Her mother had the mask she 

wore in high school shipped to 
Ann Arbor in time for Sunday’s 
contest. Though the mask is 
the same, Brozoski has no 
sentimental 
value 
attached 

to it. By this point, she’s used 
to playing with it on, and the 
routine that comes with it, but 
she would rather play with no 
obstructions to her comfort or 
visibility.

Some 
well-known 
NBA 

players 
have 
sported 
many 

different styles of the mask 
after facial injuries. Long time 
Pistons shooting guard Richard 
Hamilton 
wore 
one 
after 

breaking his nose in Detroit’s 
2003-04 championship season. 
And even after Hamilton’s nose 
healed, he wore the mask until 
he retired nine seasons later. 
Kobe Bryant, Chris Paul and 
many other players have had to 
wear it for shorter time spans. 
LeBron James even wore a black, 
carbon-fiber one, different than 
the more common clear one 
Brozoski wears.

Brozoski has no plans to wear 

the mask after her nose heals, but 
she found the transition to wear 
it for the meantime easy because 
of her previous experiences 
playing with the mask on.

“I don’t really like it that 

much,” Brozoski said. “But if I 
have to wear it for protection, I 
will. It’s not something I would 
prefer to wear.”

In Sunday’s contest, Brozoski 

recorded five points, an assist 
and two steals — not far off 
from her season averages of 6.4 
points, 2.1 assists and 1.1 steals — 
proving the mask doesn’t affect 
her play too much. No matter 
how long she has to wear the 
mask, Brozoski will continue 
her role as a budding backup 
freshman point guard.

And if Brozoski’s past is proof, 

it shouldn’t slow her down.

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL
Behind enemy lines: Eddie Jordan

Rutgers coach 
talks recruiting, 
transitioning to 

the Big Ten

By LEV FACHER 

Daily Sports Writer

The Michigan men’s basketball 

team plays host Wednesday to 
Rutgers, 
a 

program 
that, 
in 

its 
second 

season 
in 

the 
Big 

Ten, is still 
struggling 
to gain traction in its new 
conference. The Scarlet Knights 
won just two Big Ten games last 
season and are currently 0-7 
in the league. Rutgers’ roster 
rebuild is very much a work in 
progress, making the Wolverines 
heavy favorites in the teams’ only 
meeting of the year.

The Michigan Daily sat down 

with Scarlet Knights coach Eddie 
Jordan — formerly the head 
coach of the NBA’s Sacramento 
Kings, Washington Wizards and 
Philadelphia 76ers — at Big Ten 
Media Day in October to talk 
about the difficulties of breaking 
into the Big Ten and Rutgers’ 
recruiting philosophy within the 
geography of its new conference.

The Michigan Daily: How 

tough has it been seeing so little 
success in your first two years 
as a Big Ten team and how has it 
affected your recruiting outlook?

Eddie Jordan: I was taught 

(that) you either sell winning 
or you sell hope. If you aren’t 
winning, have a future in front 
of you. Develop your future. And 
we’ve got a great future. Our kids 
are great kids. They work hard. 
Our talent base is much better, 
although they’re young. In a 
three-hour practice, we don’t fall 
off so much, and we have eight 

guys who could possibly start. I 
just think that it keeps everybody 
excited. You’ve got to deal with 
their mistakes as the season goes 
along. As I’ve said before, in June, 
July and August, everybody says, 
‘We’re young, let’s take some 
time.’ In December and January, 
when they’re making youthful 
mistakes, people are saying, 
‘What the heck’s going on, 
Coach?’ You have to expect that. 
You have to have some patience.

TMD: Is it tough, cyclically, to 

lose so many scholarship players 
as you continue to try to break 
into the conference? Does it 
feel like you need to take a step 
back before you can take a step 
forward?

EJ: Well, I don’t want to take a 

step back. We had two wins in the 
conference last year, and I would 
love to be more successful in 
the conference. We’re just going 
to have to rely on some of our 
youthfulness to maybe surprise 
some people and stay in games 
and be exciting. But you know 
what? Our talent is good, our 
talent base is good. But one thing 
I’ve learned over the years is that 

talent just doesn’t win itself. You 
have to have experience along 
with talent, you’ve got to have 
toughness along with the talent, 
you’ve got to have good kids with 
good character. Toughness alone 
doesn’t win. Experience alone 
doesn’t win. Talent always has 
to be involved, along with the 
previous two.

TMD: Some coaches might 

try to take advantage of the new 
geographical 
footprint 
when 

their team switches conferences. 
If and when you find yourself 
in Iowa or Michigan, are there 
selling points for the Rutgers 
brand that might lure an athlete 
from a Midwestern area?

EJ: 
Well, 
we 
don’t 
go 

to 
Iowa 
and 
Michigan 
to 

recruit. 
What 
happens 
in 

recruiting is, with all the AAU 
tournaments, everything is in 
Vegas. Everything is in Florida. 
Everything is in Texas or New 
York or California, wherever. So 
if there’s a kid who’s on an Illinois 
AAU team, we’ll obviously make 
some contact if he has interest. 
But look — our hotbed is New 
York through northern Virginia, 

and we’ve recently gone to 
Florida and Carolina, because my 
assistants are really good in those 
areas. So our top kids are from 
Carolina and Florida. Although 
we want to recruit New Jersey as 
hard as any other place, it’s just 
that’s the way life is.

TMD: So the intent, long-

term, isn’t necessarily to compete 
in Indiana for recruits with 
offers, for example, from Indiana 
and Purdue?

EJ: I wouldn’t say that, not 

necessarily. We want to go after 
the best kids — that’s number 
one. Number two is (we want to 
go after) the best kids that we 
have a chance at getting. We’re 
not going after the best kids 
when we know they’ll go to a 
top-10 program. Corey Sanders 
(a freshman from Lakeland, Fla.) 
has been one of our highly rated 
recruits, and we had a connection 
there, we recruited him hard, he 
had great interest in me being an 
ex-NBA coach. So again, you’ve 
got to connect the dots that will 
help you form the picture of what 
this kid is about, and do you have 
a chance?

BEHIND
ENEMY
LINES

COURTESY OF THE DAILY TARGUM

Rutgers coach Eddie Jordan used to coach the NBA’s Sacramento Kings, Washington Wizards and Philadelphia 76ers.

matic weapon. Buttons for sale 
displayed sayings like, “Jail Hill-
ary” and “BOMB the SHIT out of 
ISIS.” Another button trumpeted 
Thomas Jefferson, George Wash-
ington and Andrew Jackson as 
“the original right wing extrem-
ists.”

When Trump told the coun-

try in June he planned to run for 
president, a number of pundits 
deemed his candidacy a grab for 
the spotlight. And with rheto-
ric as brash and controversial as 
Trump’s has been, he certainly 
got it. But now, as he leads the 
polls in Iowa amid a crowded 
field of Republican candidates, it’s 
clear not only that Trump is play-
ing to win but that for many, the 
message he has spent the last six 
months peddling has resonated 
in a huge way. Trump has consis-
tently painted himself as the only 
candidate willing to say what oth-
ers will not — the only person with 
the business acumen and, more 
importantly, the balls to take on 
everything a sizable chunk of 
voters find scary — immigrants, 
radical Islamic terrorism, China, 
Iran, you name it.

A handful of protesters on 

Muscatine High’s front lawn 
were trying to counter that nar-
rative when I arrived. They, too, 
held signs. “Donald’s economy 
is no good for working Iowans,” 
one read. Another: “Love Trumps 
Hate.” When cars drove by on 
their way to the parking area, 
the group chanted, “What do we 
want? No hate. When do we want 
it? Now.” A five-year-old girl in a 
Hello Kitty hat and pink gloves 
held a “Dump Trump” sign, 
clearly written in her own shaky 
script. Two cars on the way to the 
rally slowed long enough to roll 
down their windows and bran-
dish middle fingers.

Others, clearly not Trump sup-

porters but apparently interested 
in seeing the Trump show for 
themselves, obliged a sign asking 
rally-goers to honk if they con-
demned the candidate’s rhetoric. 
On the way in, another woman 
told me she wasn’t a supporter, 
but wanted to see the guy in per-
son.

Jean Clark, a retired teacher 

who taught for 30 years at Musca-
tine High, was on the lawn with a 
“Fear + Hate = Trump” sign. She 
said Trump’s language would not 

have been tolerated in her class-
room, let alone in a presidential 
campaign.

“We want a president that our 

students and our young can chil-
dren can look up to, and I don’t 
think this is it,” she said. “I think 
people oftentimes do vote their 
fears, and that’s why people vote 
for extremes, but I think my mes-
sage would be that this kind of 
fear, intolerance, hatred really 
isn’t acceptable and it doesn’t rep-
resent our country.”

Inside 
the 
school’s 
yellow 

gymnasium, where a crowd of 
about 1,000 people stood bunched 
around a stage set up below a 
large “Muskies” logo painted on 
the wall, I wandered around the 
gym floor with the aim of asking 
supporters why exactly they’re in 
Trump’s camp. Some told me they 
were only leaning toward Trump, 
while others, like Judith Knut-
hson and Rod Treimer, said they 
were committed to caucusing for 
Trump. Knuthson, a 72-year-old 
who owns a real estate business in 
Muscatine, explained it this way: 
“I think he is the only one that can 
save the country at this moment.”

Treimer had just met Knuth-

son a few minutes before and was 
chatting with her about Trump 
when I interrupted.

“He is big on everything,” Tre-

imer told me. “He says it like it is. 
I believe in the borders. I believe 
in the security. I don’t believe in 
lying to people. I’d rather have 
him say something bluntly and 
that’s the way it is, not lie. I don’t 
want him to be two-faced. I think 
Obama has done a terrible, ter-
rible job.”

Knuthson agreed with that 

assessment, noting she has been 
forced to work 72-hour weeks 
to make ends meet. I asked her 
which of the president’s policies 
have posed the greatest chal-
lenges for her business. She told 
me I shouldn’t really be asking 
her that. However, she did agree 
that Trump’s business experience 
could not be matched by anyone 
else in the Republican field.

For Treimer, a corn farmer who 

told me I probably eat his corn if I 
eat Cap’n Crunch cereal, national 
security was his biggest priority, 
especially in light of ISIS’s rise 
and what he deemed a bad Obama 
administration deal with Iran. So 
I asked: Why Trump, the guy with 
virtually no traditional back-
ground in foreign affairs?

“He’s got so much security and 

national background,” Treimer 

told me, raising his voice slightly 
and speaking more quickly. “Look 
at all his businesses. He has to 
have security in all his buildings 
he’s built, he oversees business he 
does, the contacts he’s got, he has 
more than all the other politicians 
together. He knows more people, 
he knows how business works 
in the world, world economics, 
everything about the monetary, 
on the Wall Street, how they 
manipulate the currencies across 
the world.”

Derek Wolfe, a columnist for 

The Michigan Daily who accom-
panied me to Iowa, asked about 
Trump’s stance on immigration. 
Did they support his proposal to 
ban the entry of all Muslims into 
the United States? Treimer said 
he would go further.

“Our founding fathers got 

separation of church and state 
because they knew how Islam 
religion would not work in this 
country,” he said, as Journey’s 
“Don’t Stop Believin’ ” played in 
the background. “That’s why we 
have separation of church and 
state as much as we can possibly 
get it. Anyone who says they want 
Islam in the United States, they 
need to get out.”

Both Knuthson and Treimer 

said they plan to caucus on Mon-
day. Treimer said his goal is to 
get as many supporters of U.S. 
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who is 
currently polling second in Iowa, 
to switch over to Trump. That’s 
because in a caucus, part of the 
process entails supporters trying 
to convert caucus-goers to their 
camp before the official numbers 
are tallied.

“I had never been to a caucus,” 

Knuthson told me. “I vote, but I 
have never been to a caucus, and 
I would never dream of not going 
to that caucus (this year). I would 
never vote for any candidate 
beside Trump, and if he doesn’t 
make it, I will write his name in. 
He is the only one that can pull us 
out of this mess.”

When Donald Trump took the 

stage, he told the crowd he had 
just come from church. The ser-
mon, he said, focused on humility.

“I don’t know if that was aimed 

at me — perhaps — but the church 
I don’t think knew I was coming, 
so maybe it was just by luck,” he 
said. 

The crowd loved it.
Trump 
wasted 
little 
time 

before ticking off his poll num-
bers. According to an aggregate 
from Real Clear Politics, Trump 

is leading Cruz, widely seen as the 
anti-establishment alternative to 
Trump, by 16.9 points nationally 
and 5.7 points in Iowa. Trump and 
Cruz have ramped up the inten-
sity of their attacks against one 
another in the last week as both 
try to secure a first-place finish in 
Iowa. Over the weekend, U.S. Sen. 
Marco Rubio (R-FL), currently 
polling in third place in Iowa and 
vying for the state’s compara-
tively moderate Republican vot-
ers, secured the endorsement of 
the Des Moines Register. Trump 
has not shied away from sparring 
directly with the opposition, and 
spent much of the early portion of 
his stump bashing other contend-
ers — both Democrat and Repub-
lican.

“We’ll talk about individual 

candidates for a while,” Trump 
began. “Should we do that?”

The crowd responded with 

cheers.

“I thought so.”
Trump started in. He hit U.S. 

Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT), the 
Democratic candidate who has 
also tapped into populist fervor 
and is consistently hammering 
a message centered on the eco-
nomics of income and wealth 
inequality. Trump said his attacks 
on Democratic frontrunner Hill-
ary Clinton, who by the way, as 
Trump told the crowd, might be 
in jail by the time she takes office, 
were solely responsible for Sand-
er’s surge in the polls.

“This guy Bernie Sanders, give 

me a break, how does he figure 
into this whole thing?” he said, 
adding that the Vermont senator 
is probably a communist. “I could 
hit him so hard, he’s too easy, he’s 
really too easy.”

The insults kept rolling from 

there: former Florida Gov. Jeb 
Bush (“It’s time to give up, Jeb.”), 
Cruz (“He has no principles.”) 
and Obama (“Just a bad guy.”) all 
received their share of the Trump 
treatment. As he finished the 
introductory takedowns, which 
as it turns out, never really end 
in a Trump speech, he began to 
roll out a vision for America that 
largely relied on projecting his 
own strength in making deals and 
standing up for the country in the 
face of China, Mexico and even 
fiscally-related interests like big 
oil. He told the crowd he would be 
“the greatest jobs president God 
ever created” and that he is “the 
most militaristic person.” At one 
point, he explained that his pre-
vious interactions with Chinese 

firms provide proof of his apti-
tude for winning.

“I do great with China,” he 

said. “Where I win, I win, that’s 
how I got them. I beat China.”

At this point, chants of “We 

love Trump” roared through the 
gym.

“We’ve got to have wins,” 

Trump said. “We got to have 
wins. Our country doesn’t win 
anymore.”

Trump kept emphasizing that 

he would help the country win 
again, particularly in the context 
of the only concrete policy pro-
posal he presented during the 
course of his speech: approving 
the Keystone oil pipeline.

“I want 25 percent of the deal 

for the United States,” he said. 
“When they do this pipeline, it’s 
going to be a very profitable thing 
… I want the developers of the 
pipeline to give the United States 
a big, big chunk of the profits or 
even ownership rights like I do in 
business. That’s what I do. That’s 
what I do … They will give us a 
lot… I don’t want to be too greedy, 
but if I’m greedy, I’m greedy for 
the country. I want to be greedy 
for the country. I want a piece 
of the deal? Doesn’t that make 
sense?”

And to the crowd gathered 

here in Muscatine, it totally did. 
Sometime after a Sikh protester 
wearing a red turban and unfold-
ing a cloth “Stop Hate” banner 
was escorted out by security 
staff and the wild applause of the 
gymnasium, he lamented what he 
said were the media’s continued 
efforts to downplay the size of his 
rallies.

At one point, he told the thou-

sand or more people gathered in 
the gym to turn toward the “slea-
zebags” in the media risers as he 
explained the press would likely 
misrepresent the one empty por-
tion of the bleachers closed for 
safety concerns as evidence that 
the rally was really not that wide-
ly attended.

“What sleaze, what sleaze, 

they’re disgusting,” he said.

In doing so, Trump was driv-

ing home a message articulated 
by Jeff Kaufmann, the Iowa 
Republican Party chair, when he 
introduced Trump at the begin-
ning of the event. And it’s a mes-
sage that’s been internalized by so 
many of the people who had come 
to see Trump in Muscatine. Every 
day, Kaufmann said he wakes up 
to headlines trumpeting civil war 
in the Republican Party. That’s 

not so, he told the crowd.

“We’re 
having 
a 
vigorous 

debate because the last eight 
years has made us mad, made us 
angry,” he said, voice cracking as 
he spoke, talking about his short 
meeting with Trump prior to the 
event. “Most of our conversa-
tion was about how to give voices 
again to the people that don’t 
believe they have a voice. I can’t 
think of anything more Republi-
can than that.”

Campaign 
observers 
say 

Trump has capitalized on some 
of the same kind of feelings that 
Bernie Sanders has tapped into 
— frustration with the political 
system, a desire for political revo-
lution.

“I’m angry and the American 

people are angry,” Sanders said at 
a Saturday rally in Clinton, about 
an hour away. “What Trump is 
doing with the anger he sees, is 
he is using it to scapegoat minori-
ties. What he is doing is trying 
to divide us up. And what we 
are saying, which is profoundly 
different, is that when we stand 
together as a people, Black and 
Latino 
and 
Asian 
American, 

when we stand together, gay and 
straight, male and female, people 
born in this country and people 
who have come from another 
country, when we stand together 
there is nothing that we cannot 
accomplish.”

“This is a movement folks,” 

Trump said on Sunday. “This 
is not like a normal situation. 
There’s never been anything like 
this. They’re going to study it … 
Our country is divided, and it’s 
divided very badly. And we have 
to bring it back. And if we don’t 
bring it back, we’re going to have 
a problem. But we’re going to 
bring it back. I’m going to bring 
it back.”

As Trump shook hands and 

posed for pictures after the 
speech, I asked people still stand-
ing around in the gym what poli-
cies of Trump’s they supported. 
Most referred abstractly to his 
business experience or his will-
ingness to tell it like it is, his 
ability to keep the country safe 
or create new jobs, but very few 
could pinpoint a specific, tangible 
policy item.

I thought about what Knuth-

son told me earlier in the after-
noon when I asked her whether 
the people she knows are as angry 
and fearful as many pundits say.

“Oh they’re scared, period,” 

she said. “Everywhere.”

TRUMP
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