Star Tribune
“Clarkies” converge in downtown Minneapolis for Big Ten tournament
Sisters Eliona and Eliza Sofogah woke up Friday morning thinking they’d be headed to another day at their Plymouth elementary school. Instead, their mom told them, they were going into downtown Minneapolis to see Caitlin Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes face Penn State in the NCAA’s Big Ten Conference Tournament.
“They were like, are you serious?” mom Leslie Sofogah said, as she waited with her 10- and 8-year-old daughters, her own mother — a Hawkeyes season ticket holder — and a growing group of fans lining up in the Minneapolis skyway in the hours ahead of the late afternoon game at Target Center.
Sofogah said she laid out two Clark No. 22 T-shirts on her daughter’s beds to let them know they were in for a surprise.
“It was shock,” Sofogah said. “We’ve been watching them all season on the TV, and it’s different to see them in person.”
Waiting fans set up lawn chairs in the skyway, playing cards and handing out friendship bracelets. Reagan Cross, 12, said he made 311 bracelets ahead of the tournament, stringing together thousands of yellow and black beads with basketball charms, spelling out “Iowa,” “Hawkeyes,” and the names of every player and coach on the team that his family loves.
Mom and dad, Jodi and Matt Cross, of Pella, Iowa, helped their son make the friendship bracelets over the past month, a trend based on a Taylor Swift lyric.
“We decided to do it for the tournament and just hand them out,” Reagan Cross said. “I was born a Hawkeye and I’ll always be a Hawkeye.”
Diehard Hawkeyes stress that they are fans of every player, not just NCAA all-time leading scorer Clark. But the star guard has created a phenomenon and following unlike any seen before in women’s college basketball hasn’t seen before. The Big Ten women’s tournament sold out for the first time ever. Clark’s name and jersey appeared on fans young and old.
For younger kids who look up to Clark, this is all they’ve ever known. But for generations of Hawkeyes and women’s basketball fans before them, they see Clark helping bring long overdue recognition to the team and the sport.
“It’s unbelievable watching her live and the whole team is just phenomenal,” said season ticket holder June Brady, who found her spot in the front of the general admission line at 5:50 a.m.
“Women’s basketball is being elevated,” Brady said.
Lori Fesitner, the grandmother of the Sofogah sisters, lives in southwest Iowa, and is a season ticket holder for Hawkeye’s women’s basketball. She says it’s cool to see her grandkids catch the Iowa bug. Eliona and Eliza said in unison that they were most excited to see Clark in person.
“It’s just amazing how she plays. Sometimes when I watch her I don’t even believe that it’s real,” Eliona said. “When she does stuff, like made the shot to become the number one scorer in the NCAA, it was so amazing she had scored all those points.”
Friday’s game just so happened to coincide with International Women’s Day. It was not lost on longtime Hawkeyes fan Amanda Mosley of Iowa City.
“It’s time. It’s been past time to do something that’s this big and this exciting for women,” said Mosley, who was sporting a custom jean jacket with I♀wa on the back. “I played college ball in a small school and didn’t really feel like anybody cared about it. And so to watch people show out like this… I’m glad that we can see it and be a part of it.”
Star Tribune
Sentencing set for Monday morning for a Minnesota man who was drunk and speeding when he hit a woman’s SUV and killed her.
A man with a history of driving drunk received a four-year term Monday for being intoxicated and speeding when he hit a woman’s SUV on a southern Minnesota highway and killed her.
John R. Deleo, 54, of Lake Crystal, Minn., was sentenced in Brown County District Court after pleading guilty to criminal vehicular homicide in connection with the crash on Aug. 17, 2023, in New Ulm at Hwy. 68 and S. 15th Street that killed 82-year-old Sharon A. Portner, of New Ulm.
With credit for the two days he was in jail after his arrest, Deleo is expected to serve the first 2⅔ years years of his term in prison and the balance on supervised release.
A week ahead of sentencing, defense attorney James Kuettner asked the court to spare his client prison and put him on probation for up to five years.
Kuettner pointed out in his filing that Deleo stayed at the crash scene and attempted “to aid Portner, and he left [her] side only when directed to by law enforcement.”
The attorney also noted that Deleo has been sober since the crash, and therefore, at a particularly low risk for reoffending.
According to the criminal complaint:
Police arrived to find the two damaged vehicles near 15th and S. Broadway streets. Emergency responders took Portner to New Ulm Medical Center, where she died that day.
ROCHESTER – The defense for Shane Roper, the former state trooper charged for his role in a crash that killed Owatonna teenager Olivia Flores, has asked the court to dismiss eight of the nine charges against him.
In a motion filed Oct. 24, Roper’s attorneys said the state has “failed to meet its burden of offering direct evidence tending to demonstrate that [Roper’s] actions, or negligence, were the proximate cause of death or bodily harm.”
Roper, 32, faces nine criminal charges related to the May 18 crash, including felony charges of second-degree manslaughter and criminal vehicular homicide. Both charges carry maximum sentences of 10 years in jail.
The only charge the defense did not ask to have dismissed is a misdemeanor for careless driving, which carries a maximum sentence of 90 days in jail.
Among the other requests made to the court, Roper’s defense asked for a change of venue outside of Olmsted County, citing the extensive media coverage of the case. The defense said “jury pools have surely been tainted and a fair trial cannot be had” in the county.
Roper’s attorney, Eric Nelson of Halberg Criminal Defense, also argued that any evidence related to Roper’s prior speeding or traffic incidents should be precluded as evidence in the case.
In the five years leading up to the crash, Roper had been disciplined by the State Patrol on four separate occasions for careless or reckless driving, including a February 2019 crash that injured another officer.
District Judge Christa Daily has not responded to the motions. Roper is scheduled to be back in court Nov. 21 for a pretrial settlement conference.
Star Tribune
Who is comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who insulted Puerto Rico at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally?
NEW YORK — Of the nearly 30 speakers who recently warmed up the crowd for Donald Trump at Madison Square Garden, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe got the most attention for racist remarks.
”I don’t know if you guys know this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico,” he said, later including lewd and racist comments about Latinos, Jewish and Black people.
The comments have led to condemnation from Democrats and Puerto Rican celebrities, with Ricky Martin sharing a clip of Hinchcliffe’s set, captioned: “This is what they think of us.”
The Trump campaign took the rare step of distancing itself from Hinchcliffe. ”This joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign,” senior adviser Danielle Alvarez said in a statement.
Here’s what to know about Hinchcliffe, his comedic styling and the response to his Madision Square Garden comments.
Hinchcliffe, raised in Youngstown, Ohio, is a stand-up comedian who specializes in the roast style, in which comedians take the podium to needle a celebrity victim with personal and often tasteless jokes. He has written and appeared on eight Comedy Central Roasts, including ones for Snoop Dogg and Tom Brady.
Even fellow comedians aren’t immune. At the Snoop Dogg roast, Hichcliffe made a joke referencing comedian Luenell, who is Black, being on the Underground Railroad. Of the honoree, he said: ”Snoop, you look like the California Raisin that got hooked on heroin.”
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