Los Angeles (E! Online) – We were wondering how long it was going to take for a Bridget Moynahan response to Gisele Bündchen lounging around naked in Vanity Fair, talking about how it feels like she birthed her husband’s ex-lover’s son herself:
“I understand that he has a mom, and I respect that, but to me it’s not like because somebody else delivered him, that’s not my child. I feel it is, 100 percent,” the Brazilian model said in the mag.
And two days later, we have our answer. Team Moynahan has retaliated via Page Six, where a “close pal” talks some serious trash…
“If Gisele loved Bridget’s child like he was ’100 percent her own,’ then she would not talk about him in the press. Discretion and respect are not either of Gisele or Tom’s virtues, as was evidenced even when the child was still unborn and they publicly flaunted their relationship without any discretion whatsoever.”
Fair enough, that does seem pretty uncool of them.
“Don’t you think Jack [Bridget and Tom's son] will grow up and read her comments and find them disrespectful to him and his mother?” the friend continues to rant. “Is she is so desperate for attention that she can’t find anything more productive to talk about other than Bridget’s child?”
Ouch! It’s pretty hard to recover from being called an attention whore. Plus, Gisele and Tom were very private about their wedding, so that’s not entirely accurate. And so the source resorts to making fun of Gisele’s English (and/or lack of maternal instinct): “Hey Gisele-real mothers don’t call their kids ‘it.’ “
The Ghost Whisperer star is proving that she is one devoted girlfriend by helping nurse her new boyfriend, co-star Jamie Kennedy, back to health after his recent hospitalization for kidney stones.
The cozy couple spent the afternoon together in Santa Monica on Thursday, first stopping to lunch at local eatery Blue Plate. “Jennifer drove him to the restaurant,” an onlooker tells PEOPLE. “She was very sweet to him, ordered for him and made sure he drank plenty of water.”
When the pair left, “Jamie put his arm around Jennifer in a loving way and pulled her closer to him. It was obvious that he appreciated that Jennifer took care of him,” says the onlooker.
Before parting ways later that day Hewitt stopped at a McDonald’s drive-thru to pick up some dinner for her man. “They seem very in love and happy together,” says another source.
Last week Kennedy, 38, and Hewitt, 30, returned home from a Mexican getaway where he began feeling sick with kidney stones and checked into a hospital to recover.
It was unclear exactly when and how the problem was resolved, but a source close to the actor says Kennedy is “definitely doing better now.” He’s even well enough to have rescheduled two postponed comedy-club appearances in Massachusetts. On June 26, he’ll play the Wilbur Theatre in Boston, and on the 27th he’ll play the Hu Ke Lau in Chicopee, Mass.
SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea defiantly carried out a provocative rocket launch Sunday that the U.S., Japan and other nations suspect was a cover for a test of its long-range missile technology.
Liftoff took place at 11:30 a.m. (0230GMT) Sunday from the coastal Musudan-ri launch pad in northeastern North Korea, the South Korean government said. In Washington, the State Department also confirmed the launch.
The rocket flew over Japan and landed in the Pacific Ocean, the Japanese broadcaster NHK said, citing its government.
“Our primary concern is to confirm safety and gather information,” Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso told a news conference at his Tokyo office Sunday.
Resisting calls from President Barack Obama, Aso and Hu Jintao of China to call off the launch, North Korea had announced Saturday that preparations were complete to send communications satellite Kwangmyongsong-2 on a multistage rocket bound for the skies over Japan.
Tokyo deployed warships and Patriot missile interceptors off its northern coast to shoot down any debris that the North said might fall over the area.
U.S. and South Korean warships equipped with missile interceptors also plied the waters between the Korean peninsula and Japan to monitor the launch.
Russia, meanwhile, scrambled fighter jets to its Far East in case any debris hits its territory, Russian news reports said.
North Korea pushed ahead with the launch despite mounting international pressure to cancel a liftoff Obama warned Friday would be a “provocative” act.
South Korea, the U.S. and Japan said earlier in the week they would take North Korea to the U.N. Security Council for an act they say is banned under a 2006 resolution barring Pyongyang from ballistic activity.
BINGHAMTON, N.Y. – Jiverly Wong was upset over losing his job at a vacuum plant, didn’t like people picking on him for his limited English and once angrily told a co-worker, “America sucks.”
It remains unclear exactly why the Vietnamese immigrant strapped on a bulletproof vest, barged in on a citizenship class and killed 13 people and himself, but the Binghamton police chief says he knows one thing for sure: “He must have been a coward.”
Jiverly Wong had apparently been preparing for a gun battle with police but changed course and decided to turn the gun on himself when he heard sirens approaching, Chief Joseph Zikuski said Saturday.
“He had a lot of ammunition on him, so thank God before more lives were lost, he decided to do that,” the chief said.
Police and Wong’s acquaintances portrayed him as an angry, troubled 41-year-old man who struggled with drugs and job loss and perhaps blamed his adopted country for his troubles. His rampage “was not a surprise” to those who knew him, Zikuski said.
“He felt degraded because people were apparently making fun of his poor English speaking,” the chief said.
Wong, who used the alias Jiverly Voong, believed people close to him were making fun of him for his poor English language skills, the chief said.
Until last month, he had been taking classes at the American Civic Association, which teaches English to immigrants and helps them prepare for citizenship tests.
Then, on Friday, he parked his car against the back door of the association, burst through the front doors and shot two receptionists, killing one, before moving on to a classroom where he claimed 12 more victims, police said.
The police chief said that most of the dead had multiple gunshot wounds. Wong used two handguns – a 9 mm and a .45-caliber – for which he had obtained a permit more than a decade ago.
The receptionist who survived, 61-year-old Shirley DeLucia, played dead, then called 911 despite her injuries and stayed on the line while the gunman remained in the building.
“She’s a hero in her own right,” he said.
Police initially said it took 90 minutes to rescue her. On Saturday, Zikuski said it was actually 39 minutes, and he said the police response followed all proper procedures.
“The police did the right thing,” he said.
DeLucia remained in critical condition Saturday. The chief said she and three other hospitalized victims were all expected to survive, and that police were in no hurry to question her.
“We’re giving her a break. There’s no reason to put her through that,” he said.
Binghamton police are withholding the names of victims until they have notified relatives and can release all the names at once. Each autopsy takes two to four hours, and authorities are struggling to track down families around the globe.
Wong’s tactics – including the body armor and copious ammunition – fit him into a category of killers called “pseudo-commandos,” said Park Dietz, a criminologist and forensic psychiatrist at UCLA who analyzed the Columbine High School shootings in Colorado in 1999.
Barricading the back doors to trap his prey “was his way of ensuring that he could maximize his kill rate,” Dietz said. “This was all about anger, paranoia, and desperation.”
Wong was born in Vietnam to an ethnically Chinese family. He moved to the States in the early 1990s and soon afterward became a citizen, friends and relatives said. He worked at IBM for a time, friend Hue Huynh said, but decided to move to California.
There, he worked for seven years at a caterer called Kikka Sushi, eventually making $9 an hour, said Paulus Lukas, the company’s human resources manager.
“He was really good at doing his job – we respected him for that,” Lukas told the Los Angeles Times. “He’s never late, he’s always punctual. And when he finishes his job, he goes home. He doesn’t complain, he doesn’t argue with people. He gets along.”
But one day he simply didn’t show up for work, Lukas told the Times. Early last year, he called asking the company to send his tax forms to a New York state address.
Back in New York, he worked at the Shop-Vac plant in Binghamton. Former co-worker Kevin Greene told the Daily News of New York that Wong once said, in answer to whether he liked the New York Yankees, “No, I don’t like that team. I don’t like America. America sucks.”
Zikuski said Wong was fired from that job, where he assembled vacuum cleaners. That’s apparently when things really started to go downhill.
“People who end up doing this particular thing have an accumulation of stressers in their lives, and ultimately there is the one that broke the camel’s back,” Dietz said. “Job loss is one of the big ones, and those stressers are happening more often this year.”
Huynh, the 56-year-old proprietor of an Asian grocery store in Binghamton frequented by the gunman’s sister, ran into Wong at the gym recently and noted that he was complaining about how he couldn’t find work.
His unemployment benefits were only $200 a week, and he lamented his bad luck, she said.
“He’s upset he don’t have a job here. He come back and want to work,” Huynh said. Her husband tried to cheer him up by saying that he was still young and had plenty of time to find work.
Wong’s story is similar to how friends were describing the recent trials of a man accused of opening fire on Pittsburgh police officers during a domestic dispute Saturday, killing three of them. They said he had recently been upset about losing his job; police say that, like Wong, he was wearing a bulletproof vest.
A woman reached at the home who identified herself as Wong’s sister told The Associated Press late Friday she did not believe he was the gunman. “I think somebody involved, not him,” she said.
That’s not an unusual response, Dietz said.
“What will be revealed if the investigation goes deep enough is that many people in a shooter’s world knew that he was angry, mad, unreasonable, scary at times, and recently some of them came to learn that he was threatening and armed,” said Dietz, who is not involved in the Binghamton investigation.
“They’ve known that for a long time, but none of them did what they should have done with that information.”
State police got tips suggesting that Wong may have been planning a bank robbery in 1999, possibly to support a crack-cocaine addiction, Zikuski said. But the robbery never happened, and Zikuski had no other information.
Wong’s father was well-known in the Binghamton area through his work years ago at the now-defunct World Relief Organization, helping recent immigrants find a doctor and obtain food stamps.
“Everyone, when they come to America, he’s the one who helps,” said Ty Tran, who came to the United States in 1990.
Mark Preston, 48, a neighbor of the gunman in Johnson City, outside Binghamton, said people in the family keep to themselves but often tended the bushes in their yard.
“They grow great vegetables and roses,” he said.
STRASBOURG, France – European leaders enthusiastically praised President Barack Obama’s new Afghan strategy at a NATO summit Saturday but held their ground on a central disagreement and offered only military trainers and extra security forces for upcoming elections.
Violent anti-war protests that marred the alliance’s 60th anniversary celebrations were a stark reminder that much of Europe has no appetite for the other, costlier half of Obama’s Afghan equation: more combat troops.
“I am pleased that our NATO allies pledged their strong and unanimous support for our new strategy,” Obama said. “We’ll need more resources and a sustained effort to achieve our ultimate goals.”
As protesters battled police outside, NATO risked angering Muslims around the world by giving the post of secretary-general to the prime minister of Denmark, who fueled anger three years ago by backing a Danish newspaper’s right to publish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. The 28 leaders at the summit also approved measures to repair ties with Russia – virtually frozen since the Russo-Georgian war in August.
Afghanistan is seen as a crucial test of the power and relevance of the alliance, which was founded at the height of the Cold War to counterbalance the Soviet Union and now is struggling against a rising insurgency far beyond its borders.
The escalating war has highlighted doubts in Europe about the ability of NATO’s 58,000 troops to stem the Taliban insurgency. Worries about casualties and costs have contributed to opposition to a conflict many Europeans see as an unnecessary distraction during economic crisis.
Despite a security crackdown on both sides of the Franco-German border, thousands of anti-war protesters fought running street battles with police, setting ablaze a hotel and a customs post and forcing the leaders’ spouses to cancel a visit to a nearby cancer hospital.
During the summit, jointly co-hosted by France and Germany as a symbol of European unity, Obama briefed NATO leaders about his new strategy aimed at stabilizing Afghanistan while rooting out Taliban and al-Qaida hard-liners in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
After the meeting, Obama heralded what he called “concrete commitments” from NATO allies on Afghanistan, saying their agreement to send up to 5,000 more trainers and police was “a strong down payment” toward securing the country.
Obama’s new strategy has him adding 21,000 U.S. troops to an American force of 38,000.
The White House said NATO countries agreed to send 3,000 personnel on short-term deployments, to help stabilize Afghanistan before elections in August. An additional 1,400 to 2,000 will provide training for Afghanistan’s national army.
NATO’s outgoing Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said the alliance would set up a trust fund for the Afghan National Army, and provide monitoring and liaison teams that would work with Afghanistan’s fledgling security forces.
The alliance must ensure “no more terrorist danger emanates from Afghanistan,” German Chancellor Angela Merle said.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown echoed Obama’s argument that Afghanistan was key to Europe’s security.
“Now we are working to build a successful, democratic Afghanistan and that will be that our streets will be safer in Britain,” he said. “With important presidential elections to come in the next few months we must not allow the Taliban to disrupt the democratic process.”
It was not immediately clear how the selection of Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen would effect the war effort. Fogh Rasmussen’s candidacy for NATO’s top civilian post was initially opposed by Turkey, whose leaders pointed out that the choice would antagonize predominantly Muslim Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Fogh Rasmussen appeared arrogant to many Muslims, when he refused to apologize for the 12 drawings of the Prophet Muhammad – including one of which showed the prophet wearing a turban shaped as a bomb – that sparked angry protests in 2006 throughout the Middle East and South Asia.
NATO said it had agree to address various Turkish “concerns.” Turkey said its requests had included the closure of a Kurdish satellite television broadcaster based in Denmark; the establishment of contacts between NATO and Islamic countries; appointment of a Turk as an aide to Fogh Rasmussen, and senior NATO command positions for Turkish generals.
Fogh Rasmussen denied making undue concessions to the Turks, and pledged to improve relations between NATO and the Muslim world.
“I will make a very clear outreach to the Muslim world and do my utmost to ensure a positive cooperation and intensified dialogue with Muslim countries,” he told a news conference after the summit.
Nine months after relations frayed over Moscow’s invasion of Georgia, Russia has become an important element in NATO’s Afghan war plans. Repeated Taliban attacks on NATO logistics convoys in Pakistan have made southern resupply of the international forces in landlocked Afghanistan increasingly hazardous.
Moscow, which also worries about the spread of Islamic fundamentalism in Central Asia, has offered its road and rail network as an alternate overland supply route.
A summit statement said leaders decided to resume the work of the NATO-Russia Council – a joint body whose work was suspended after the war in Georgia. It said a meeting with Russia’s foreign minister would be held soon.
The alliance also officially recognized France’s return to full participation on NATO’s military councils after a 43-year absence, and welcomed Albania and Croatia as its newest members.
Looking to the future, the leaders issued a declaration Saturday that formally launches the creation of a new “strategic concept” or road map to define NATO’s roles, missions and way of functioning.
It would be the first such revision of the alliance’s purpose and function since 1999.
GRAHAM, Wash. – Washington state investigators say five children between 7 and 16 years old have been found dead in a Graham area home and they may have been killed by their father.
Pierce County Sheriff’s investigators told The News Tribune the children apparently were victims of homicidal violence.
Spokesman Ed Troyer says the 35-year-old father was discovered dead Saturday afternoon in neighboring King County.
Deputies were called to check on the welfare of the children at a mobile home park after the father’s body was discovered.
Troyer identified the dead children as four girls and a 7-year-old boy.
SLAMABAD – An American U.N. worker abducted more than two months ago turned up unharmed Saturday, lying alongside a road in western Pakistan with his hands and feet bound and pleading “Help me, help me,” the man who found him said.
John Solecki was discovered Saturday evening abandoned in a village some 30 miles south of Quetta near the Afghan border after his captors called a local news agency to tell them where to look, officials said. At one point, the kidnappers had threatened to behead him.
Mohammed Anwar, the owner of a restaurant alongside the main Quetta-Karachi highway, told The Associated Press that he found a bound Solecki lying in the dirt near a wall. Anwar said he heard a voice in the gloom saying “Help me, help me” in English.
Solecki made no public comment. Police and U.N. officials declined to discuss what led to his release. U.N. officials who met with him reported that he was “tired but all right,” U.N. spokeswoman Jennifer Pagonis said.
Pagonis would not say when Solecki, who headed the U.N. refugee agency’s operations in Quetta, would leave Pakistan but said he would be reunited with his family “as soon as possible.”
The release was a rare piece of good news amid intensifying violence here that has raised international alarm over the nuclear-armed country’s stability. On Saturday, a suicide bomber attacked a paramilitary base in the capital, killing eight.
Solecki’s abduction and the killing of his driver on Feb. 2 in Quetta raised concern that he was another victim in a spate of attacks on foreigners blamed on Islamist militants operating from strongholds along the Afghan frontier.
A previously unknown group, the Baluchistan Liberation United Front, had claimed responsibility for the abduction, threatening to behead him and issuing a grainy video on Feb. 13 of a blindfolded Solecki pleading for help.
But the group’s name and demands indicated they were ethnic Baluch separatists who have been waging a long low-level insurgency in the impoverished but oil-rich southwest of Pakistan and have no record of taking or killing Western hostages.
The kidnappers had demanded the release of hundreds of people from alleged detention by Pakistani security agencies.
President Asif Ali Zardari last week announced that the government had “traced” 200 people previously listed as missing and provincial leaders insist they are no longer holding any political prisoners.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he was grateful for the efforts to secure Solecki’s release, citing Zardari and Afghan President Hamid Karzai. But Ban, who was in Paris, also pleaded for the release of another U.N. official, Robert Fowler, was still missing in Niger.
Kidnappers in December took Fowler, a Canadian diplomat who serves as Ban’s special envoy for Niger, an aide and their driver. The driver was released unharmed almost two weeks ago.
Antonio Guterres, Ban’s high commissioner for refugees, expressed relief and gratitude. He added: “UNHCR looks forward to continuing its humanitarian efforts in Pakistan.”
The suicide bomber who attacked the base Saturday in Islamabad sneaked in after dark from a wooded area at the rear and detonated his explosives inside one of several large tents used as sleeping quarters.
Another four members of the paramilitary Frontier Constabulary, many of whose members are assigned to guard foreign embassies and VIPs in the city, were wounded, senior police official Bin Yamin said.
The blast was the second in Islamabad in two weeks and follows a militant assault on a police academy in the eastern city of Lahore.
There was no claim of responsibility for Saturday’s attack on the police base. However, the leader of a Taliban faction accused of ties to al-Qaida warned Wednesday that militants would strike soon in Islamabad.
U.S. special representative Richard Holbrooke is due in Islamabad this week to discuss Washington’s offer of more assistance – and call for more resolute action against militants on Pakistani territory – under a plan to turn around its stalemated Afghan war effort.
However, U.S. officials have already made clear that they will take action on their own in an area that President Barack Obama last month described as the “the most dangerous place in the world” and almost certainly the hiding place of al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden.
On Saturday, a suspected U.S. missile strike on an alleged militant hide-out in Pakistan’s North Waziristan tribal region left 13 people dead, Pakistani intelligence officials said.
The dead and injured in Data Khel village included local and foreign militants, but women and children were also killed, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
Pakistan says the strikes violate the country’s sovereignty, kill innocent civilians and generate sympathy for the militants. But the U.S. argues that the attacks are an effective tool that has killed a string of militant leaders.
PITTSBURGH – A gunman wearing a bulletproof vest and “lying in wait” opened fire on officers responding to a domestic disturbance call Saturday, killing three of them and turning a quiet Pittsburgh street into a battlefield, police said.
Police Chief Nate Harper said the motive for the shooting isn’t clear, but friends said the gunman recently had been upset about losing his job and feared the Obama administration was poised to ban guns.
Richard Poplawski, 23, met officers at the doorway and shot two of them in the head immediately, Harper said. An officer who tried to help the two also was killed.
Poplawski, armed with an assault rifle and two other guns, then held police at bay for four hours as the fallen officers were left bleeding nearby, their colleagues unable to reach them, according to police and witnesses. More than 100 rounds were fired by the SWAT teams and Poplawski, Harper said.
The three slain officers were Eric Kelly, 41, Stephen Mayhle, 29, and Paul Sciullo III, 37. Kelly had been on the force for 14 years, Mayhle and Sciullo for two years each. Another officer, Timothy McManaway, was shot in the hand and a fifth broke his leg on a fence.
Poplawski had gunshot wounds in his legs but was otherwise unharmed because he was wearing a bulletproof vest, Harper said. He was charged with three counts of homicide, aggravated assault and a weapons violation.
The shooting occurred just two weeks after four police officers were fatally shot in Oakland, Calif., in the deadliest day for U.S. law enforcement since Sept. 11, 2001. The officers were the first Pittsburgh city officers to die in the line of duty in 18 years.
“This is a solemn day and it’s a very sad day in the city of Pittsburgh,” Harper said. “We’ve seen this kind of violence happen in California. We never would think this kind of violence would happen in the city of Pittsburgh.”
At 7 a.m., Sciullo and Mayhle responded to a 911 call from Poplawski’s mother, who remained holed up in the basement during the entire dispute and escaped unharmed, Harper said.
When they arrived at the home, Sciullo was immediately shot in the head. Mayhle, who was right behind him, was also shot in the head.
“It appears he was lying in wait for the officers,” Harper said.
Kelly, who was on his way home after completing his overnight shift when he heard the call for help, rushed to the scene and was killed trying to help Sciullo and Mayhle, Harper said. SWAT teams and other officers arrived and were immediately fired on as well.
Don Sand, who lives across the street from Poplawski, said he was woken up by the sound of gunfire. Hunkering down behind a wall in his home, he saw the first two officers go down and then saw Kelly get shot.
“They couldn’t get the scene secure enough to get to them. They were just lying there bleeding,” Sand said. “By the time they secured the scene enough to get to them it was way too late.”
Deputy Chief Paul Donaldson, who lives nearby, was one of the first officers to arrive. He saw Mayhle by a bush to the right of the door; Kelly was in the street and McManaway, his hand injured, was kneeling beside him, yelling that Kelly needed help.
Donaldson suggested using a police van to get them. They draped a bulletproof vest on the window to protect the driver and several officers got into the van to get Kelly and McManaway.
During this time, Poplawski was somehow distracted, Donaldson said.
“We were fortunate that he didn’t fire on us. I don’t know why he was distracted, but he apparently didn’t see us coming down to get them,” he said. “It could have been worse.”
Poplawski had feared “the Obama gun ban that’s on the way” and “didn’t like our rights being infringed upon,” said Edward Perkovic, his best friend.
Perkovic, 22, said he got a call at work from him in which he said, “Eddie, I am going to die today. … Tell your family I love them and I love you.”
Perkovic said: “I heard gunshots and he hung up. … He sounded like he was in pain, like he got shot.”
Poplawski had once tried to join the Marines, but was kicked out of boot camp after throwing a food tray at a drill sergeant, Perkovic said.
Another longtime friend, Aaron Vire, said Poplawski feared that President Barack Obama was going to take away his rights, though he said he “wasn’t violently against Obama.”
Vire, 23, said Poplawski once had an Internet talk show but that it wasn’t successful. He said Poplawski owned an AK-47 rifle and several powerful handguns, including a .357 Magnum.
Obama has said he respects Americans’ constitutional right to bear arms, but that he favors “common sense” gun laws. Gun rights advocates interpret that as meaning he would approve some curbs on assault and concealed weapons.
Poplawski had been laid off from his job at a glass factory earlier this year, said another friend, Joe DiMarco. DiMarco said he didn’t know the name of the company, but knew his friend had been upset about it.
The last Pittsburgh police officers killed in the line of duty were Officers Thomas L. Herron and Joseph J. Grill, according to a Web site that tracks police killings. They died after their patrol car collided with another vehicle while chasing a stolen car on March 6, 1991.
In 1995, an off-duty officer was shot with his own gun after he confronted a group of teenagers about graffiti. Tests later showed the officer had been drinking.
According to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, 133 law enforcement officers died in the line of duty in 2008, a 27 percent decrease from year before and the lowest annual total since 1960.
Poplawski had often fought with neighbors and had even gotten into fist fights with a couple, Sand said.
“This is a relatively really quiet neighborhood except for him,” Sand said. “He was just one of those kids that we knew to stay clear from.”
Harper confirmed police had responded to calls from the Poplawski house several times but said the incidents were still being investigated.
Rob Gift, 45, who lives a block away, said the well-kept single-family houses with manicured lawns are home to many police officers, firefighters, paramedics and other city workers.
“It’s just a very quiet neighborhood,” Gift said.
DETROIT (AP)-As his Michigan State teammates hustled downcourt, Kalin Lucas looked around at a stadium ablaze in green and white, turned on his megawatt smile and raised both his arms.
No worries, he seemed to be saying, we’ve got you.
Carrying an entire state knocked down by the economic crisis is a lot to ask of a group of college kids, but the Spartans are proving they’re more than up to the task.
“It means so much, so much,” said Magic Johnson, who sat just a few rows behind the Michigan State bench Saturday night. “It’s been all bad news the last couple of years.”
It’s nothing but good news now. Lucas scored 21 points, Raymar Morgan broke out of his late-season slump with 18 and nine rebounds, and the smaller Spartans ran roughshod over Hasheem Thabeet and Connecticut in an 82-73 upset in the Final Four on Saturday night.
The Spartans (31-6) now will play the winner of Villanova-North Carolina for the NCAA title Monday night, giving the city and state at least two more days to forget all the bad news and revel in their Spartans’ success.
ADVERTISEMENT
It’s Michigan State’s first appearance in the title game since 2000, when the Spartans won their second title.
“One thing we talked about is bringing hope to the city for a whole weekend,” said Travis Walton, who dished out eight assists. “People forgetting about their problems, forgetting about what they’re going through, just focusing on us and focusing on Michigan State.
“From the moment we were on that court and we won that game, people didn’t think about what they was going through outside of this. They was just happy that we won and they can continue to cheer for us on Monday.”
How’s this for some karma? Johnson, Spartan-in-chief since leading Michigan State to its first title in 1979, will present the game ball before Monday’s title game along with Larry Bird.
“I hope we were a ray of sunshine, a distraction for them, a diversion, anything else we can be,” coach Tom Izzo said. “We’re not done yet, so hopefully we can continue to make them feel a little better and us feel a lot better.”
The loss is the latest blow for UConn, the best team in the country until Jerome Dyson went down with a knee injury in mid-February. The Huskies (31-5) have been dealing with distractions since last May, when coach Jim Calhoun was diagnosed with his third bout with cancer, and are now facing questions about alleged recruiting violations.
The loss snapped Calhoun and Connecticut’s perfect run in the Final Four. They’d made it twice before-1999 and 2004-and went on to win the title each time.
UConn cut an 11-point deficit to 4 in 49 seconds, getting within 3 with a minute to go. But the outcome was never really in doubt. Durrell Summers, a Detroit native who experienced firsthand the hardships his city and state are enduring when both parents were laid off, converted a three-point play to put the game out of reach.
Flashbulbs popped throughout the arena as the final seconds ticked down. After huddling at midcourt, the Spartans walked to the edge of the floor and saluted the Final Four-record crowd of 72,456, about two-thirds of which was pulling for Michigan State.
“It was a memorable game that I won’t forget,” Izzo said. “Except we’ve got another one.”
The UConn players walked slowly off the court, looking shell-shocked that their season had ended. Thabeet left with a towel draped over his face.
“I’ve got a lot of kids in there crying right now,” Calhoun said. “But they had a great season. It hasn’t been that easy to stay focused the past few weeks. But I give (Izzo) a great deal of credit.”
This was supposed to be a battle of big men.
UConn’s Thabeet had been a one-man swat team, averaging a double-double and winning defensive player of the year in the burly Big East for a second straight year. Michigan State’s Goran Suton led the equally gritty Big Ten in rebounding and had averaged a double-double in the NCAA tournament.
But the matchup never developed.
The Spartans are veterans of the down-and-dirty Big Ten, but they can run some, too, and Izzo made no secret of his plan to use their speed to keep Thabeet out of his comfort zone.
Thabeet led the Huskies with 17 points and six rebounds, but it was the quietest 17 points anyone’s ever had. He looked gassed from the opening tipoff, leaning over, tugging on his shorts and gasping for air not even six minutes into the game. Aside from the first few possessions of the second half, he actually looked lost down low.
Or as lost as a 7-foot-3 guy can look.
“This ended up being who made the small plays made the big difference,” Calhoun said.
The most aggressive Thabeet got was at the end of the first half, getting in Marquise Gray’s face after Jeff Adrien and Walton got tangled up under Connecticut’s basket. There was some pushing and shoving, prompting Calhoun to come all the way from the other end of the floor to calm his players. But the dust-up fizzled quickly, and no technicals were even called.
Suton, who had the main job of corralling Thabeet, didn’t score his first field goal until early in the second half and finished with four points and seven boards.
Stanley Robinson and A.J. Price had 15 each for Connecticut, and Robinson added 13 rebounds.
“We couldn’t get back and they’re a good team in transition,” Robinson said. “I just give them all the credit. They’re a tough team.”
Morgan was Michigan State’s best player early on, but he’s struggled to find his groove since missing three games in February with walking pneumonia. He had just seven points in Michigan State’s last three games-that’s combined-and was 0-for-2 in the big win over Louisville in the Midwest Regional final. Granted, he’s playing with a broken nose and a plastic mask, but Izzo has been all over him to be more aggressive.
Apparently, he finally got the message.
“We needed someone to step up, and he stepped up in a huge way,” Izzo said. “Not only rebounding the ball, not only defending, not only being physical down there, but the way he scored and what he did.”
Morgan scored 11 in the first half, including a couple of big buckets when UConn was threatening to take off. Little Korie Lucious, the back-up point guard who’s never met a shot he didn’t like, was a key contributor early on, too, scoring nine points in a 1 1/2 -minute span at the end of the first half.
It was Morgan again in the second half, stripping Craig Austrie to start an 8-2 run that caught UConn flat-footed, all but ended the game and threatened to bring down the roof at Ford Field.
Morgan stripped Austrie and dished to Draymond Green, who lumbered down the floor for an easy layup. Austrie missed a shot at the other end. Lucas- generously listed at 6-feet-grabbed the rebound and sprinted upcourt, splitting two Connecticut defenders with a shake-and-shimmy that gave him a wide-open layup. Wide open because those two defenders didn’t have any help. Thabeet didn’t even bother to run up the court to play defense, gasping for air with his hands on his hips.
After another Huskies miss, Morgan grabbed the rebound and fired it to Allen, who scored on a finger roll to give Michigan State a 53-49 lead.
The ball had barely dropped through the net when Calhoun barked for a timeout, and the Michigan State fans erupted. If Calhoun hoped the break would re-energize his team, he was wrong.
Green made a jumper, Durrell Summers a 3 and Green converted a pair of free throws. After Price missed a jumper, Green made his own from the top of the key to give Michigan State a 72-54 lead with 7:52 to play. He and Lucas slapped hands as the crowd roared.
“We love y’all!” Lucas yelled to the crowd during a postgame interview. “We love Detroit!”
Two famous Natalies made the news this week, albeit for very different reasons–one quite serious, the other not so serious (unless we’re talking about a serious fashion faux pas).
First there was soul star Natalie Cole, who while appearing on Larry King’s CNN show Tuesday announced that she has been diagnosed with double-kidney failure related to her hepatitis C (the now-sober Cole attributed her illness to longtime struggles with cocaine and heroin addiction). “I couldn’t breathe…my kidneys stopped functioning. They stopped processing the fluid that was starting to build up in my body,” she sadly revealed.
After Cole mentioned that without a donor kidney she will be on dialysis for the rest of her life, the CNN website was inundated with email offers from Cole fans, all volunteering to donate their own kidneys to the ailing singer. Handing a stack of printouts to Cole during the live broadcast while she was still on the air, King said: “These are all emails from dozens of people offering to be tested to see if they can match, who want to give you a kidney.” A clearly moved Cole replied: “There are some great human beings out there. That’s all I can say.”
The other Natalie who made the news this week, in a far more frivolous way, was Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks, who at one time caused controversy with her anti-George Bush remarks. But now Maines seems to provoke debate just by chopping off her long blonde mane. A paparazzi photograph this week of the country star wearing an extremely severe buzzcut–we’re not talking the cute pixie style she rocked a few years ago, but a total Army-regulation G.I. Jane hairdo–generated messageboard frenzies across the Interweb, and the reaction was not as kind as when another Natalie, Miss Portman, sheared her own head for V For Vendetta. “She looks more like a Dixie Dude” was a typical comment. Guess Ms. Maines wasn’t ready to make nice with her hair stylist.
And other blonde style-shifting pop stars made headlines this week as well. Madonna’s own hairy situation continued in Malawi, as she attempted to solidify the adoption of a second African orphan, Chifundo “Mercy” James, despite protests from some detractors who claimed she was “buying” a child and using her star power to bypass typical adoption procedures. Similar protests popped up a couple years ago when Madonna adopted Malawian toddler David Banda (pictured right), but it should be noted that Malawi’s child welfare minister, Anna Kachikho, publicly backed Madge’s adoption bid this time around. But in the end, even having Kachikho in her corner didn’t help Madonna this time, as a Malawi court shot down her adoption request on a technicality (that she did not meet an 18-to-24 month residency requirement).
The other blonde chameleon in the news this week was avant pop starlet Lady GaGa, who delivered a knockout American Idol performance Wednesday night wearing a sure-to-be-on-trend zippered eyepatch, but just a day earlier literally knocked out three of her backup dancer’s teeth at a concert for New York radio station Party 105. Apparently Lady got a little too gaga during her high-energy set and accidentally whacked the hapless dancer in the mouth with her microphone. Talk about a poker face!
Oh, and by the way, Madonna, Lady GaGa, and today’s other top pop females might have some competition soon…from David Hasselhoff’s daughters. Yes, 18-year-old Taylor Ann Hasselhoff and 16-year-old Hayley Amber Hasselhoff are planning, much like their part-time-pop-star dad, to take Germany and hopefully the rest of the music world by storm as a new recording duo. London’s The Sun reports their music will be similar stylistically to that of Miley Cyrus. This might help mend the millions of tweenage hearts undoubtedly broken by this week’s news that the recent Hannah Montana movie will be Miley’s last (and that the film’s soundtrack failed to debut on the Billboard charts at #1). No word yet on when the Hasselhoff daughters’ being-recorded-as-we-speak debut single will be released, but The Sun is reporting that the second-generation band’s name might be the Hoff Drops. Seriously.
OK, enough about female pop singers…although we will quickly mention that Queen Latifah’s being jointly sued by a makeup artist and a fashion stylist, and Kelly Rowland has left her record label just weeks after parting ways with her manager (Beyonce’s dad, Matthew Knowles). But now….on to some male-rocker news! This weekend the latest induction ceremony for the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame will take place at the Rock Hall in Cleveland, and it turns out 2009 inductees Metallica’s Hall performance will be a two-bassist affair. Yes, surprisingly, onetime bass-slinger Jason Newsted–who replaced original deceased bassist Cliff Burton in 1986, and left Metallica in 2001 to play with Ozzy Osbourne, Voivod, and reality-TV supergroup Rock Star Supernova–will be appearing with Metallica at the ceremony this weekend, along with current ‘Tallica bassist Robert Trujillo. “I felt strongly they should go as that band [with Trujillo] and represent because…they’re strong right now together,” Newsted told Reuters. “There was no negativity, no hubbub or jealousy or silly, childish…It was years ago, man. We’re just gonna have a…great celebration.” And rockers everywhere will surely celebrate with them.
Meanwhile, shoo-in future Hall Of Famers Green Day–whose upcoming 21st Century Breakdown album will be their first official full-length release under the Green Day moniker since 2004′s 12-million-selling American Idiot–announced plans this week to bring American Idiot: The Musical to the stage. Following in the great tradition of rock musicals like the Who’s Tommy and Pink Floyd’s The Wall, and well as punk musicals like the Ramones’ Rock ‘N’ Roll High School, Green Day’s rock opera will be directed by Michael Mayer, the Best Director Tony Award-winner for the Duncan Sheik-scored Spring Awakening. The musical will run for a month in September at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, right down the street from the Gilman Street Project club where Green Day got their start.
Will Broadway be next? And will Metallica’s Master Of Puppets be rock’s next stage adaptation? Both prospects sure sound cooler than another Hannah Montana movie, that’s for sure…
And so concludes another week of headspinning headlines. Come back next week for more, and until then, goodnight and good music.
« Previous Entries Next Entries »