The State of Texas: March 21, 2016

Quote of the Day

“You go up and you grab the ball off the rim when it comes off, then you grab it with two hands, then you come down with it, and that is considered a rebound. So they got more of those than we did.”

-Baylor men’s basketball player Taurean Prince, answering a reporter’s question about how Yale managed to get more of those rebound things than Baylor did. Prince had more fun with this later.

Daily Roundup

March Sadness — Remember how super excited we were last week because Texas had five teams in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament? Well, that didn’t last long. By late Sunday night, all but one Texan team had been bounced. Butler beat Texas Tech in the opening round, and Texas fell to Northern Iowa on a devastating (but really cool) half-court buzzer beater, prompting Texas A&M fans to roast their in-state rivals. However, Aggie faithfuls weren’t laughing too long—in the second round, Northern Iowa nearly eliminated them in a double-overtime thriller. Meanwhile, Baylor was bested by a bunch of Ivy League nerds (Yale) in a battle of two athletic programs embroiled in sexual assault scandals. Baylor apparently took the whole “March Madness” thing a little too seriously when forward Taurean Prince angrily shoved his teammate during a timeout. After the tough loss, Prince did give this pretty awesome response to a reporter’s question, though. Surprisingly, the biggest Lone Star bright spot was 14th-seeded Stephen F. Austin. Led by well-bearded senior Thomas Walkup, the Lumberjacks somehow blew out a tough West Virginia team in the first round, proving once and for all that when it comes to post-season college basketball, no one knows anything. But they couldn’t quite continue their Cinderella run, losing in the next round to Notre Dame on a heartbreaking last-second tip-in.

Texas Two-Step — The Republican establishment believes its best hope to defeat Donald Trump is in the hands of two Texans—but one of them doesn’t wanna play anymore, and the other is having a tough time shedding some extra weight. On Saturday, the New York Times reported that the Republicans are turning to “the political equivalent of guerrilla fighting” to take down Trump before he lands the party’s nomination—and in case that doesn’t work, the GOP is recruiting popular conservatives who could launch a third-party campaign that would be more friendly to the moderate Republican base. Ex-Texas Governor Rick Perry is reportedly near the top of the party’s wish list, but his former campaign manager said on Twitter that Perry isn’t interested. The Texas Tribune checked with state and national GOP “operatives” and found that “the effort to draft Perry appeared to be limited in scope and mostly theoretical,” anyway. Meanwhile, Ted Cruz is being slowed by an apparent inability to scrape the sticky John Kasich from the bottom of his shoe. The Ohio governor is really starting to push Cruz’s buttons. According to the Tribune, Cruz said on Saturday that “a vote for John Kasich is a vote for Donald Trump,” to which Kasich’s campaign responded: “a vote for Ted Cruz is a vote for Hillary Clinton.” Ugh, so annoying.

Recovery Road — Southeast Texans who were displaced by last week’s massive flooding are beginning to return to what’s left of their hometowns. The mandatory evacuation order was lifted Sunday afternoon for Deweyville, where floodwater “displaced hundreds of families and ruined most of their homes…overtook the town’s elementary school, diners, government buildings and the library,” the Beaumont Enterprise wrote. On top of the initial flood damage, residents along the Sabine River will be welcomed back home by “a reeking, polluted and dangerous mess” that could devastate the area’s ecosystem, according to the Enterprise. Thankfully, the federal government responded to Governor Greg Abbott’s request for assistance on Friday by declaring a major disaster in three counties—Jasper, Orange and Newton—meaning residents and business owners affected by the flood will get help in the form of federal grants and other programs. They’ll certainly need it. In Deweyville alone, the early estimated cost of the damage is around $10 million. That figure pales in comparison, however, to the hail storm that struck Fort Worth last week. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported over the weekend that it will cost $300 million to repair damaged automobiles alone—a “catastrophic” amount of damage, as one insurance expert told the Star-Telegram.