Moderately newsy day in the NU sports world, so let's hit it and quit it.

• I normally don't talk about recruiting because it creeps me out, especially in football, where I know I won't actually see the dude play for another three years. But, basketball's different, because there's only 12-ish players on the squad. NU used up one of their readily available 2011 scholarships - they have four, I believe - on Tre Demps, a point guard from San Antonio, that hotbed of Northwestern recruiting. Demps had offers from Minnesota and Stanford, but chose NU, because he's the intellectual type who coulda gone to Harvard. Demps' dad is Dell Demps, a former shooting guard from the University of the Pacific who had a cup of coffee in the NBA over the course of three years, and I've never heard of him, although he's apparently quite a big figure in the front office world working as an assistant GM to R.C. Buford in San Antonio, and is one of the people being bandied about for the New Orleans Hornets GM job. (IFYOUGETTHEJOBTRADECHRISPAULTOTHEKNICKSFORTWOFUTUREFIRSTROUNDPICKSOKAYTHANKS). So, that's Tre Demps. He and other PG recruit David Sobloweski (spelling from memory - how was I?) - will try to take the recently abandoned reins from Juice Thompson in two years.
• I hoped Alex Marcotullio would also be a reins taking candidate, and perhaps he shall, so, let's check up on his progress with the Great Britain U20 team over in Austria. The Marcoleptic, as I decided just now I would call him forever, is being used exactly the way you'd expect him to be used: as a 3-point specialist. Through three games, he's taken four 2-pointers and 19 3-pointers. Against those dirty Austrians, Marcotullio started out hot, draining three threes in the first half to give the redcoats a halftime lead, but after their halftime tea break, Marcotullio failed to strike again and the team went on to lose 91-71, finishing with nine points. Then today, the squad faced Belgium (SCREW YOU BELGIUM, SCREW YOU AND YOUR THICK, DELICIOUS WAFFLES) needing a win to qualify for the tournament's second round. Marcotullio dropped eight, and Belgium made like they did in World War I and quickly succumbed to larger, imperialist powers, losing 73-52, incidentally, also ceding their sovereignty over the Congo in the process. Marcotullio has had eerily similar stats in every game: either eight or nine points, zero or one assists, two or three steals, and 1-3 rebounds. Not awful, but creepily similar. He's shooting 37 percent from downtown, which isn't bad considering the extra two feet the FIBA line presents. Tomorrow, he and the squad take on Norway in a second round game. (SCREW YOU NORWAY, SCREW YOU AND YOUR FJORDS).
• Eric Chun is done and gone at the British Open, but he fought hard, eventually missing the cut by only one measly stroke. He was at 1-under through 12 on the second day, but then... well, I suppose you can't call a college kid going 4-over on the last six holes of a major tournament choking, but feel free to call him a choke artist. (don't. he did really well.)