Monday sips, ft. Taylor Thornton, Northwestern baseball, and Kanye West

Happy Monday y'all! Let's look at a bunch of stuff from the Northwestern sports world, to football hype to lacrosse hype to baseball team boredom to the basketball team losing a player while some of its dudes do big things in France. (exhales.)

VOTE OR DIE: Taylor Thornton is now winning the female athlete of the year vote at SI by about a percentage point. Go help her out!

Brandon's got us covered about NU lax - Final Four! - and its worth noting that there will now be a Big Ten lacrosse conference. Anything that boosts the sport's popularity/exposure is good news for Northwestern, plus it sounds way cooler to win the Big Ten than it does the American Lacrosse Conference.

See us gettin props right now: Some serious love for Northwestern in national publications: Matt Hayes of the Sporting News talks NU's almost-undefeated season last year, while Jeff Goodman of CBS once again praised the Chris Collins hire.

YOUR ANNUAL NORTHWESTERN BASEBALL UPDATE: Northwestern finished in ninth place out of 11 teams and five games below the sixth and final spot in the Big Ten Tournament. So their year is over, meaning they missed the Big Ten Tournament for the third straight season and the 19th time in Paul Stevens' 26 seasons as head coach, and missed the NCAA Tournament for the 26th time in his 26 seasons.

But wait: is it possible that Jim Phillips could do something to change a program ignored even by Northwestern sports fans, looking to follow up in the success of the Chris Collins hire by axing somebody else in charge of a program success has forgotten? Sunday, a site called "Skippers Dugout" claiming to be a college baseball rumor mill had this tweet:

We have learned that #Northwestern University has let go of their baseball staff.#B1Gbaseball

— Skippers Dugout (@SkippersDugout) May 19, 2013

Except nobody else had anything to say on the topic. A few hours later, someone that appears slightly more reputable had this to say:

There is a rumor that Northwestern has relieved it's staff. I've spoken to Paul Stevens, there has been no conversation w/ him on that front

— Chris Webb (@ChrisMWebb) May 19, 2013

As the hours passed and nothing happened, the original site began to backtrack:

Also, we pass information on to the coaching world.Many of you email us daily from D1 to D3.Today we posted some information that was..

— Skippers Dugout (@SkippersDugout) May 20, 2013

emailed to us from a source close to the situation.Perhaps we jumped the gun, but time will tell.

— Skippers Dugout (@SkippersDugout) May 20, 2013

I guess that's the pros/cons of knowing connections to the coaching world, but probably should've held off of the news.

— Skippers Dugout (@SkippersDugout) May 20, 2013

So, perhaps something will come of that, but it generally seems like a swing and a miss on that report. Northwestern baseball will probably enter year 27 of the Stevens era, and will probably miss out on the NCAA Tournament again. Wouldn't it be cool if they were good?

Maybe it's because ya boy Yeezy loves Cats a lot: Friday night/Saturday morning, Kanye West projected video/music from his new album onto the sides of buildings across the world. One of those buildings was Ryan Field?

Hey @nudarcompliance, can @coachfitz51 & @nu_bowers use "Kanye projected his new video on our stadium" in recruiting or is that a violation?

— Paul Kennedy (@PK9) May 18, 2013

I haven't seen any confirmation that this actually happened - really, nobody, Northwestern student publications? Anyway, we are now Kanye West's Big Ten Team.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Dan Sinker, who you may remember as @MayorEmanuel, went and took a photo of Kanye on the side of Ryan Field:

Six teenagers, a jeep and a very large Kanye West face. twitter.com/dansinker/stat…

— dan sinker(@dansinker) May 18, 2013

Schedule hype: I actually never did talk about the 2014 conference scheduling coming out. Northwestern obviously could have gotten a slightly easier than Penn State and Michigan as cross-divisional opponents, but the way I see it it is what it is. (I wouldn't have gone to State College last year if I'd known NU would be back in two years, tho.)

Omar leavin': Northwestern loses beloved walk-on Omar Jimenez:

Via Facebook @omarjimenez_nu will leave the bball team to focus on journalism. Has internships at CNN, NBC. Great classmate, talented guy.

— Inside Northwestern (@insidenu) May 18, 2013

It sounds like he's got a lot of potential in non-basketball fields ahead of him. Dude scored seven points in 25 games for the Wildcats. Unlike James Montgomery III, I don't think Jimenez was ever called upon in a non-traditional-walk-on role. He'll be successful in something.

Allez chats: French hoop news!

Looks like @juicethompson22 & @asvel_basket will take on John Shurna & @sigbasket in the championship semifinals in France starting Tuesday.

— NU Men's Basketball (@NUMensBball) May 19, 2013

So both guys are doing pretty well over there. We'll tell you if there's an illegal way to watch those games, because I DEFINITELY will, as previously noted when we broke down French basketball far too intently. Also, there's now a little tiny glass of juice.

Cubs/Cats: Soccer coach Tim Lenahan became like the 3,000th Northwestern coach to throw out a first pitch at Wrigley:

And a strike, too.