Monday Morning Roundup: Basketball recruiting update, Pat Fitzgerald throws first pitch at Wrigley

Welcome to the Monday Morning Roundup, a collection of noteworthy Northwestern-related news from the weekend. Today, we have basketball recruiting notes as usual, plus a weekend MLB series with Northwestern relevance.

All is quiet on the Northwestern basketball recruiting front (for now)

The Nike EYBL and Under Armour Association AAU circuits both feature several top Northwestern 2018 targets. Both were off this weekend, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t basketball. Rivals.com’s Corey Evans has a roundup from the Bill Hensley Run-N-Slam tournament in Fort Wayne, IN on Saturday that looks at NU targets Ayo Dosunmu, Talen Horton-Tucker and Drew Peterson.

From last week: Evans thinks Northwestern and Stanford are leading the way for Cormac Ryan, who we have talked about a lot here.

Trey Klock shares Georgia Tech graduation photo

Northwestern made a mini-splash back in March when it landed Georgia Tech offensive lineman Trey Klock as a grad transfer. Klock is projected to have a major impact on the line this fall, but he still has yet to join the team as he’s been finishing up school. Well, as of Saturday, Klock has officially graduated.

It’s not like this was ever in question, but it’s still cool to see that the big man is formally done with his last chapter and ready to start a new one in Evanston over the next two seasons.

Joe Girardi comes back to his alma mater, Pat Fitzgerald throws out first pitch at Wrigley Field

With the red-hot New York Yankees in town this weekend to take on the defending champion Chicago Cubs, Joe Girardi seized the opportunity to come back to his old stomping grounds. Girardi, a Peoria native and former player for the Wildcats and Cubs, stopped by Rocky and Berenice Miller Park last Thursday to talk to the current team.

Evidently Girardi’s talk helped, as the Wildcats went to Purdue and picked up a crucial series victory. Girardi’s Yankees picked up a sweep in a wild three-game series at Wrigley Field that concluded with a ridiculous 18-inning marathon on Sunday night.

Game two of the series was our beloved Pat Fitzgerald’s seemingly-annual trip to Wrigley, where he threw out the first pitch and led the fans in “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the seventh-inning stretch.

Fitz has been doing this for years, and the southpaw has a pretty solid arm out on the mound. However, I gotta say, this one from 2012 is a little off the plate (1:22):

And this one from 2015 (0:37) is clearly high and out of the strike zone. Get it together, Fitz.

UPDATE: There is footage of Fitz’s first pitch from Saturday, and this one is a strike!

I should never have doubted him.

Ifeadi Odenigbo and Austin Carr participate in rookie minicamp

Two of the four newest former Northwestern players on NFL rosters participated in rookie minicamps this past weekend. Ifeadi Odenigbo, a seventh-round pick of the Minnesota Vikings, shared this photo of the entire Vikings draft class at camp.

Undrafted Free Agent Austin Carr also got quest for an NFL roster spot underway in New England. Both Anthony Walker Jr. (Colts) and Joe Jones (Cowboys) will have their minicamps this upcoming weekend.