Jason Thompson Court, named for the 2008 alumnus and current member of the NBA’s Toronto Raptors, is housed inside a new 8,400 square foot basketball practice facility on the Lawrenceville campus. The facility was completed in April 2016 as the second phase of the multi-phased Alumni Gym project. A ribbon cutting was held on Sept. 17. The third phase, which includes the construction of new men’s and women’s basketball office suites inside a space that will connect Alumni Gym and the practice facility, is expected to be completed in September. Fundraising for future phases is underway. 

Bronc Bits

The Eastern Wrestling League named Gary Taylor, who is fourth on the all-time NCAA Division I career win list, Coach of the Year and All-American sophomore Chad Walsh Wrestler of the Year.

Junior Robin Perkins was named Second Team All-MAAC while senior Teddy Okereafor and junior Kahlil Thomas were named Third Team All-MAAC.

Sophomore Zack Molloy was named the MAAC Most Outstanding Performer. He won three individual events at the MAAC Championships and was a member of four winning relays. In June, Molloy competed in the 200 free for a chance to qualify for the United States Olympic team.

The golf team tied its best-ever score in MAAC play (293) on the final day to place third in the MAAC Championships, with junior Parker Mann earning All-MAAC honors.

Sophomore Nick Margevicius earned Second Team All-MAAC and MAAC All-Academic team honors. In the MAAC, Margevicius was second in earned run average (2.57) and sixth in strikeouts (67).

Senior Nicolette Mateescu qualified for the NCAA East Regional Track & Field Championships in Jacksonville, Fla. This spring, Mateescu set Rider records for the 10,000m, the 5,000m and the 3,000m.

The fastball is junior Drew Tumbelty’s pitch of choice, the one that primarily helps him get the Broncs out of a jam in the 9th inning and preserve a victory. But the right-handed closer keeps a curveball in his back pocket to keep batters guessing.

Pitchers have been using the curveball for almost 150 years to fool batters, relying on its low velocity and big break as it approaches the plate to freeze hitters and keep them swinging and missing. Good hitters can see the way a ball is spinning to determine what kind of pitch is coming toward them, where it will wind up and whether or not to swing. Generally, a late-breaking curveball is more effective at beating hitters than one that breaks big, but the pitch can be difficult to control. 

How does it work?

To throw a curve, the middle finger is placed along the bottom seam, with the thumb on the back seam, creating a C shape. When pitchers reach the peak of their throwing motion, they begin to rotate their throwing hand and wrist and as the ball is released they snap their middle finger down, which guides the trajectory of the ball. 

To get a better snap, Tumbelty grips the ball tighter with his middle finger than his pointer when he’s throwing a curve, and pulls his throwing arm hard to his opposite hip. The snap creates topspin, meaning the top half of the ball spins toward its direction of motion, with the bottom half spinning against it. Such spin causes the ball to dive as it approaches
its target. 

Why does it work?

The explanation of why the ball dives begins with Newton’s third law, which states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. When a pitcher fires a pitch into a catcher’s mitt, the catcher feels the force of the pitch through the impact, but he or she also exerts a force to slow the ball down. That’s an example of the third law in practice. 

Something similar happens to a curveball. When a ball is thrown with topspin, “Air hitches a ride to the top side of the ball and gets dragged along and slightly down towards the ground,” says physics professor John Bochanski, “but the air on the bottom doesn’t get on the same track. The net result is that a top spinning ball deflects some air toward from the sky.”

Essentially, air that is pushed up towards the sky pushes the ball down. The opposite is also true, which is why a ball thrown with backspin, like a fastball, causes it to stay in the air longer.

The ball’s trajectory is described more precisely by the Magnus Effect, which is named after the 19th-century German physicist Gustav Magnus who studied it. The Magnus Effect states that a spinning object moving through air will deviate from a straight path.