The Anonymous Eagle Mailbag: Frozen Custard, NCAA Lacrosse, Science Exploration, and more!

Welcome back to the AE Mailbag! We’re going to try to do these once a week between now and (at least) August, so feel free to keep firing your questions in to the email inbox — anon.eagle@gmail.com — or hit us up on Twitter — @AnonymousEagle — if you’ve got something that’s nagging at you. Marquette sports, college sports, movies, TV, favorite foods, whatever you’ve got, we’ll be happy to try to answer it.

Here we go!

From @CharlieWeber45: Culver’s concrete go-to order?

The key to a good concrete mixer is the realization that you aren’t required to get vanilla custard. If you order “a concrete mixer with cashews & marshmallow creme,” you’re automatically getting it mixed with vanilla custard. Which is fine! But you can get it made with chocolate custard, and that’s the key to the whole enterprise. Same thing goes for milkshakes by the way, and if you’re ordering a chocolate shake at Culver’s without requesting it be made with chocolate custard, you’re missing the entire point.

The second most important thing about ordering a concrete mixer is the realization that two mix-ins are included in the price. You want to get Oreos & blueberries? Knock yourself right out. The catch there is by pure volume, you’re probably only getting half as much Oreo as you would if you ordered it with just Oreos.

WITH THAT SAID, I usually just go with whatever turns my Smurf blue on a particular day, but the combo of pecans and brownie pieces is a secretly great combination.

From @ericgebby: So I’m sitting on Myrtle Beach right now. Why didn’t I go to Coastal Carolina?

Luckily for you, I took a vacation to Myrtle Beach two years ago, so I’m well versed in the geography of the beach area. For the sake of the discussion here, I’m going to presume that you’re sitting directly east of the Skywheel on the beach. This will all make sense in a second.

The reason why you didn’t go to Coastal Carolina relative to your current beach experience is because it takes 20 minutes to drive 11 miles from campus to the Skywheel at 9:30 on a Tuesday morning.

CCU is so far away from the beach, it’s not in Myrtle Beach, the city. It’s in Conway, South Carolina. That 20 minute drive on a Tuesday morning? Psssssssh, don’t even get me started on what that traffic looks like on a weekend. It’s gotta be at least 30 minutes when people are inbound to the beach, and at that point, if you’re a local that is going to have to get back out to your residence near campus, it is not worth the trouble.

Also? Eric, you’re all over the 2017-18 hoops intro video. Let me just say this: Coastal Carolina teal is just not your color.

From @Marisa_Ingemi: Your thoughts on the NCAA men’s and women’s lacrosse brackets?

Here are links to the men’s and the women’s brackets so everyone can read along as I spout off like someone who knows things about things.

MEN’S BRACKET THOUGHTS

1. Yale is the #3?? Where the hell were they seeded before getting clattered by Cornell on Sunday morning?
2. WOO THREE BID BIG EAST
3. This is technically 2A, but it’s a bummer that the Big East is guaranteed to lose a team by the time that the quarterfinals wrap up, as Georgetown and Villanova are the unseeded teams in the 4/5 corner of the bracket.
4. It’s a 17 team tournament, and six of the teams were on Marquette’s schedule this season. You can say a lot of things about MU lacrosse, but you can’t accuse the Golden Eagles of ducking anyone.
5. Having watched both of them in the last couple of weeks, I can’t say that I’m expecting the Notre Dame/Denver game to be a fireworks shows on offense.
6. Shoutout to Virginia for making the tournament for the first time since 2015, as I’m sure winning a game against an ACC opponent for the first time since March 1, 2014 was a very big contributor to that fact.
7. My Final Four: Maryland, Johns Hopkins, Loyola, Albany, with..... I dunno, let’s say Albany taking the title.

WOMEN’S BRACKET THOUGHTS

1. Stony Brook got completely hosed. They’re 19-0! 6-0 against the other 26 teams in the field! They outscored those teams 95-50! Average score in those six games: 15.8 to 8.3. That’s nearly doubling them up! How are they the #5 seed??
2. This is 1A, but: If the Seawolves make it to the Final Four, they may have to play a road game in the quarterfinals at Boston College, as the Eagles are the #4 seed. Guess where the semifinals are being held this year? AT STONY BROOK.
3. WOO THREE BID BIG EAST
4. WOO TWO BID 2019 BIG EAST (good riddance to you, Florida)
5. Why the hell is there a play-in game for Wagner/Mercer? You’ve already got a tournament format that’s goofier than hell with the top six seeds getting byes to the second round. Just boot an at-large team and let Wagner and Mercer play the #7 and #8 seeds.
6. With Marquette suddenly having four fewer league games taking up space on the schedule next season, I’m wondering how many of these NCAA tournament teams will suddenly pop up on the schedule for the Golden Eagles next season.
7. My Final Four: Maryland, Stony Brook, Florida, and North Carolina, and I’ll take the Tar Heels to win the title.

From @CrookedNumbers: Kopps or Leon’s?

Before I say anything else, I want to say that Leon’s is a Milwaukee icon, and if you manage to graduate from Marquette without making at least one trip to the corner of 27th and Oklahoma, you didn’t really attend Marquette. These are the rules and I didn’t make them up.

However, when taking the full scope of the establishment into account, I have to give the edge to Kopps on two counts. First, going to Leon’s can be a bit of a gamble, because there’s no way of telling what the flavor of the day is. No social media presence, no list on the website. If you just want a scoop of vanilla, chocolate, or butter pecan, then that’s fine, but I can look at Kopps’ website right now and make plans to go on May 25th because they’re going to have Tiramisu.

The other advantage that Kopps has is the much more robust food menu, and if I’m being honest, I’m more likely to go to Kopps for a burger (fried onions & mustard, please) and the shake of the month (currently chocolate peanut butter) than to go for just a scoop of custard.

From @77ncaachamps: What’s more essential: Discovering the uncharted depths of the oceans or the landscape of Venus?

I feel like the obvious answer is the oceans. The oceans are here on this planet, and the only thing stopping us from figuring out what exactly is down there is the incredible amounts of pressure that develop at those depths. There’s a vast untapped amount of resources down there, and who knows what kind of discoveries and advancements lay in front of us in that direction.

Venus, on the other hand, well, we already know it’s uninhabitable, right? So while I see the value of investigating our stellar neighbor for the purposes of understanding our own position in the universe a little bit better, it’s ultimately just for the curiosity factor as opposed to any particular true advancement and benefit. It seems to me that the current expeditions and explorations of Mars are accomplishing somewhat of the same task, but with a lack of an atmosphere that prevents us from seeing what the hell is going on down on the surface.

From @KurtInMilwaukee: What is the ceiling for Andrew Rowsey’s professional career? High level Europe, G-League, etc.?

I figure he can play overseas for years and years. As long as that jump shot keeps going in, there’s going to be someone who’s going to be willing to pay Andrew Rowsey to play basketball. If he manages to catch a NBA Summer League invite, I suppose there’s a chance he could get an NBA training camp invite and end up landing in the G-League for a little bit, but somewhere overseas is likely his best bet. In order for that Summer League invite to show up, I feel like Rowsey would have needed to have a completely flawless senior season, and I can’t quite say that he was flawless. That’s not an indication of his defense, that’s a discussion of his sometimes erratic stats.