Pygmy Pride

Here are my Top 10 jazz/improv albums of 2024. Each of them made my life a little better this year, and I’m hoping they might do the same for you. “Compassion,” by Vijay Iyer (ECM) 1. ”Giant Beauty,” by [ahmed] (Fonstret): A box containing five CDs, with one extended performance per disc. Each begins simply enough, with the piano-bass-alto saxophone-drums quartet setting up an interpretation from composer Ahmed Abdul-Malik’s songbook.

Editor’s note: The opinions of the smart, well-read women in my Denver book club mean a lot, and often determine what the rest of us choose to pile onto our bedside tables. So we asked them, and all Denver Post readers, to share their mini-reviews with you. Have any to offer?

Often, it’s 500 shots. Sometimes, a thousand. And the Betts siblings will not stop until they’ve pushed themselves to their hooping brink. Sienna Betts, the Grandview senior who is a five-star recruit, sees the workouts with her freshman brother, Dylan, as part of her push to cement herself as one of the best girls basketball players in Colorado history. For Dylan, the weekly sessions with Sienna throughout the summer and fall were stepping stones to starting his high school career at Cherry Creek.

A look at 30 Colorado high school boys basketball players to keep an eye on during the 2024-25 CHSAA season.* Siraaj Ali, sr., G, Overland: Quick and crafty with range and the ability to see the court, the 5-foot-11 Ali (16.6 points, 6.4 assists in 2023-24) is the conductor of an Overland attack that looked all sorts of dangerous by the end of last season.

LAFAYETTE — Evan Eschmeyer first spotted Kristina Divjak as she walked off the basketball court at Northwestern University. He was a 6-foot-11 junior center, she was a freshman shooting guard. He thought she was hot. “Oh, please! I was wearing a sweatshirt!” she recalled with a hearty laugh. So began the Eschmeyers’ hoops fairytale. Evan and Kristina starred at Northwestern, fell in love, got married, had three kids, and extended a lineage of basketball royalty with deep roots in America’s heartland. The Eschmeyer family — mom, dad, the twins, Alexandra and Elijah, and youngest daughter Mila — recently gathered in the Peak to Peak Charter School gym to talk about basketball, their excitement over the Pumas’ upcoming season and Nikola Jokic. “We love the ‘Joker,’ ” said 9-year-old Mila. “We sure do, but it would be annoying for people to watch Nuggets games with us,” Kristina said.

Jerry Jeudy was better in space than NASA. But he never posted stats out of this world. Jerry Jeudy ran elite routes, but the destination rarely finished in the end zone. Jerry Jeudy needed consistency, and could not overcome the carousel of chaos with head coaches (four) and starting quarterbacks (seven). As the Broncos’ first-round draft pick in 2020, Jeudy was not bad.