Recent Stories in Sports

More Elston Turner, please

Coach Lorenzo Romar has struggled to determine the right mix of playing time for his team all season. Last night against Oregon State, the struggle continued. With the Huskies in danger of suffering a loss that would sink their NCAA tournament hopes, Romar made starting shooting guard Isaiah Thomas his primary point guard, sitting both members of his point guard rotation. Elston Turner slotted in at shooting guard and played 23 minutes, his most since January 8.

The bigger lineup helped the Huskies dominate the boards. Giving Thomas total control of the offense gave him freedom to find space in the Oregon State zone. And, generally, it let Romar have his best players on the floor longer. The result was a 37-point second half that gave UW the win.

Basketball coaches from the pros down to CYO ball are known to shorten their rotations--that is, give the bench players less playing time--when the playoffs come. Perhaps Romar is moving in that direction. It's time.

With every game do or die, Abdul Gaddy shouldn't see meaningful minutes again this year. The highly-touted freshman has had his chances to make an impact, and has had valuable playing time that will help him develop into the NBA prospect he's supposed to be. But right now, he hurts the team when he's on the floor.

Venoy Overton should keep his role as off-the-bench disrupter. But that only works if he's got the energy, so he can't see more than 20 minutes a night.

That leaves Thomas as the Dawgs' primary ballhandler, spelled when Overton comes on. This is a role that Cal's Jerome Randle rode to a Pac-10 Player of the Year award, with energy guard Jorge Gutierrez in the Overton role....

First: Let us congratulate the Cleveland High girls' basketball team, which yesterday won their first-ever state tournament game. In the 83-year history of the school! "Eagles! Eagles" chants filled the Tacoma Dome parking lot as Cleveland fans filed out post-game. Pretty cool. Cleveland will play Shorecrest tonight at 8:30 p.m. for a spot in the state semifinals.

You know you'll be rooting for Cleveland in this game, as KIRO right-wing talker Dori Monson is one of Shorecrest's assistants. I'm surprised Monson is in favor of government-funded athletics. Shouldn't the kids pay their own way, like the orphaned children Monson pilloried on his show last week? I digress.

Other Seattle schools shared Cleveland's success. Five Metro league teams advanced to today's quarterfinals, with only one suffering a loss. Franklin was the only loser--but with their three top scorers being underclassmen, I suspect the Quakers will exact some non-violent revenge in next year's tourney.

Why the Metro League success? From watching O'Dea's a dominant win over Mt. Rainier, I will tell you: The speed of the game. Mt. Rainier seemed completely unprepared for the speed of O'Dea's passing, their quickness on defense, and the way they swarmed to rebounds. Irish guard Devante Williams, who may be the best shooter in the tournament, hit 4-7 from three, destroying the Rams' zone defense.

O'Dea will play Spokane's Shadle Park tonight at 8:30 p.m. I suspect the 509ers will give O'Dea a little more trouble; the Irish are susceptible to teams with a good inside game.

Other city teams who'll play in today's quarters......

Sometime back, former Washington Husky basketball star Nate Robinson began signing off his tweets with "wordaapp." Huh?

"When I say word aapp It means the same as up I just spell it diff," he explained to a confused Twitterati.

Robinson, the three-time NBA Slam Dunk Competition champ who serves as an unofficial godfather to the city's young basketball players, then started turning his signoff into a tag. Other Seattle-area tweeps have followed suit.

Take this from a Denver resident, reminiscing about childhood visits to Tacoma: "I spent my summers gett'n dirty up in HillTop nev'r forget where u come from #WORDAAPP."

Or from this UW student: "wrote 4/8 pages on India's education system and how education isnt necessarily a social equalizer and how it affects youth culture #wordaapp."

Due to some anonymous Internet stumpage, Robinson's colloquialism has garnered an Urban Dictionary entry. And now--t-shirts!

T-shirt designers Word Aapp Clothing define the phrase as "a 'Seattle thing' that is taking over the world."  That may be a little hyperbolic. For now, #wordaapp use seems confined mostly to basketball fans under the age of 24. But we're hoping for a breakout.

Here's a recent Mayor McGinn tweet: "Search Committee announced for new Human Services director." Couldn't Mayor McGinn just as easily tweet "Search Committee announced for new Human Services director #wordaapp"? I don't see why not.

(You can get that Word Aapp t-shirt for $23.99. Here are other models. Nate says don't do it! They're fake. He'll be offering authentic t-shirts soon.)

Joe Posnanski, the best sportswriter in America, tweeted thus recently: "Felipe Lopez, not yet 30, hit .310/.383/.427, signed for $2 mil? Jason Kendall, not yet 52, hit .241/.331/.305 sign 2yr/$6 mil? Confused."

No hit. Great "glove"?

Posnanski might be equally confused to learn that the Mariners made no serious attempt to replace starting catcher Rob Johnson, who hit an abysmal .213/.289/.326 last year--and had surgery on both hips in the off-season.

Kendall is old and doesn't hit, Johnson is young and doesn't hit. Why do the two have jobs? Because they play the immeasurably important position of catcher.

The catcher is not the most important player in a baseball game. But he is the caddy, coach, and confidante of the most important player in a baseball game, the pitcher. In 2009, the Mariners were 25-9 when ace Felix Hernandez pitched. A .735 winning percentage. That would be 119 wins over a 162-game season. In other words, when Felix Hernandez pitches, the Mariners are the best team in baseball history.

Now listen to what Hernandez says about Johnson: "We just seem to think alike. Every time he calls for a certain pitch, I am thinking the same thing." Do you know what having Johnson behind the plate must mean for Hernandez' confidence? What a like-minded partner like Johnson does to increase Hernandez' chances of success?...

The Mariners played an intrasquad game yesterday, and, courtesy of the Times' tireless Geoff Baker, we get a peek at actual baseball being played. Huzzah!

And tomorrow--yes! tomorrow!--you'll be able to listen to Hall-of-Famer Dave Niehaus again, as ESPN 710 broadcasts the first M's spring game of the year, vs. San Francisco, at 12:05 p.m. Seattle time. (Full broadcast schedule here.)

Thus, it is time for my annual tradition of sharing this wonderful ode to spring training by light verse superstar Ogden Nash. Take it away, Ogden!

All winter long, yes, every day,
I throw the sporting page away,
I turn my faithful radio off
And grimly settle down to scoff,
Since contests that as sport I list,
In wintertime do not exist.

If Mr. Gallup me is polling
He will not tally a vote for bowling;
Despite our brief Olympic radiance,
Hockey belongs to the Canadians;
But chiefly am I unbeguiled
By Dr. Naismith's monster child,
Basketball is not a sport,
Not even as a last resort --
A game indulged in by giraffes
And only good for scornful laughs,
All whistle-blowings and palaverages
And scores that read like Dow Jones averages.

Only Harlem's unique Globetrotters,
As comic as seals and slick as otters,
Find its pretensions are grotesque
And treat it purely as burlesque.

But hark! A hint from softer climes
Of past and future golden times!
In Phoenix and St. Petersburg
The rookie generates the erg,
And Vero Beach and Sarasota
Of embryo Ruths can boast their quota.

The airwaves now begin to tingle
As grapefruit knights in tourney mingle;
Again the happiness pills I know
Of sporting page and radio.

Home is the exile, home is the rover,
The storm of basketballs is over;
I sail serenely into harbor
With Phil Rizzuto and Red Barber.

U.S.A! U.S.A! The Game Goes to Overtime

My friend David and I often plan gatherings around sporting events. Sometimes--as was the case for our Poinsettia Bowl party--no one shows. Sunday afternoon was different. The USA v. Canada Gold Medal hockey game proved a big draw, as our ten-person group spilled across two different tables at Ballard's best Upper-Midwest-themed bar, Zayda Buddy's.

And all of us got to experience one of the most thrilling moments in Olympic history--U.S. winger Zach Parise's game-tying goal with just 24 seconds left in regulation. Much of the credit goes to Parise, but let us not forget the contributions of my friend Jason, who chugged a Miller High Life just before the goal was scored in honor of U.S. goalie Ryan Miller. 

I'd arrived at noon, wearing a blue sweater and "Git 'er Done" cap, in order to secure a table. Wise move, as all tables were gone shortly after the 12:30 p.m. face-off. David arrived shortly before the game in a cowboy hat. Beers were ordered, the mysteries of the "blue line" and the "power play" explained, and general shouting at the T.V. commenced. My friend Saira was particularly into the game, having engaged in a shouting match with some anti-U.S. Canadians the night before in Vancouver. "They were jerks," she asserted more than once....

The toughest 3A boys basketball tournament in Washington this year won't be the state tourney held in Tacoma. It will be the SeaKing District Tournament, this week and next at the Bellevue College gym. Look! BRACKETS! (March must be imminent.)

The tourney features five of the state's ten top ranked teams--but grants only four places in the state tournament. One of #2 Rainier Beach, #3 Bellevue, #8 Chief Sealth, #9 Mount Si, and #10 Franklin won't get to play in Tacoma. Bummer for them, but fun hoops for us.

Two of those top-ten teams face off today at 4:45 pm: Franklin plays Mount Si. Each team has a star player: Franklin's Anrio Adams, a sophomore point guard, is a possible pro prospect. Mount Si shooting guard Tanner Riley will play for the University of Portland next year. The young Quakers (they start three freshmen) have come on strong as the season's progressed. Adams in particular: he had 41 points Tuesday in the Quakers' win over Ingraham.

At 8:15 p.m., Rainier Beach plays O'Dea--two city schools who'...

Ljungberg: "The longest ever." Preseason! We're talking about preseason!

In all the Olympics excitement, you may have missed that spring training is underway. Both the Sounders and the Mariners have been preparing for their upcoming seasons--the Sounders at a tournament in Spain, the Mariners at their spring training hub northwest of Phoenix.

Both training seasons are much longer than they need to be--something Freddie Ljungberg complained about in a blog post for ESPN.com titled "The longest preseason training ever."

"We have been running our asses off," according to Ljungberg, who expressed concern that the long training schedule could be detrimental to his fitness. Ljungberg points out when he played for Arsenal, one of the top clubs in the world, training was half as long than the Sounders' is. Well, Fred, the Sounders have a lot more work to do.

Big question is, will they get to do it? Major League Soccer and its players' union are overdue to sign a collective bargaining agreement, and negotiations are not going well. "They're not even humoring us," says Kansas City Wizard Jimmy Conrad, whose invocation of the Weaken Resolve spell at the last bargaining session had no appreciable effect. (D&D reference! Yes!) There's a Thursday deadline to get a deal done--and a work stoppage is looking like a possibility.

The Sounders split two games in Spain, losing 3-0 to defending Norwegian champs Rosenborg FC on Thursday, but beating Staebek IF, another top Norwegian team, 2-0 on Sunday. Fredy Montero and Roger Levesque scored the goals, both assisted by Ljungberg.

The Mariners aren't yet playing games, or really doing much of anything, to the eternal dismay of the reporters in town to cover them. Said reporters had a difficult enough time finding material for stories in the pre-blog days; now, with both column inches and pixels to fill, they are desperate. How desperate? Tacoma News-Tribune writer Larry LaRue (the best writer among our local baseball scribes, in my view) posted a story about a new hitting drill the Mariners are doing. The Times' Geoff Baker, who has the best nose for news, could only come up with "Jack Hannahan catches bullpen session." Yeah....

Why did NBC bump Sunday's USA/Canada hockey game to cable? Because showing it would've required actual sports coverage. Which is not what NBC is broadcasting in primetime this Olympics. NBC is showing reality television.

Think about it: When you watch Survivor, they don't show the entirety of, say, each immunity challenge. No, you get a bunch of interviews building up the suspense of the event, and a few cherry-picked moments from a much longer competition. You get the same menu when you watch the Olympics on NBC.

What I think of as sports coverage--showing, you know, sports--does not fit into NBC's plans. The New York Times' Richard Sandomir explains why:

A hockey game cannot be sliced easily into a series of short events, like ski or luge runs, figure skating programs or speedskating races. If the network cannot chop a sport into two-to-five-minute elements framed with a lot of ads, it is not likely to be shown from 7 p.m. to midnight.

Someday, maybe they'll guard each other in the NBA. But Thursday night, in front of a lucky 500 at the Ballard High gym, sophomore Anrio Adams of Franklin High and freshman DJ Fenner of Seattle Prep matched up with third place in the Metro League tourney as the prize.

For most of the second half, Adams guarded Fenner, and Fenner guarded Adams. It was a game within a game as the two freakishly athletic underclassmen chased each other around the court. Early on in the half, both players were warned by the referees for overly physical play. Not long after, Adams was called for an intentional foul for grabbing Fenner trying to come off of a screen.

Adams had the tougher task staying with his man, as Prep's organized offense threw a multitude of screens and picks his way. However Fenner had to contend with Adams within the flow of Franklin's more improvisatory style. Adams got the best of the match-up, as did his team.

Prep held a two point lead at half, but early in the second their one true point guard, Julian...

Coach Romar, Sane Genius

Flexibility is not among Lorenzo Romar's attributes as a coach--or as a person. Yet Romar may need to channel his inner relativist if his Washington hoopsters are going to beat USC tonight.

Romar: A man of such high ethical principles that he doesn't swear. ("Dog!" is the saltiest epithet that passes Romar's lips.)

So dedicated to his profession that he took his wife to a high school basketball game one Valentine's Day (I was there, too, though sans date).

So strict that he benched starters Will Conroy and Bobby Jones for the start of an NCAA tournament game for a minor curfew violation. (The Huskies started slow and lost by just two points.)

Romar's ethics, dedication, and willpower are strengths. They inspire respect from his players; and have made Romar the most successful Washington coach of the past half-century.

But flip that coin. Romar's inflexibility may have stiffed him a Final Four appearance. Had he instructed his 2006 Huskies to foul UConn's Rashad Anderson with time running out remaining in an NCAA Tournament regional semifinal, the Huskies would likely have won. Left unmolested, Anderson hit a game-tying three-pointer that sent the game into an overtime period that the shorthanded Huskies lost....

Among the adjectives The SunBreak commenters have used to assess NBC's 2010 Olympics coverage: "unacceptable," "boring," "pathetic," "incompetent," "horrible," "terrible," "disgraceful,"  and "awful." People are mad that the coverage is tape-delayed. They are mad about the number of commercials. They are mad that the network shows too many U.S. athletes. Or not enough.

KING 5, presumably inundated with complaints, has posted an apology about the tape delay. 90 percent of Seattlepi.com readers call the tape delaying "ridiculous." (And not in the good way the Sasquatch lineup is.)

But--people are watching. In an age where practically all network TV programming is losing ratings, Winter Olympics ratings are up 15 percent over 2006. Those annoying tape delays? They aren't turning off viewers. Four of the five cities where NBC had the highest ratings Saturday night were outside the Eastern time zone. (Seattle ranked fifth, but had the highest share: 40 percent of Seattle TVs that were on Saturday night were tuned to the Olympics--thanks in part to CBC-less competition--even though they were watching something that was at least three hours old.)

The haters, I suspect, are the true Olympic diehards. The people who want to see all the competitors, who want to see everything live, who can't help themselves from checking online to see who's won. These people are ill-served by NBC's coverage. I wish that NBC had at least given such people an option--some sort of pay site or channel--where their need for coverage could be sated....

When Garfield High grad Will Conroy joined the Houston Rockets last month, he became the ninth player from a Seattle high school to play for an NBA team this season. This from the 25th largest city in America. Started me wondering--where does Seattle rank as far as sending players to the NBA? The answer: second. Only Chicago (13) has had more players go from city high schools to the League. Amazing in itself, but even more striking when you look at the numbers by population. There, 206 fertility becomes even more clear. Graph!

That's right--among large cities, Seattle is the best NBA breeding ground in the nation. (I mapped the top 50 U.S. cities by population.) We're well ahead of second-place Miami, and absolutely housing such supposed basketball meccas as Philadelphia, Los Angeles and New York. Some larger cities, like San Francisco, Jacksonville, and Austin, haven't sent a single guy from a city high school to the league.

Now. A word about the data, which comes from Basketball Reference. What's available is high school and city. So this doesn't take into account someone like Carmelo Anthony, a Baltimore kid who went to prep school in Virginia. Also, "city" is narrowly defined by actual city boundaries. So Los Angeles, for example, is only L.A. proper, not cities within L.A. County like Compton and Inglemoor. Metro areas aren't considered, so Seattle doesn't get credit for Jon Brockman of Snohomish High or Marvin Williams of Bremerton High, only those guys who went to in-city high schools. ...

I watched an hour of NBC's Vancouver Winter Olympics coverage on KING 5 this afternoon, and I saw about 90 seconds of actual sports action. I'm not exaggerating. I'm actually being generous.

What I did see was amazing. In covering the normal hill ski jumping from Whistler, NBC showed close-ups of every liftoff, then showed a tense and entertaining series of angles as the jumper flew to the bottom of the hill.

After the jump, analyst Jeff Hastings narrated slo-mo closeups of each take-off, providing smart and insightful commentary on each. We got reaction shots of every jumper, as well as of his coach. And, most interesting to me, a close up of the coach who signals the jumper to start--very tense coaches, these, as they are trying to choose the exact time within a seconds-long window when the wind will be the most propitious. See for yourself: Here's their coverage of Swissman (?) Simon Ammann's gold-medal-winning jump.

Great stuff. But there was so little of it. NBC would show two jumps, then pause for a long commercial break. The jumps themselves are about ten seconds long, with surrounding chatter lasting about a minute for each. So for every four minutes of coverage, with only about 20 seconds of action, I'd see three minutes of ads.

The ski jumping lasted about 30 minutes, in which I saw about nine actual jumps. They did show the last four or so without a break, which was nice.

Once Ammann finished off the competition, Al Michaels let us know that speed skating would be next. Awesome! Can't wait! Too bad, because I'd have to.

First, a commercial break. Then we got an update on how luge qualifying was going. Then, another commercial break.

Back: Speed skating time? Nope, a long piece by NBC sports reporter Mary Carillo, who traveled to The Netherlands to give us a sense of the Dutch passion for speed skating. A neat piece, really, and I wouldn't mind it sprinkled into some actual coverage of actual speed skating. Hadn't seen any yet. And it was time for another commercial break.

When the commercials are over, we're at the actual speed skating venue! (Richmond Olympic Oval, about ten miles south of Vancouver proper). Finally! The NBC speed skating announcers give us a little preview of the event, showing the top US contenders and then...we get another commercial break.

By the time they come back from this commercial break, it's been 30 minutes since the ski jumping ended, and I have to be somewhere. No speed skating for me, although I would've loved to see what NBC did with it. (Although, by this time, I already knew who won, NBC delays the coverage three hours and I'd accidentally spotted the winner on ESPN's crawl.)

I love what NBC is doing coverage-wise, and I understand why they have so many ads. Nice production costs money; they probably budgeted out what they were going to spend long before the advertising market went to hell. Plus they paid $2.2 billion to for rights to these and the 2012 Games; and this was back in 2003 when advertisers paid a lot more for network TV ads. So NBC has to run so many ads to make up what they've spent. I get it.

So I'm going to watch NBC's coverage, but I think, for the first time ever when watching live sports on TV, I'm going to make sure I have a book nearby when I do.

Celebrations Banned: Are Cheerleaders Next?

Since intercollegiate athletics are contested between college students, you'd think it would make sense for college students to determine what standards of sportsmanship are appropriate on the field, right? Oh, you are so naive. 

No, it's a bunch of middle-aged men--the NCAA Rules Committee--who are slowly imprinting their anachronistic, unrealistic standards on college football players. Recent rules committee proposals would stiffen the penalty for "taunting," a nebulous concept that the middle-aged men who serve as college referees have proven incapable of assessing fairly. You'll remember how Jake Locker's celebratory toss of a ball after scoring a last-second touchdown against BYU was deemed "taunting," costing the Huskies a chance at overtime.

Now, any behavior deemed taunting-y on the way into the end zone would also be penalized, as a 15-yard personal foul from the spot of the taunt. So the overexcited player who breaks a long run and points at the camera during his last five yards to the end zone? He'll find himself lining up again at the 20. 

Another idiotic repression of utterly harmless behavior: students will be banned from writing messages in their eye black. Players usually will write in their home area code as a shout out to where they're from. Or, in the case of Christian hero Tim Tebow, Bible verses. Pretty harmless stuff, but apparently too much self-expression. And self-expression apparently...is bad?...

From the group Manther (myspace!), comes this lament about the Sonics. It's true, we do still miss them. Part of the reason I avoid NBA basketball is that watching it makes me miss them more. Even looking at the box scores sends me into a funk, especially when former Sonic Kevin Durant records another 25-point game. Anyhoo, here's what Manther--appearing along with a guy in a replica Squatch costume--has to say.

Via True Hoop

ASU's Derek Glasser Gets the Dawgpack Treatment (Photo via Twitter, @UWDawgPack)

At Hec Edmundson Pavilion, with a full student section behind them, the Washington Husky basketballers are as dominant as John Wooden's UCLA teams. In Seattle, the Dawgs bombed Pac-10 leaders Cal by 15 points. They crushed Pac-10 second placers Arizona State by 23. They dropped a 56-point second half on cross-state rivals Wazzu, and a 123-point game on crosstowners Seattle U.

Washington has won 16 of 17 games at home this year. But something happens on the road. Away from Hec Ed, the Dawgs are winless in six games. That ASU team the Huskies crushed here Saturday? Lost to 'em by 17 in Tempe.

Why the difference? On the road, the Huskies start the same guys, have the same coaches, play by the same rules--and flop. The one principle difference, it would seem, is the Washington fans--specifically the rowdy student section that goes by the name "The Dawgpack." Pac-10 players generally agree that Washington has the best crowd in the league. Oregon coach Ernie Kent has called The Dawgpack the best student section in the country.

The Dawgpack stands the entire game. When the opposing team is on offense, they keep up a constant shout, unnerving players and making it hard for them to communicate. When opposing coaches attempt to shout out instructions, they yell to drown him out. They pick on opposing players, like when they chanted "Mich-ael Cera!" at Cal's Nikola Knezevic (who does sorta look like him). A sign at Saturday's game had a photoshopped image of Husky guard Venoy Overton with his arm around the mother of hated ASU guard Derek Glasser. The sign read "Mr. and Mrs. Overton." With Glasser scoreless midway through the second half, UW fans held their hands in the shape of a zero and derisively chanted "Der-ek, Der-ek."...

Teenagers Run Amok!

Garfield's administration probably wished they had a full archery set Tuesday night, when their anti-floor-storming warnings went unheeded.

To set the scene: After watching their school's basketball team fall behind 21-6 to rival Roosevelt, enduring a 15-minute delay after a scoreboard malfunction, and sweating through an overtime period, Garfield's students sensed that victory was finally near. Their Bulldogs led by two points, and Roosevelt had just 2.7 seconds to get off a desperation shot. Security guard Joe--a Garfield employee since my years at the school--edged through the twenty or so GHS cheerleaders and addressed the section. "If they win, don't rush the court," Joe told the front few rows. He pointed a little further back and shouted. "Don't rush the court, okay?"...

First, a word about Seattle Prep's DJ Fenner. If you haven't seen him, make haste to your local high school gymnasium. Late in Prep's 77-56 win over O'Dea Tuesday, Fenner took his defender off the dribble with a crossover, drove the lane, elevated around another defender, switched hands in mid-air and finished at the rim with his left hand. Wow.

With two top-ten teams playing (Prep's #6, O'Dea #10), a capacity crowd filled Prep's gym Tuesday. I was thigh-to-thigh with my friend's girlfriend on my left, which was awkward enough, but also with a nine-year-old boy on my right, which is I think possibly illegal.

Though we'd squeezed in to watch basketball, what we saw actually resembled hockey. You didn't hear the expression "let 'em play" shouted at this game, as the referees--including former Seattle Times photographer Rod Mar--permitted Prep and O'Dea to settle matters with minimal supervisory interference. Or as my friend Mark put it: "They're beating each other bad out there."

Early on, the physical style played to O'Dea's strengths. The speedy Irish applied heavy pressure to Panther ballhanders, forcing steals and bad shots. O'Dea raced to a 20-point first quarter and an early six-point lead.

But the stress of defending Prep's bigger, taller players began to wear on O'Dea. The Irish don't give substantial minutes to any player who's taller than 6'3". Prep's point guard is 6'3". Prep scored inside and on putbacks, slowly catching, surpassing, and eventually blowing out the Irish. Mitch Brewe, Prep's 6'7" sophomore center, led the way with 24 points, most from point-blank range....

Dollar's Redhawks Must Win Tonight to Reach His Goal

Both Washington and Seattle University's men's basketball teams had lofty goals for the season.

"We can make it to the Final Four," Washington's star guard Isaiah Thomas told reporters in October. "We're that good. That's our goal."

Seattle U coach Cameron Dollar, whose team isn't eligible for the NCAA tournament, set his sights on the finals of the second-tier National Invitational Tournament, held in New York City. "We will be playing and competing at a high level to get to Madison Square Garden," said Dollar when he was hired in April.

But as things stand in January, neither team would even make the field of their targeted tournaments.

So while the "storylines" of this game are rather interesting--an in-city rivalry, Dollar coaching against former boss Lorenzo Romar, Seattle U star Charles Garcia facing the school that rejected his admissions application--the simple truth is that the team that loses this game can forget about reaching their goal once and for all.

For Washington, a home loss to the D1 transitioning Redhawks (ranked #224 in the all-important RPI) would read like a felony conviction on their NCAA tournament resume. All hopes of an at-large bid would be dashed, and even if they made the tourney by winning the Pac-10, they'd have an unattractive seed and a difficult road to the Final Four....

In an earlier story on The Sunbreak ("The Little Sonics Lawsuit that Could"), I referenced the progress of a little class-action lawsuit between former Seattle Supersonic season ticket holders and Oklahoma’s own version of Valdemort, Clay Bennett and his cronies in the Professional Basketball Club, the owners of the Oklahoma Thunder.

According to a story on Seattlepi.com, Bennett and the other Thunder owners have settled the lawsuit and agreed to pay $1.6 million in damages, to be split among the ticketholders represented in the class action. (This outcome pleases me, I should add, because I'm a former Sonics ticketholder.)

The presiding judge in the case, the Honorable Richard A. Jones, has not yet signed off on the joint agreement to settle. There is no timetable for his ruling and the documents contained in the joint motion for approval of a settlement stipulate that members of the class action must be notified of the settlement details before the agreement is final.

"This is what I expected to happen," said Michael A. Maxwell, a Seattle attorney and the SunBreak’s legal correspondent. "All along, Bennett thought the judge would throw out this case. When he didn’t, he was caught in a very bad position."

Early in 2009, both sides asked Judge Jones for a summary judgment, which he did in February. The judgment, which can be read online at www.sonicsclassaction.com, threw out many of the complaints of both parties, but left intact the plaintiffs’ claim that the Sonics entered into a contract with ticketholders and then broke that contract....

Pete Carroll becomes the first Seahawks head coach to star in a "Funny or Die" video, as the folks who brought you Baby Pearl make this skit with Rob Riggle as a psycho USC fan trying to convince Carroll to stay.

It's been 20 years since I started high school, and while beepers, baggy sweatshirts and parachute pants are no longer quite as sought after among young people, at least one object retains its allure: Weed!

Walking past the Garfield baseball field on the way to see the basketball team play Bothell, four dudes are hanging out in the dugout, smoking a prodigious amount of marijuana. We're fifteen feet past and my friend blurts out "I can still smell it!"

Mary Jane isn't the only familiar sight. Outside the gym entrance, Joe the security guard still sits in his folding chair, as he did when I was a Bulldog.

Inside the new gym, the Garfield band plays the same songs: Theme from "Peter Gunn," "I'm So Glad," some others I don't know the titles of. Rick, the developmentally disabled fellow who liked to faux-conduct the band when I was a Garfield student, faux-conducts the band.

And the ethnic makeups of the respective teams haven't changed. Garfield predominately black, Bothell...well, as my other friend said: "Bothell doesn't look like a basketball team, they look like a beer pong team."

Bothell didn't play like a beer pong team, not at first. Dominic Ballard drove the lane and scored with a nice lefty finish, a subsequent Garfield turnover led to an Oliver Hardin basket, and the Cougars had an early 6-0 lead.

Some of us weren't watching the game as much as the sidelines, where Garfield's coaches were putting on a fashion show. "Every man over there is very attractive," says friend #1. She preferred the coach in the brown suit with a lavender shirt. "Not everyone can pull off a brown suit," she said, "but he's making it work." She also had high marks for the guy in the gray suit. I have to say, I preferred Garfield head coach Ed Haskins' navy blue jacket, tan pants combo....

At halftime of Washington's blowout hoops win over Cal on Saturday, fans were treated to what we were told was the 13th annual mascot basketball game. Participants included the Red Robin Restaurant Robin, "Doppler" of the Seattle Storm, the Ivar's Clam (rather handicapped as it has no arms), and UW's own Harry the Husky. Words cannot do this event justice. To the slideshow!

In the most shocking and yet outstanding news Mariner fans have received maybe ever, star pitcher Felix Hernandez has agreed to a five-year contract. Hernandez could've left the Mariners to sign with another team after the 2011 season, and would've have been possibly the most sought after free agent in baseball history. Now the M's have locked him up through the middle of Sarah Palin's first presidential term.

Why is Hernandez so sought after? The same reason Mariner fans will have silly grins on their faces all morning. Felix Hernandez is one of the best pitchers in baseball, and he's only 23 years old--an age at which some of the all-time greats were still struggling to break into baseball.

Randy Johnson didn't have a single major league win at 23. Bob Gibson had 3. Sandy Koufax, despite having logged five major leagues seasons by age 23, had just 28 wins. Felix Hernandez already has 58.

With his high-90s fastball and knee-buckling curve, Hernandez can be nearly unhittable. And given the current state of medical science, and the fact that fireballing pitchers now seem to be able to pitch into their mid-40s, Hernandez would seem to have an outside shot at equaling Roger Clemens' modern day record of 354 wins (for pitchers in the era of five-man rotations).

The Mariners and general manager Jack Zduriencik (who I could kiss right now) have locked up at least five more seasons of this excellence. I'm shocked that they managed it....