Seattle Sports: In the Morning

The Huskies beat Cal State Northridge 80-66 with 0 points from Ryan Appleby, who faced a box-and-one when he was in the game, and left early with back spasms. Brockman had 21 and 10, and Overton was 4-4 from three.

Venoy Overton threw a successful length of the court pass to Jon Brockman, and gave Bob Condotta a glimpse into his in-game decision making: "Every time Brockman runs, he looks up and looks for the ball, and I seen a little guy under him so I knew there was no way the little guy was getting the ball."

P.J. Carlesimo isn't exactly staying up nights wondering when he'll be able to use Robert Swift again, writes TNT's Eric D. Williams: "I don’t even ask, to be honest you, what the timetable is. When he’s able to get some weight off and when he’s able to play without pain or whatever the doctors are looking for, that’s when.”

The Seahawks' brutal travel schedule may account for their road woes, writes the Dallas Morning News' Rick Gosslein: "Think about it – the 12-2 Cowboys travel no farther than 1,400 miles to play a road game. The 9-5 Seahawks have five road trips this season in excess of 2,000 miles. It's called jet lag...The Seahawks have been in existence since 1976 but have managed only two winning seasons on the road." Obviously, the solution is to pick the city up and move it to Kansas.

Steve Kelley argues that the Hawks aren't sunk just because they don't have a decent running back: "Teams have won Super Bowls without super backs. Holmgren won one in Green Bay with Dorsey Levens getting just enough yards to complement Brett Favre...The New York Giants won the 1991 Super Bowl with journeyman Ottis Anderson at running back. And San Francisco's leading rusher when it won its first Super Bowl in the 1981 season was Ricky Patton, who gained a mere 543 yards." Perhaps. Anderson and Patton both averaged less than four yds per rush in their teams' Super Bowl seasons. But Levens averaged 4.7. Mo Morris is averaging 4.4 right now. The Times' Danny O'Neil explores the same topic, looking at team rushing stats of Super Bowl winners going back to 2000.

Wally Szczerbiak tells Peter May of the Boston Globe that the Sonics are starting to settle into a groove: "There were a lot of issues at the start of the season with all the new players, the new staff. It took time. The coaching staff has done a good job of putting the relocation situation aside and getting us to focus on the task at hand. I think once you get into the heart of the season, that's all you focus on - the games."

Kent Baer won't talk much to his hometown paper about his firing, but he does fess up to some errors, writes Craig Hislop of the Logan Herald-Journal: "Baer admits injuries and recruiting mistakes by the staff left the Washington defense thin in experience."

Rainier Beach won the Mission Prep tourney in San Luis Obispo. The Times has a roundup of how other teams did.

Hawks play Baltimore today at 1:15 at Qwest. Here's the Stats LLC preview.