Northwest Sports: In the (Late) Morning

Dr. Detecto urges BOLD action from Bill Bavasi: "BOLDLY doesn't have many moves left available. BOLDLY has just a few targets; Manny, Abreu, Zito and AJ Burnett. At this time those are the perrenial AllStar Caliber players. These are the types of players that blow up in your face, or blow up the leagues. The BOLDLY attitude grabs one or two of those to throw alongside Ichiro, Richie, and Felix and says we have a window with proven talent that is at most three years longer."

The Oregonian's Aaron Fentress runs down the draft prospects players with Oregon ties who are at the NFL combine.

Worth pointing out again--not a single player from UW was considered talented enough to get an invite to the combine. Make of that what you will.

Turns out Marcus Trufant was designated as a "non-exclusive franchise player" which means, as Frank Hughes explains, that Trufant can negotiate with other teams but said teams would have to give up two first round picks to sign him AND the Seahawks would have the option to match the offer. Could this blow up in their faces Hutchinson-style?

Jim Moore, who's been on a roll lately, reveals something I'd never known about Mel Stottlemyre--that he lost a son to leukemia. Stottlemyre tells Moore that he drew on his memory of his son to deal with his own fight with cancer: "I used him a lot. Still to this day, I think of him daily, how he handled certain situations. He helped me, helped me tremendously. I remember how he handled it and it gave me a lot of inner strength I didn't think I had before."

A Husky win tonight could go a long way toward keeping Arizona out of the NCAA tournament for the first time in 23 years, writes the Times' Bob Condotta. Cats point guard Nic Wise is still out with a knee injury.

This one Husky women's basketball player who the University refused to let out of her scholarship after June Daugherty quit left the team with four games to go in the season. Which is shitty, but so was not letting her out of her scholarship, so I guess we're even.

Looks like the Oregon legislature will OK OU's new basketball arena.

The Ducks play USC tonight, they figure they can win if the Trojans shoot like mortals--last game they shot 18-22 from three, including a desperation halftime buzzer beater. "You can't defend banked-in jump shots from 35 feet," Ernie Kent tells John Hunt of The Oregonian.

The Blazers could use another rebounder, but with Greg Oden coming next year, they aren't going to make a trade now for some guy who'll only play half-a-season.

Tim Casey, who led a mid-60s Oregon defense known as Casey's Commandos, then played briefly in the NFL, died at 63.

John Canzano weighs in on Jeff Larsen, the 5th-grade girls basketball coach who threatened to punch a 17-year-old referee:

Sorry, but [Larsen's] not the disease.

He's a symptom....

Understand, we've stolen sports from our children. Kids have lost the ability to organize themselves and play games without adults around. They've lost focus and enthusiasm for the games. And we're raising a generation of young people who are short on negotiation skills and are unable to understand compromise because they haven't had an opportunity to practice on a playground or field or inside a gymnasium.

Adults have taken their stressful routines and ultra-serious approach and turned kid's games into competitive, intense, often sad weekend events.

Youth sports are supposed to be about kids playing games.

As long as we're booking the coach, we might as well fingerprint and photograph the whole thing.