Friday, January 28, 2005
HUNGER
Welcome to Friday.
Since I'm sure you're looking for something completely random here before I go on with the usual post, I'll give you something completely random...
Food that I ate at college (Ellensburg) when I had my own place and no meal card...
-- pizza, usually of the Papa Murphy's or Papa John's variety, and 99% of the time I had a coupon for it
-- ramen, which I believe was part of the contract I signed to rent the place
-- whatever cereal at Safeway that was marked down if you had a Club card (I grew fond of Apple Jacks and Honey Bunches of Oats)
-- banana, usually chopped and put into the cereal (one of the few dents into the nutritious parts of the food pyramid)
-- quesadillas along the lines of melted cheese and hopefully some ground sausage between the two tortillas
-- uber-breakfast burritos; a mixture of scrambled eggs (sprinkled with cayenne pepper), sausage, melted cheese, salsa, and possibly sour cream, all wrapped in a tortilla. Usually I'd make four of these at a time and they'd last me two days. Easily my best achievement ever while cooking by myself.
-- there's an exact recipe online that I can't find for stuffed mushrooms. Basically you take out the stems, dice those up, then mix the diced-up stems with cream cheese, crushed croutons, and the ground sausage, and then stuff the heads of the mushrooms with the mixture. Then you throw it all into the oven. It's not healthy, but it's damn good. The mushrooms come out juicy. It's scrumtrilescent.
Are you hungry yet? Was that random enough for you?
Sports? Oh yeah, that. Bremerton 2002 grad and butterfly specialist swimmer Dana Kirk and the Stanford Cardinal have two dual meets at home this weekend against UCLA this afternoon and UCLA tomorrow afternoon.
On TV tonight -- SuperSonics at Warriors (7:30p, FSNNW)
Now, the post...
MARINERS
Before I get to the Mariner articles here, I am sad to pass on that former Red Sox reliever Rich Garces, who I endearingly yelled "EL GUAPOOO!!" at along the warning track before a game in Seattle back in 2000, is apparently missing according to some reports in Venezuela. We know about Ugueth Urbina's mom being kidnapped and all, but this is just really disturbing that kidnapping top-dollar athletes seems to be all the rage in Venezuela. Thanks to blog colleague Jeremy for that link.
[Add ~1:40p -- Jeff cites Spanish news sources as saying that Garces merely took a 10-day vacation without telling his wife. Anyone want to wager on a divorce?]
Not surprisingly, there are questions about the pitching. Now it seems that this minor-league system which was once so rich in pitching before last season is now in a position where they only have 17 pitchers on the 40-man roster with just over two weeks to go until pitchers and catchers report to spring training. A total of 23 pitchers is slated to go to camp as of right now, and the Mariners have averaged 28 pitchers per camp for the last decade. Also in the Finnigan article is the revelation that the "divot" in Bucky Jacobsen's knee upon surgery was double the size they were expecting after seeing the MRI. Bucky is now taking hacks in the cage. At least he didn't injure his throwing arm.
John Levesque says that the Mariners lucked out on the defensive aspect of things this offseason. While it's no secret that Carlos Delgado was highly coveted because he was a lefty bat, he and his agent held out for a long time, just signing in the last couple of days. The Mariners ended up netting Sexson, who can pick at first, and Beltre, who can pick at the other corner. Surely this looks better defensively than Sexson in left and Delgado at first would. That would have been quite weird, and there would have definitely been a period of adjustment for Sexson to get accustomed to left field. Luckily, we don't have to deal with that. And we got Adrian Beltre too. And somehow Bill Bavasi didn't get taken to the woodshed by Scott Boras in signing him. Hooray!
SEAHAWKS
Seahawks college scouting director Scot McCloughan will interview with the 49ers to be a not-quite general manager, or something like that. He apparently is also a rumored name on the list for the Seahawks' vacant VP of football ops post.
In other news, the Seahawks still do not have a president or a vice president of football operations.
BASKETBALL
The Marvin Williams Watch
Marvin Williams and the Tar Heels play at Virginia bright and early tomorrow (9a, ESPN).
Huskies
If I manage to wake up early enough, I might turn the radio to KJR in the morning to hear Softy bitch about Arizona getting to the free-throw line 40 times while the Huskies only got 21 trips to the line. The Wildcats' 1-3-1 zone made the Huskies start bombing threes, and they drained 13 of 34. But the free throws on the other end were just too much.
[Add ~1:38p -- Softy wasn't nearly as ticked on his show, saying that although the game did have some "homer officials," the Wildcats were jumping up and down about the Huskies, which signifies how good the Huskies have become, and that all of the Huskies' goals are still intact even with the loss. Also, Softy says the Huskies win that game if it's in Seattle.]
In another note, Arizona's 6'11" Channing Frye had exactly two rebounds in last night's game. He had three inches on Mike Jensen and the Huskies killed the Wildcats on the offensive boards (Washington had 17) and outrebounded them overall 35-26.
The Huskies play at Arizona State on Sunday afternoon (12:45p, CBS).
Bulldogs
The Zags host the Portland Pilots tomorrow night (8p, ESPN2).
Sonics
Before going to the daily articles, I must note that Kevin Pelton's second part in his series, The Sonics Play Moneyball, is now up at the Sonics' official site. Part two of the series focuses on Dean Oliver's love of math, science, basketball, and Bill James' work, and how Oliver parlayed his hobby into his current job. Kevin also threw in a bunch of links to outside nuts-and-bolts statistical stuff that Oliver has been working with. The first article of the series is here.
It's the halfway point in the Sonics' regular season. Though it'd be fun to just multiply everything by two and have the Sonics finish 58-24 with a three seed, we can't do that. The fans just have to roll with the punches and hope everything turns out okay.
With that, there's some half-season pieces running.
As was put into the articles yesterday, Ray Allen says that one thing that could help the Sonics get their groove back in the coming months would be if one of Jerome James, Nick Collison, or Danny Fortson can average 12 points and 7-8 rebounds a game. That'd be nice, and Jerome James seems to think that Collison would be the best candidate to improve, due to his apparent camaraderie with Luke Ridnour. Of course, I'd have to agree with Fortson and Coach McMillan here -- the team just has to get back to playing defense again, and that's been all too obvious in the games since the second Miami game. The Sonics have had a fairly mediocre January, which currently stands at 7-6 (not 6-6 like I mistakenly said after the Jazz game the other day). This 7-6 January so far follows a 13-3 November and a 9-3 December. The Sonics are at Golden State and they host San Antonio before turning the page on the calendar to February -- where they get the back end of a back-to-back on the road against a torrid Sacramento team. Ouch. Maybe the Sonics can get bailed out by some previously undiscovered Chris Webber injury? Maybe some more Peja Stojakovic back spasms? Wait, the Nuggets had a ton of injured guys, and the Sonics still didn't beat them...
Usually when there's this much of an improvement in wins from the season before, it means there was either some very significant draft pick or trade bringing in some new blood or a change of coach. Really, everything has seemingly been held constant except that Brent Barry went to San Antonio, and Calvin Booth was traded for Danny Fortson. Other than that, it's just been largely the same group of guys playing together for another year. Last year, the team wasn't that great and there were some signficant injuries. This year, the players know the tendencies of their teammates and are more experienced as a group. Add some Danny Fortson screens and elbows inside, and add some plain ol' oomph to the defense, and voila! You've got what the Sonics have dished out over the first 41 games of the season. Of course, the defense was more shifted to the first 30 or so games, and hopefully the team finds that again.
Danny O'Neil's also got his three lists of five points each concerning where the Sonics could be headed.
Congrats to Luke Ridnour on being named to the sophomore team in the Rookie Challenge festivities for All-Star Weekend. Take a look at the sophomore team, because it's stacked.
I guess I'll close the Sonics' part of the post by saying this: does anyone realize that George Karl is now going to be coaching for the franchise that handed him and the city of Seattle one of the worst sports defeats of all time? Does Karl himself realize this?
Upcoming...
Tonight at Golden State (7:30p, FSNNW)
Monday vs. San Antonio (7p, FSNNW)
Tuesday at Sacramento (7p, FSNNW)
HOCKEY
Matt Gaschk sat down for a bit with Zack FitzGerald of the Seattle Thunderbirds.
Also, the Puget Sound Tomahawks look to bonuce back from two losses against then-second-place Portland by hosting the Spokane Flyers at the Bremerton Ice Arena tonight and tomorrow. They also have a Tuesday-Wednesday set when they host the Queen City Cutthroats, who hail from Helena, Montana.
Upcoming...
Tonight: Kamloops at Seattle, Portland at Everett, Tri-City at Vancouver, Manitoba at Utah, Spokane at Puget Sound
Saturday: Everett at Seattle, Tri-City at Portland, Kelowna at Vancouver, Manitoba at Utah, Spokane at Puget Sound
Sunday: Everett at Tri-City
Monday: Grand Rapids at Manitoba
Tuesday: Grand Rapids at Manitoba, Queen City at Puget Sound
Wednesday: Spokane at Seattle, Vancouver at Red Deer, Queen City at Puget Sound
---
Have a great Friday and a great weekend, everyone.
Since I'm sure you're looking for something completely random here before I go on with the usual post, I'll give you something completely random...
Food that I ate at college (Ellensburg) when I had my own place and no meal card...
-- pizza, usually of the Papa Murphy's or Papa John's variety, and 99% of the time I had a coupon for it
-- ramen, which I believe was part of the contract I signed to rent the place
-- whatever cereal at Safeway that was marked down if you had a Club card (I grew fond of Apple Jacks and Honey Bunches of Oats)
-- banana, usually chopped and put into the cereal (one of the few dents into the nutritious parts of the food pyramid)
-- quesadillas along the lines of melted cheese and hopefully some ground sausage between the two tortillas
-- uber-breakfast burritos; a mixture of scrambled eggs (sprinkled with cayenne pepper), sausage, melted cheese, salsa, and possibly sour cream, all wrapped in a tortilla. Usually I'd make four of these at a time and they'd last me two days. Easily my best achievement ever while cooking by myself.
-- there's an exact recipe online that I can't find for stuffed mushrooms. Basically you take out the stems, dice those up, then mix the diced-up stems with cream cheese, crushed croutons, and the ground sausage, and then stuff the heads of the mushrooms with the mixture. Then you throw it all into the oven. It's not healthy, but it's damn good. The mushrooms come out juicy. It's scrumtrilescent.
Are you hungry yet? Was that random enough for you?
Sports? Oh yeah, that. Bremerton 2002 grad and butterfly specialist swimmer Dana Kirk and the Stanford Cardinal have two dual meets at home this weekend against UCLA this afternoon and UCLA tomorrow afternoon.
On TV tonight -- SuperSonics at Warriors (7:30p, FSNNW)
Now, the post...
MARINERS
Before I get to the Mariner articles here, I am sad to pass on that former Red Sox reliever Rich Garces, who I endearingly yelled "EL GUAPOOO!!" at along the warning track before a game in Seattle back in 2000, is apparently missing according to some reports in Venezuela. We know about Ugueth Urbina's mom being kidnapped and all, but this is just really disturbing that kidnapping top-dollar athletes seems to be all the rage in Venezuela. Thanks to blog colleague Jeremy for that link.
[Add ~1:40p -- Jeff cites Spanish news sources as saying that Garces merely took a 10-day vacation without telling his wife. Anyone want to wager on a divorce?]
Not surprisingly, there are questions about the pitching. Now it seems that this minor-league system which was once so rich in pitching before last season is now in a position where they only have 17 pitchers on the 40-man roster with just over two weeks to go until pitchers and catchers report to spring training. A total of 23 pitchers is slated to go to camp as of right now, and the Mariners have averaged 28 pitchers per camp for the last decade. Also in the Finnigan article is the revelation that the "divot" in Bucky Jacobsen's knee upon surgery was double the size they were expecting after seeing the MRI. Bucky is now taking hacks in the cage. At least he didn't injure his throwing arm.
John Levesque says that the Mariners lucked out on the defensive aspect of things this offseason. While it's no secret that Carlos Delgado was highly coveted because he was a lefty bat, he and his agent held out for a long time, just signing in the last couple of days. The Mariners ended up netting Sexson, who can pick at first, and Beltre, who can pick at the other corner. Surely this looks better defensively than Sexson in left and Delgado at first would. That would have been quite weird, and there would have definitely been a period of adjustment for Sexson to get accustomed to left field. Luckily, we don't have to deal with that. And we got Adrian Beltre too. And somehow Bill Bavasi didn't get taken to the woodshed by Scott Boras in signing him. Hooray!
SEAHAWKS
Seahawks college scouting director Scot McCloughan will interview with the 49ers to be a not-quite general manager, or something like that. He apparently is also a rumored name on the list for the Seahawks' vacant VP of football ops post.
In other news, the Seahawks still do not have a president or a vice president of football operations.
BASKETBALL
The Marvin Williams Watch
Marvin Williams and the Tar Heels play at Virginia bright and early tomorrow (9a, ESPN).
Huskies
If I manage to wake up early enough, I might turn the radio to KJR in the morning to hear Softy bitch about Arizona getting to the free-throw line 40 times while the Huskies only got 21 trips to the line. The Wildcats' 1-3-1 zone made the Huskies start bombing threes, and they drained 13 of 34. But the free throws on the other end were just too much.
[Add ~1:38p -- Softy wasn't nearly as ticked on his show, saying that although the game did have some "homer officials," the Wildcats were jumping up and down about the Huskies, which signifies how good the Huskies have become, and that all of the Huskies' goals are still intact even with the loss. Also, Softy says the Huskies win that game if it's in Seattle.]
In another note, Arizona's 6'11" Channing Frye had exactly two rebounds in last night's game. He had three inches on Mike Jensen and the Huskies killed the Wildcats on the offensive boards (Washington had 17) and outrebounded them overall 35-26.
The Huskies play at Arizona State on Sunday afternoon (12:45p, CBS).
Bulldogs
The Zags host the Portland Pilots tomorrow night (8p, ESPN2).
Sonics
Before going to the daily articles, I must note that Kevin Pelton's second part in his series, The Sonics Play Moneyball, is now up at the Sonics' official site. Part two of the series focuses on Dean Oliver's love of math, science, basketball, and Bill James' work, and how Oliver parlayed his hobby into his current job. Kevin also threw in a bunch of links to outside nuts-and-bolts statistical stuff that Oliver has been working with. The first article of the series is here.
It's the halfway point in the Sonics' regular season. Though it'd be fun to just multiply everything by two and have the Sonics finish 58-24 with a three seed, we can't do that. The fans just have to roll with the punches and hope everything turns out okay.
With that, there's some half-season pieces running.
As was put into the articles yesterday, Ray Allen says that one thing that could help the Sonics get their groove back in the coming months would be if one of Jerome James, Nick Collison, or Danny Fortson can average 12 points and 7-8 rebounds a game. That'd be nice, and Jerome James seems to think that Collison would be the best candidate to improve, due to his apparent camaraderie with Luke Ridnour. Of course, I'd have to agree with Fortson and Coach McMillan here -- the team just has to get back to playing defense again, and that's been all too obvious in the games since the second Miami game. The Sonics have had a fairly mediocre January, which currently stands at 7-6 (not 6-6 like I mistakenly said after the Jazz game the other day). This 7-6 January so far follows a 13-3 November and a 9-3 December. The Sonics are at Golden State and they host San Antonio before turning the page on the calendar to February -- where they get the back end of a back-to-back on the road against a torrid Sacramento team. Ouch. Maybe the Sonics can get bailed out by some previously undiscovered Chris Webber injury? Maybe some more Peja Stojakovic back spasms? Wait, the Nuggets had a ton of injured guys, and the Sonics still didn't beat them...
Usually when there's this much of an improvement in wins from the season before, it means there was either some very significant draft pick or trade bringing in some new blood or a change of coach. Really, everything has seemingly been held constant except that Brent Barry went to San Antonio, and Calvin Booth was traded for Danny Fortson. Other than that, it's just been largely the same group of guys playing together for another year. Last year, the team wasn't that great and there were some signficant injuries. This year, the players know the tendencies of their teammates and are more experienced as a group. Add some Danny Fortson screens and elbows inside, and add some plain ol' oomph to the defense, and voila! You've got what the Sonics have dished out over the first 41 games of the season. Of course, the defense was more shifted to the first 30 or so games, and hopefully the team finds that again.
Danny O'Neil's also got his three lists of five points each concerning where the Sonics could be headed.
Congrats to Luke Ridnour on being named to the sophomore team in the Rookie Challenge festivities for All-Star Weekend. Take a look at the sophomore team, because it's stacked.
I guess I'll close the Sonics' part of the post by saying this: does anyone realize that George Karl is now going to be coaching for the franchise that handed him and the city of Seattle one of the worst sports defeats of all time? Does Karl himself realize this?
Upcoming...
Tonight at Golden State (7:30p, FSNNW)
Monday vs. San Antonio (7p, FSNNW)
Tuesday at Sacramento (7p, FSNNW)
HOCKEY
Matt Gaschk sat down for a bit with Zack FitzGerald of the Seattle Thunderbirds.
Also, the Puget Sound Tomahawks look to bonuce back from two losses against then-second-place Portland by hosting the Spokane Flyers at the Bremerton Ice Arena tonight and tomorrow. They also have a Tuesday-Wednesday set when they host the Queen City Cutthroats, who hail from Helena, Montana.
Upcoming...
Tonight: Kamloops at Seattle, Portland at Everett, Tri-City at Vancouver, Manitoba at Utah, Spokane at Puget Sound
Saturday: Everett at Seattle, Tri-City at Portland, Kelowna at Vancouver, Manitoba at Utah, Spokane at Puget Sound
Sunday: Everett at Tri-City
Monday: Grand Rapids at Manitoba
Tuesday: Grand Rapids at Manitoba, Queen City at Puget Sound
Wednesday: Spokane at Seattle, Vancouver at Red Deer, Queen City at Puget Sound
---
Have a great Friday and a great weekend, everyone.
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