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Sunday, March 20, 2005

ENDS 

(actually posted very late at ~3:16p)

Welcome to Saturday. This one is freakin' late. See what happens when you prioritize sleep and/or fall asleep while you're reading articles?

In the NCAA Women's Swimming and Diving Championships yesterday, Dana Kirk was 6th in the prelims (1:56.79) and 5th in the finals (1:56.17) in the 200 butterfly. She has one more year left at Stanford. Congrats on a great college season, Dana.

Another season that ended yesterday was that of the Puget Sound Tomahawks, who lost in Game 4 of the Cascade Cup series here at the rink in Bremerton. I'd like to congratulate them on a great season as well, and I'd like to thank Frank for bringing me into all of it as one-third of the sound crew at the games. Thanks to everyone involved, and thanks to the players not only for giving me a much-needed hockey fix, but for the dominating, fast-paced, and high-octane style of hockey they played all year. Thanks to them, I can say that I've listened to one team win the division in their last game of the season last year (Canucks) and saw in person a team win their division with their last win of the season. Thanks to the huge support network that keeps the Tomahawks going, from the coaches to the players to the parents to the game staff to the billet families to the officials, thanks to everybody involved for a truly memorable season, and thanks for having it in Bremerton.

For the random...I had a baseball bat long ago that was from Bat Night at the Kingdome in 1989, I think, might have been a game against the Yankees. I was a second- or third-grader at the time, and we lived in another house in Bremerton, and I got my sister to throw me a grapefruit so I could hit it. I did. I know it's stereotypical that guys love explosions in movies and stuff, but that explosion of grapefruit was great for a little kid. Awesome stuff. Then I probably went inside and watched the Skid Row "Monkey Business" video on MTV.

To the post!!

MARINERS
Yesterday, the Mariners faced a Bob Melvin team that has Quinton McCracken playing for it. More distressingly, Aaron Sele is trying his damnedest to pitch his way into the rotation, and for the love of humanity, this cannot happen. Then Ramon Santiago had a 3-6-3 double play turn into a ball going off his glove into leftfield, and Cha Seung Baek imploded. Felix Hernandez also pitched in a minor-league game.

SEAHAWKS
The Seahawks beat the Broncos in the Chartric Darby sweepstakes. The deal is for three years and $3M, with an $800k signing bonus. This adds to the signings of Kevin Bentley, Bryce Fisher, and possibly/probably Kelly Herndon. As much as I like the increase of activity at Camp Ruskell, I can't wait to see how they draft.

BASKETBALL
The Miah Davis Update
In last night's 106-102 overtime loss to the Fayetteville Patriots, Miah Davis had 10 points (4-11 from the field, 0-4 from downtown, 2-2 from the line), 5 rebounds, 3 assists and a turnover in 41 minutes for the Roanoke Dazzle.

The Roanoke Dazzle hosts Fayetteville again today.

The Marvin Williams Watch
The Tar Heels are playing 9th-seeded Iowa State as I type this, though the game started at 11:30a.

Huskies
The Huskies are in the Sweet 16 after a 97-79 win over the Pacific Tigers. The Huskies appeared to just be too fast for Pacific's big guys. Bobby Jones had 13 points in the first half (including 10 straight) in addition to his great defense on Christian Maraker, and Nate Robinson had 18 of 23 after halftime. Husky assistant Ken Bone also spun Pacific coach Bob Thomason's remarks into a motivational speech. The undersized Huskies outrebounded Pacific 42-32.

First-seeded Washington will face the winner of Georgia Tech/Louisville. The resulting game will be on Thursday.

Bulldogs
End of season. The Zags lost 71-69 when Adam Morrison's late three-pointer bricked. Ronny Turiaf also missed key free throws and JP Batista didn't have a great day either. Neither did 2-for-11 Derek Raivio. Brutal timing by everyone involved. Of course, if you read Jeremy's running tournament commentary from yesterday, you'd have learned that Gonzaga hasn't advanced past the first weekend since 2001. It seems like we just keep waiting for them to get further and it still hasn't happened. Yes, it appears that the Bulldogs lost to the kinder, gentler Bobby Knight. Amazingly, with all the players that had off games, Erroll Knight was on his.

Sonics
There doesn't appear to be talk about players with agendas or not getting enough looks, but the adversity of injury is still here. Jerome James and Danny Fortson are still nursing their injuries and did not fly to LA with the team. Thus, the Sonics have a five-man bench for tonight's game against the Lakers. Worse yet, the Sonics had a stretch coming up of 10 games in 17 days. Hopefully for them, one or both of James and Fortson get healthy soon.

Upcoming...
Tonight at Lakers (6:30p, FSNNW)
Tuesday vs. Milwaukee (7p, FSNNW)
Thursday at Portland (7p, FSNNW)
Friday vs. New York (7:30p, ESPN)

HOCKEY
Portland beat Seattle 3-2 in overtime. After dominating the Winter Hawks in the first part of the season, the Winter Hawks are unbeaten against Seattle since the calendar turned over to 2005, and they took the season series from Seattle. After this win, Portland was 7-2-1 in its last ten games. They finished their road schedule with an 11-game unbeaten streak (10-0-1). In this game, Portland had a 2-0 lead before Seattle tied it. Brendan Mikkelson scored on the power play in the first period, and Garrett Festerling scored shorthanded in the second. Seattle came back with powerplay goals by Scott Jackson and Tom Hickey. With 32 ticks left in overtime, Mike Funk ended the game for Portland, scoring the only even-strength goal of the game. Shots were 40-36 for Seattle. Bryan Bridges stopped 34 for Seattle, and Blake Grenier stopped 38 for Portland. Though Jim Riley marvels at the 75 minutes of penalty time issued in this game, check out the Tri-City/Everett game below this one.

Tri-City beat Everett 3-0. This loss put Everett behind Portland in the race for home-ice advantage in the first round of the playoffs. Three third-period goals sunk the Silvertips in this one. Jason Beeman, Shaun Vey, and Shawn Belle tallied in the third. Shots were 36-33 for Tri-City, and Lelenad Irving stopped 34 for Everett. There were 218 penalty minutes in this game.

Vancouver beat Kelowna 5-1. The Giants avenged the loss to the Rockets from the night before. Kelowna scored the first goal of the game to get the early lead, but the Giants netted the winner in the second period and threw fuel onto the fire in the third period with three more goals. Andrej Meszaros tied the game on the power play with a goal 16 seconds into the middle frame. Chad Scharff got the winner six minutes later. The Giants played pile-on in the third period with powerplay goals from Adam Courchaine and Gilbert Brule as well as an addition Brule goal. Courchaine, Meszaros, and Brule had two assists each to go with their goals. Those three guys had a combined ten points on the night. Shots were 26-25 for Vancouver, and Marek Schwarz stopped 24 for the Giants.

Manitoba beat Houston 8-1. Jeremy Reich spoiled Wade Flaherty's shutout with 8:59 remaining. The Moose scored two in the first period, three in the second, and three in the third. Nathan Smith and Nolan Baumgartner tallied in the first. Jesse Schultz, Kevin Bieksa, and Ryan Kesler scored in the second. Jeff Heerema scored in the third period before Nathan Smith scored twice to finish off his hat trick. Jimmy Roy had three assists, Heerema had two assists to go with his goal, and Danny Groulx had two assists. Shots were 26 apiece, and Wade Flaherty stopped 25 for the Moose.

Queen City beat Puget Sound 2-1. No goals were scored in the first two periods, but Queen City scored the first two goals in the third. THe first goal was unassisted on a rush in which Joe Tolles was able to come from the side boards and get to the net, roofing the puck. The second goal was one that trickled across the line, with no Tomahawk skater quite quick enough to bat it away from the goal line. Sadly, the Tomahawks almost had a trickler in the second period that broke the scoreless tie, except a Queen City skater was able to keep it from crossing the line. Luke Winkelman scored shorthanded to cut the lead in half, and nearly had a tying goal in the final minute, but it was disallowed and play was never whistled dead, much to the dismay of everyone in the arena.

Upcoming...(WHL playoff matchups to be determined)
Tonight (end of WHL regular season): Everett at Seattle, Tri-City at Portland, Houston at Manitoba
Thursday: Saint John's at Manitoba
Saturday: Saint John's at Manitoba
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Have a great Saturday, everyone.

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