If you follow on Twitter, or listen to me yap on radio, you’ll know I thought the Cal Bears coming into this basketball season. The Bears are deep, experienced and have the best all-around player in the league in Jorge Gutierrez. And while other teams like Arizona, UCLA and Washington have all slipped up in the nonconference season, the Bears have not.

The best way I can describe how they play is mature. The No. 20 Bears play a very mature brand of basketball. They run their stuff offensively, and understand what they need to do defensively. Last night’s 87-58 win over Georgia in the CBE Classic was a pretty good example. Cal didn’t look particularly crisp early. But the Bears didn’t resort to taking quick shots or gambling. They stayed with their stuff, knowing it would come around eventually.

Cal plays No. 21 Missouri tonight at 7 p.m. on ESPN 2, should be a good game to watch.

Read more »

In a word – quiet.

With so much fanfare and buildup surrounding the closing of Husky Stadium on Saturday night, activity post-game and over the next couple of days will be benign.

“It will be silent,” UW athletic director Scott Woodward said. “There will be a lot of moving, but no excavation – unlike at Stanford where they were working day and night. … Ours is going to be more methodical – at a frenetic pace but just not as dramatic.”

Even with a lot of the old memorabilia (seats, aisleway signs) being auctioned off online, Woodward knows a few …

Read more »

A few of you may have already noticed – and Ryan Divish has made sure to pen a farewell item on the Mariners blog – that the sports department underwent a shake-up recently with its major beats.

* Divish is moving from M’s/Rainiers to the UW beat full-time as the football and basketball writer (with help from others, including myself and Don Ruiz).

* After two years on the UW beat – yours truly started a few months after coach Steve Sarkisian was hired to lead the revival – I will be moving into a hybrid writing/editing position overseeing South …

Read more »

Savvy is Steve Sarkisian. When he wants to, he can charm, entertain or rivet reporters from all corners of the West Coast.

The UW’s third-year coach was on hand for the Pacific-12 Conference football media day at Fox Studios in Los Angeles on Tuesday afternoon.

For a brief nine minutes – the quickest enter and exit of any coach in the proceedings – he sat up along side tailback Chris Polk talking optimistically about the Huskies’ continued growth.

He was off and running. Others had to face the music concerning offseason issues – something Sarkisian was largely devoid of (unless you count Johri Fogerson’s ongoing issues as a major infraction or distraction, which I don’t).

Rarely in a setting such as this will Sarkisian allow a reporter to peek into his candid, off-handed side. In that regard, he is very guarded.

But on Tuesday, when I approached him about a topic I will write later during fall camp – how impactful year No. 3 is in a reshaping project – Sarkisian raised some insightful points about how much more confidence he has in what his team is doing.

Read more »

The trend continues – go to a BCS national title game, enter the next season as the all-the-marbles favorite to win the Pacific-12 Conference.

Oregon, led by two-time conference coach of the year Chip Kelly received the most first-place votes of any team in either the North or South Division – 29 – in the annual preseason media poll.

With 239 points, the Ducks edged Stanford (13 first-place votes) with 220 in the North Division.

Last year, Washington received a first-place vote – and went all the way to a Holiday Bowl triumph over Nebraska. The Huskies are third – …

Read more »

Green is for Oregon football, money and overstepping greed in recruiting?

Will be an interesting next few months.

Here is Willie Lyles’ side of his scouting-service relationship with the Ducks in today’s Houston Chronicle.

Here’s the announcement from the league:

Expanding for the first time since 1978, the Pac-10 officially becomes the Pac-12 today with the addition of the University of Colorado and the University of Utah, opening a new chapter in the Conference’s long history.

With more than 120 Nobel Laureates across all of its campuses and the first ever to reach 400 NCAA Championships, the Conference is synonymous with both academic excellence and athletic success, having earned the nickname the “Conference of Champions”®.

Colorado and Utah fit perfectly into this tradition, bringing nationally recognized research programs and a record of athletic excellence that includes 42 NCAA titles. They become the first new Conference members since Arizona and Arizona State were added exactly 33 years ago today, joining California, Oregon, Oregon State, Stanford, UCLA, USC, Washington and Washington State.

“This is a very exciting day and a historic moment for our Conference, for college athletics and for Colorado and Utah,” Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott said. “Our Conference was built on a pioneering spirit and through innovation that has contributed to some of the most valuable advancements in this country and the world. Colorado and Utah share those core values and instantly enhance the strength of our Conference both academically and athletically.”
Read more »