WSU’s conference play inches closer

With Pac-10 Conference basketball play set to begin on New Year’s Eve (that’s tomorrow for all of you who don’t have a calendar), today turned out to be the day to preview the upcoming season for many West Coast papers. We have links to all, plus a football result. Read on.

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• We gave you the opportunity yesterday to read our Pac-10 team-by-team preview on the blog (which included a few notes), and we’ll offer you the chance to read it as it appeared in the paper this morning. By the way, if you want to listen to Ken Bone’s press conference, you can here thanks to CougCenter and the WSU SID office. … The Times’ Percy Allen has his predictions on his blog, taking the place of his weekly power rankings. … There are also previews in the San Jose Mercury News and the San Francisco Chronicle along with a short one in the Arizona Republic. … With the Oregon Ducks in the Rose Bowl, the basketball news is pretty brief from Eugene – it also didn’t help that the Register Guard’s website is on the blink this morning with a mod_python error, whatever that is – so we don’t have anything to offer on Thursday’s opponent for WSU. But the Oregon State coaching staff is waiting on some news, which shows the Beavers didn’t plan their offseason well. … Even though Arizona has a big football game tonight, there is always basketball news out of Tucson. … Stanford snapped its three-game losing streak last night with a gut-it-out victory over James Madison at home. … Cal won its tournament, riding Patrick Christopher’s hot hand past UC Santa Barbara. … And, in football news, UCLA rallied in the second half to defeat Temple in a frigid Washington, D.C.

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• That’s it for this morning. We’ll be back if news warrants. Until then …