COUGARS

We've got a lot for you this morning, so we're going to get right at it. There is a ton of basketball stuff, of course, along with another football commit for 2010. Read on.
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• We're going to start with football. North Mason High junior John Fullington, 6-foot-6, 271-pounds, said Tuesday he's decided to attend WSU. The junior, who has relatives on this side of the state, told the Kitsap Sun he expects to play offensive tackle in Pullman, though he wants to improve his foot speed in hopes of playing tight end or defensive end. ... Also on the football front – every college sports front, really – we have our piece on the compliance business and how it works. It's kind of interesting to think 10 years or so ago no one had more than one or two people working in NCAA compliance and now some schools have 10 or so. As Eastern's Don Ross told me, "it's a lot of money."

• Now on to Pac-10 basketball. The Cougars will be facing a USC team coming off a tough loss at ASU – the Trojans have lost three consecutive games – highlighted by the ejection of coach Tim Floyd. The LA Times' Chris Foster is reporting neither Floyd nor guard Daniel Hackett were reprimanded by the Pac-10. Interesting. Another interesting part of Foster's story is the last paragraph. Dwight Lewis missed the first game between these two in Pullman with the same ankle injury. ... Washington and UCLA meet Thursday night and many feel this might just decided whether the Huskies can win the conference title. The Bruins may not have center Alfred Aboya available. ... The showdown in LA was the thrust of Dan Raley's Pac-10 notebook in the P-I and Don Ruiz's piece in the News Tribune. ... The Times' Bud Withers believes Ernie Kent will be back at Oregon.

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• That's it in the way of links. We'll be writing our advance this morning, along with all the other accouterments we have each Thursday, and we'll post them after we get to Los Angeles. Till then …

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