Nick Eaton

PULLMAN – The Washington State volleyball coach who resigned last week did so to take an assistant coaching job at Wisconsin. Brian Heffernan spent four years at WSU and registered a 39-87 record. The Cougars finished last in the Pac-10 this past season, and ninth the three prior years.

MOSCOW, Idaho – It was the win the Vandals had been waiting for, a home-court exposition of the work they've been putting into this season. Only Idaho's fourth overall and its first in the Western Athletic Conference this season, the 85-78 victory Thursday night came against fellow conference-basement dweller Louisiana Tech (3-11, 0-2 WAC) at the Kibbie Dome.

MOSCOW, Idaho – For a 10-point game, the Vandals' loss to New Mexico State was quite the show for the few-but-rowdy fans at Idaho's Western Athletic Conference basketball opener Wednesday. Quite the show in aggressiveness, quite the show in fouls, quite the show in turnovers.

It was a stressful struggle, but DeAngelo Casto's fight for eligibility proved a success Tuesday when the WIAA approved his appeal. The decision came down just hours before the Ferris boys basketball game at East Valley. Though he had been practicing with the team all season, Casto finally took the court wearing scarlet and white.

MOSCOW, Idaho – It was a theme circulating through the Idaho Vandals' locker room after their game Sunday: They finally earned their paychecks. "This group has worked really, really hard," Idaho coach George Pfiefer said, "and for them to get their payday (today) was deserving."

MOSCOW, Idaho – The Idaho Vandals who played in the first half Saturday looked nothing like the Idaho Vandals who played in the second half and in overtime. A slow first-half offense ultimately cost them a thriller, falling 71-69 to Idaho State in non-conference men's basketball.

PULLMAN – According to the score, the 10th-ranked WSU men's basketball team's exhibition win over Lewis-Clark State was the expected rout. But the Cougars' sporadic sloppy ball handling gave the visiting Warriors a few chances to strut their stuff, plowing several alley-oop slammers that stunned the Beasley Coliseum crowd. In the end, WSU's scoring efficiency on defense led to an 80-42 romp of the NAIA Warriors. Coach Tony Bennett said his team needs to work on its offense and solidify its defense before Friday's regular-season opener against Eastern Washington.

Michael Blanchard drifted off to sleep in his captain's cabin, the small fishing tender bobbing off the shore of Knowles Head in Alaska's Prince William Sound. Squeezed into the other cabin were a young man from Spokane and a high school senior from Illinois, deckhands on the New St. Joseph this past summer. They had been in and out of Valdez, Alaska, every few days, unloading the salmon they ferried to port for the hundreds of fishing boats trawling the seas. Things had been going smoothly for two weeks, though the second-season deckhand from the Lilac City, Justin S. Bullock, had seemed a bit depressed lately, said Blanchard, 61.

Two jack-o'-lanterns grinned mischievously from Margaret Terry's deck as firefighters stomped in and out of her ranch house. White smoke soared into the cold Halloween air, fueled by small flare-ups of flames that spiked off the roof. Terry stood back from the house, comforted by three of her friends and kept warm by her New York Giants jacket. Her emotions flashed from distress to disbelief, crying one moment and laughing the next.

Federal biologists killed 18 deer at Deer Park Airport last month in an effort to keep the animals off the runways – an increasing public-safety issue at the alfalfa-laden airfield. The Sept. 26 hunt took care of just half of the problem animals, airport Manager Penni Loomis said. Another operation will soon be needed.

The U.S. Figure Skating Championships held January in Spokane was named 2007's best overall sporting event Friday by Louisville, Ky.-based SportsTravel magazine – over contenders such as Super Bowl XLI and the 2006 World Series. "We're in shock, needless to say," said Toby Steward, president of Star USA, the company that organized Spokane's winter competition. "We are blown away."