Sasquatch, Cards ready for big deal

Humberto Perez isn’t ducking the obvious.

Two unbeaten basketball teams, one ranked 13th in the nation, geographic rivals, the scholarship guys vs. the need-based-aid brigade, the baggage of 40 years of hard-fought games and, albeit infrequently, a few hard feelings.

It’s a big game, North Idaho College and Community Colleges of Spokane, by their standards.

“Plus, I transferred from that school,” said Perez, who signed with NIC but plays for CCS, “so that probably adds to it a little bit.”

A little bit. Every teeter-totter needs its fulcrum.

We interrupt the civic hyperventilation over Gonzaga, Dick Bennett’s blues at Washington State and the profiles in mediocrity at Idaho and Eastern Washington – all of which are in action tonight, by the way – to divert a little light to where it rightfully belongs, the SCC gym over on Mission.

There at 8 p.m. – enough time to take in Gonzaga at 5 and drain a between-games pint – the Sasquatch and Cardinals meet for the who-knows-how-manyth time, the record-keeping at the juco level being as delightfully hit-and-miss as sourcing at the New York Times.

“I called Gonzaga and told them, ‘You guys are killing us – couldn’t you move your game to a different night?’ ” joked CCS coach Eric Hughes. “Maybe we can run a shuttle bus from Jack and Dan’s.”

We’re guessing that would blow the marketing budget. For the next decade.

The jukes do their thing on a shoestring, but this year the results have been anything but modest. The Sasquatch – behind roadrunner point guard Jeremy Mangum and the bombs-away shooting of Perez and Erik Bell – are off to a 6-0 start, having run the table at tournaments in Edmonds and Ontario, Ore. That record is the best in the Northwest Athletic Association of Community Colleges, though the first conference power poll is somewhere down the line.

North Idaho, meanwhile, is 9-0 and jumped six spots in the National Junior College Athletic Association poll Tuesday – a rather startling upgrade from last year’s 13-18 finish. Like the Sasquatch, the Cardinals love the 3 – they made 20 in a game the day after Thanksgiving – and that includes 6-foot-10 Darin Nagle of Potlatch, Idaho, their most intriguing prospect.

You’ll note the different affiliations. The NWAACC – a conference of Washington and Oregon schools – isn’t a part of the NJCAA. The Sasquatch could go 32-0, but they’ll never win a national championship – so the home-and-away series with NIC is their one measuring stick, something that’s a little more meaningful when the Cardinals are having a good year.

“I think it’s good for both programs and I know we’re always excited to play against them,” said Hughes, “though I don’t know if they put the same emphasis on the game.”

He needn’t worry.

“I don’t think we look at them like an NWAACC school,” said Jared Phay, who’s in his second year as NIC’s head coach. “It’s more like a conference game for us.”

Affiliation isn’t the only difference. There are years when the Cardinals’ roster looks like something put together by Carmen Sandiego, with recruits from Baltimore to Belize; CCS has occasionally started five guys from Spokane County. NIC can award full scholarships, the Sasquatch $200 tuition waivers and $1,000 jobs. The Cardinals might send five guys off to NCAA Division I schools in a year; CCS might send one every five years.

Then there are the things they have in common – playing style, coaches with an appreciation for where they are and, occasionally, a recruit.

Which brings us back to Perez.

The Big Nine player of the year at Davis High School in Yakima, the 6-2 Perez signed with NIC back in May, then reconsidered and joined Mangum, his former Davis teammate, at CCS.

“I liked the team and both are great places, but I just thought the better situation for me was here,” he said. “I felt bad because I wasted their time a little bit and I apologized to coach Phay, but he said he’d support whatever I did.”

Phay said he thought Perez “maybe felt we had too many guards and was worried about playing time here – but to be honest, some of our guys should have been worried about him.”

They can worry tonight. Perez is averaging 19 points a game and shooting 51 percent from 3-point range, or a shade better than the 47 percent Spokane is shooting as a team. The Sasquatch are mostly in the 6-5-and-under division, which makes guarding them hard.

So are the Cardinals, especially Nagle, who was 6-2 as a junior in high school and “has been a guard all his life,” Phay said, “which is good, but he still doesn’t have that post mentality. Sometimes, it’s hard to get him to go down low and dominate.”

Get the impression there won’t be a lot of bumping and grinding tonight?

Hughes, for one, isn’t sure that’s a choice.

“I think we have to play like this,” he said. “As a coach, you always want to play defense and get after people, but I don’t think that’s the reality at this level. I think you have to let kids go up and down – and I never thought I would play this way, but I’ve enjoyed coaching it.”

In fact, it’s revived him. Hughes was an assistant at Washington and one of the casualties of Bob Bender’s firing, and when it happened he figured he’d be selling insurance.

“I didn’t want to be a JC basketball coach,” he admitted, “but now it’s been four years and I don’t see myself doing anything else. I appreciate these kids and what it means to them and all they do. Practice is fun. You don’t have to practice 21/2 hours like you do at the Division I level. I don’t think you could. They’d look at you like you were crazy.”

Phay thought he was last year when he served as interim coach after Hugh Watson bailed. He felt the burden of proving himself with somebody else’s team, and the weight of a couple of losing streaks.

“I actually like coaching this year,” he confessed – even when he winds up in a game against a player he signed.

“I’m thinking of it as just another game,” Perez said, “but I guess it probably isn’t.”