Vandals cruise past Hawaii

College basketball: Deremy Geiger scored 20 points and Stephen Madison added 17 as Idaho beat Hawaii 82-63 in Western Athletic Conference play in Honolulu on Thursday.

The Vandals (17-12, 8-5 WAC), who won for the sixth time in seven games, outrebounded the Warriors 46-27. Idaho shot 51 percent from the field, including 10 of 21 3-pointers, and 80 percent from the free-throw line while limiting Hawaii to 35 percent shooting.

In other WAC games, Preston Medlin scored 26 points as Utah State beat San Jose State for the 10th straight time, 71-61; Louisiana Tech earned its fifth straight victory, beating Fresno State 75-70; and Olek Czyz scored 15 points as Nevada got past New Mexico State 65-61 to win the conference’s regular-season championship.

Varitek officially says goodbye

Baseball: Jason Varitek spent 15 seasons as the stoic center of the Boston Red Sox, with an icy stare that never blinked and an iron jaw that never quivered.

The toughness and tenacity that defined his career and galvanized the Red Sox back to the top of the baseball world finally gave way on Thursday night, when the Captain bid farewell.

With his wife and three daughters by his side, and his parents and dozens of teammates watching from just a few feet away, an emotional Varitek officially announced his retirement in Fort Myers, Fla.

“My teammates,” Varitek said, his voice shaking and his eyes welling, are “what I’m going to miss most. The hardest thing to do is to walk away from your teammates and what they’ve meant to you over the years.”

The Red Sox acquired Varitek and Derek Lowe in a lopsided trade with Seattle for Heathcliff Slocumb in 1997. The catcher spent the next 14 seasons helping turn the Sox from a seemingly cursed franchise to one of the dominant teams of this century.