Blog matters

A sampling from the past week of entries in The Spokesman-Review blog SportsLink at spokesman.com/ sportslink.

There has been plenty of chatter about the WCC schedule this season, where several teams had prolonged home or road stretches.

San Francisco and Portland had five-game homestands. Gonzaga opened with four straight at home and finishes with four on the road. San Diego had seven road games in the first half and will play seven at home in the second half.

The addition of Pacific created a 10-team scheduling model. Commissioner Jamie Zaninovich said that presented “more challenges putting it together,” including protecting travel partners and working with television partners.

“We’ve identified what the challenges are and I think we can get ahead of it, certainly some of the home and road stretches,” Zaninovich said. “We’ll get it cleaned up.”

Athletic director Bill Moos said it is unlikely the Cougars will make major upgrades to the basketball facilities:

“That’s going to be a question the coach will ask in the event that I was interviewing someone. I don’t really think that ours are that bad, I think that our practice gym – we really did some great improvements to it. I continue to feel that Beasley is a good seating bowl, good sight lines. I do think however that it’s worn out and needs a facelift and we are in the process of addressing locker rooms and meeting rooms and training rooms, weight rooms, etc.

“And the addition of the video board and some of the branding we’ve done in there, I think we can put some more focus on upgrades and a little bit more sizzle in the branding and really the exterior. I don’t think we’re that bad in basketball.”

Connor Hill felt comfortable on Tuesday night, and why not? He was shooting at Memorial Gym, where the Vandals are unbeaten this season (albeit in just three games). Hill sank eight 3-pointers and finished with 28 points in Idaho’s 96-88 victory over Cal State Northridge.

Idaho registered a season-best 21 assists, a third of which came from point guard Glen Dean, a graduate transfer who had just one turnover. Dean’s seven assists are a season-high. “Glen Dean played a whale of a game tonight,” coach Don Verlin said. “I thought it was his best floor game (of the season).”