COUGARS

Good Tuesday morning to you. The weather is fine here in Pullman, though there must have been a blizzard in the apartment complex Sunday. Wait, it's just trash from Super Bowl parties. Well it hasn't "melted" yet. Really, how far is it to the dumpster? Speaking of ... you thought I was going to say trash, didn't you, then refer to the links I'm giving you. Well, nothing could be further from the truth. We have some good links ... and some others. Read on.
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• Despite a Pac-10 basketball race that is as tight as I can remember, most of the stuff I've found is on football recruiting. What is this, the SEC? OK, I'm guilty too, with this piece I did yesterday that ran in today's S-R. There are also a couple more links on my post from last night that contained our story in its unedited version. And there are more football links this morning, what with this piece from Howie Stalwick that ran in the P-I a couple of on-line posts that put recruiting classes in perspective over time, which is truly the only way to rate a class. There's this post from Ted Miller on ESPN.com that looks back at the class of 2006 in the Pac-10 and then this one from Nick Daschel at Buster Sports that ranges back to 2002 in Cougar recruiting. Daschel did all the Northwest Pac-10 schools, which you can access by pulling down to the Pac-10 under the Football banner. Jon Wilner of San Jose came up with a formula to track recruiting classes. It works if you believe the so-called recruiting experts actually know what they are talking about. I'm not so sure that's the case. The last couple things we offer are small items, but interesting ones. You know how WSU attracted Casey Locker, cousin of UW quarterback Jake? Well, now the Cougars have received a walk-on commitment from the son of a former UW (and Idaho and Cal) coach. It's Redmond quarterback David Gilbertson (last item). Though nothing's official yet, because it can't be announced until he is accepted into school, Ferris High lineman Elliot Bosch will walk on at WSU. His uncle, John Johnson, is a WSU athletic administrator, but Bosch earned the invite on his own merits, as an all-state lineman. However, they missed out on a Hawaii cornerback because, according to the player, they wouldn't let him play baseball also.

• Back to basketball, where there isn't a heck of a lot. We mine Wilner again for this blog post on the Pac-10's 10-best players at the halfway point (I agree with most, though I would give Jerome Randle's spot to Patrick Christopher and, because I've rarely seen him play, replace Dwight Lewis with Justin Dentmon). Because there is little else, here's the link to Joe Lunardi's latest NCAA bracket. He still has five pac-10 teams in, though none of them are Arizona. If the Wildcats play like they did Saturday, they'll get in.

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• That's it for this morning, We'll be back this evening with basketball news of the day. Till then …

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