Dave Trimmer

This weekend may be bittersweet for Reagan Pariseau, but she's only looking at the sweet part. The Arizona State senior and Central Valley grad makes her last Washington trip with the Sun Devils' women's basketball team this week and she plans to enjoy it.

The voice was relaxed, the laughs came easily. Why not, it was mid-January, the weather was great and the tee-time was fast approaching.

PULLMAN – If there were any emotional ties to Washington State women's basketball coach June Daugherty's first showdown with her old Washington team they certainly weren't evident at Friel Court Friday night. After the Huskies pulled away from the Cougars for a 61-46 Pac-10 win, Daugherty was more impressed with the tie-in with Spokane's Sacred Heart Medical Center and Bellevue's Hope Heart Institute for the Cougs Have Heart promotion and the turnout – 1,247.

There were a lot of broken hearts when June Daugherty was fired as the women's basketball coach at Washington last March, the day after a loss in the NCAA tournament. After 11 seasons, six NCAA appearances, three NIT berths and a 191-139 record, her players and four recruits, including Katelan Redmon of Spokane, were shocked with the Husky decision.

Jenni Ruff left Washington State in 1996 with a pocket full of basketball records and didn't return for a decade. But like many Cougars, she was never gone.

When Rodney Stuckey came to Cheney in the fall of 2004 as the 4A Player of the Year out of Kentwood, Eastern Washington basketball coaches proclaimed his arrival as the best Eagles player ever. For two glorious – if unsatisfying – seasons his presence was breathtaking, with Stuckey making improbable, "did-you-see-that?" plays on a regular basis.

Life without Heather Bowman – and her averages of 21 points and 10 rebounds – is going to be difficult for Gonzaga. Purdue hammered that point home Wednesday night by dominating the inside and pulling out a 64-61 win over the Bulldogs in a non-conference women's basketball game before 2,232 fans at The Kennel after Courtney Vandersloot's 3-pointer for Gonzaga was released just a moment after the buzzer.

Lewis and Clark's state football championship was amazing in itself – the first in school history and the fourth in Greater Spokane League history. But Rene Miller got so much more out of the Tigers' postseason run.

Once Pat Dobratz made it to the high dive she plunged back into the shallow end, an unusual move in the world of Division I basketball. "I knew I wanted to get out of coaching," the former Idaho women's coach said. "I got out while I was young and successful. I wanted to do something else."

Game? What game? After countless hours of one-on-one battles in the driveway and even more pushing each other to be the best, Spokane sisters Jami and Angie Bjorklund are on opposite sides for the first time in a game that means more than a pencil mark on the garage wall.

Several former major league baseball players in Spokane aren't shocked by the early revelations in the Mitchell Report. "Overall, disappointed, and disillusioned a little bit," said Jack Spring, who was watching the results of baseball's steroid investigation unfold on television Thursday afternoon. "Not just in baseball but in all athletics, individuals trying to gain an advantage through illicit means."

Paul Wulff, a former Washington State offensive lineman who led Eastern Washington to the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs in three of the past four years, interviewed for the Cougars' head coaching position Friday night. Wulff is the third person known to have interviewed at WSU, according to The Spokesman-Review sources.

Neither rain, nor snow, nor sleet, nor dark of night will keep the dedicated Gonzaga student from rocking at the Bulldogs' basketball showdown against Washington State at The Kennel on Wednesday night. "You can always watch the games but you only have limited chances to experience it," GU sophomore Kelcie Butler said. "The trick is to get a bleacher seat. When the students are stomping, it's rocking. It's not the same higher up."

It may be hard to mine any nuggets out of a 1-11 football season, but it is the nature of athletics to look for them. Sifting through the debacle of Robb Akey's first year as a head coach should give Idaho fans reason to believe they can bank some success in the future.