John Blanchette

John Stockton’s induction into the West Coast Conference’s Hall of Honor this year was a surprise – not given his career, but just the evidence of the times.

Having made teetering on the edge their pet vice this season, the Gonzaga Bulldogs came to town not so much reveling in March Madness, but March Mustness.

It’s home now – familiar, comfortable, lived-in.

No, the timing of this proposition is not spectacular.

Just 29-1. How terrible could that possibly be?

It is not enough that Przemek Karnowski is 7-foot-1 and teeters on either side of 300 pounds, depending on the day’s breakfast. Nor is it enough that he plays basketball for a team that is the civic cocktail at happy hour, with every seat sold and every game on television. Or that the team is unbeaten and ranked No. 1 in the nation, the buzz of college basketball.

Adam Shackleford has a high-profile job he performs in front of 5,000 people a night,

All I know about the Academy Awards is, Meryl Streep would have a better chance at winning another Oscar on Sunday if she hadn’t starred in “Florence Foster Jenkins” and instead made “Florence Griffith Joyner.”

Caveat: this column is for entertainment purposes only. Unlike all the other ones that are devoted solely to, you know, the dogged pursuit of truth.

The Gonzaga Bulldogs woke up Saturday morning to a nice pat on the head from the NCAA Men’s Basketball Committee.

The suits who guard the guest list for college basketball’s big party embody a little of the doofy high school principal trying to be down with the kids.

Another affront to the Gonzaga sensibilities arrived Saturday.

As the eve of Super Bowl XXVI became morning, the temperature in Minneapolis dipped to 9 degrees. But inside his hotel room, something in Mark Rypien was burning too hot to make sleep sustainable.

Even the most unforgiving of teachers didn’t throw you an exam on the first day after you’d been moved up a grade.

Semantics, folks, but this is the fourth time Gonzaga’s been the No. 1 team in college basketball. Not the second.

Things to do while you’re waiting for the Gonzaga Bulldogs to climb to No. 1 in the polls next week – or while you’re working up outrage if they don’t:

There is no award for most improved player in the West Coast Conference, which is either an oversight or acknowledgement that the league needs to put multiple teams in the NCAA tournament just to pay the engraver.

Now the Seattle Mariners have gone and done the most Mariners thing ever.

We know well the numbing duration of Gonzaga’s dominance of the WCC. We know, too, that only once since Brigham Young joined the league has someone other than the Zags, Cougars or Saint Mary’s finished in the top three, and not since 2008 has another school made the WCC tournament final.

Hadn’t seen those best of pals and Zags fans, Hysteria and Horse Sense, for a few years. But there they were celebrating Gonzaga’s romp last weekend over Saint Mary’s on adjacent barstools

Chalich

On a night they were tasked with making a statement – for the country if not themselves – it turns out the Gonzaga Bulldogs lacked the proper punctuation.

You can think of it two ways: Luke Falk went through his reads, weighed the high risk/high reward options and checked down to something more prudent – coming back to play his senior year at Washington State University. The safety-valve pass to the running back of career decisions. Or he’s airing it out downfield, looking for the game-changer both for him and the Cougars program. You know, letting it rip – the way coach Mike Leach lamented Falk and his teammates didn’t do in their last public appearance two weeks ago.

John Blanchette: Winter Wednesdays at the Spokane Arena are, often as not, hockey night. They drop the puck and a sliver of the 8,000 who show up for the annual Teddy Bear Toss or some other Saturday night special event drop by, mostly out of habit.