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John Blanchette

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Sports

John Blanchette: WSU has opportunity to get back in the running in Pac-12

PULLMAN – Legends came off the books Sunday at Mooberry Track. John van Reenen, Gabriel Tiacoh, George Ogbeide and Tony Li – eight NCAA and 11 conference championships among them, plus a world record and Olympic silver. And no longer owners of the best performances on record at their old home loop at Washington State.
Sports

Leaving bar set high

PULLMAN – It was the spring of 1967, and UCLA’s track team headed north for a dual meet at Washington State. Such a thing actually used to happen back then. The Bruins, Cal, Stanford, Oregon, even USC used to be on the Cougars’ spring schedule – head-to-head, hurdlers and milers running for points instead of the narrow grail of a personal best.
Sports

Spokane Olympian Skok dies at age 98

Mary Lou Petty Skok’s journey from 6-year-old trick diver at the Spokane Interstate Fair to swimming in the 1936 Olympic Games was the epitome of Depression-era perseverance. But she was all about hanging tough. Skok was three days shy of her 99th birthday when she died April 2 in Tempe, Arizona.
Sports

CCS record-setter, Gonzaga commit Jessica Mildes remains homeward bound

Jessica Mildes now owns a national record, and to do it she had to scrap and hang tough in a race with some of the nation’s best collegiate distance runners from big-time schools a long way from her home in Chattaroy and the Community Colleges of Spokane. But you know what’s way impressive?
Sports >  Gonzaga basketball

Cougar fans snarling

Damn, you’d have thought a tailgate guest at Washington State had confessed a preference for Velveeta on his cracker over Cougar Gold. Outrage has been in overdrive in Crimsonia since it dribbled out in Gonzaga’s student newspaper this week that next season’s Bulldogs-Cougars basketball game will be played in downtown Spokane.
Sports

Blanchette: Mariners trust in Cano

SEATTLE – For Robinson Cano, a double-play grounder in his first Safeco Field at-bat as a member of the Seattle Mariners, a walk and a run scored, two more indifferent ground balls and a nice glove-scoop assist to nail Raul Ibanez at first base. Another day, another $148,148.15.
Sports

Moos lands Kent, gets his man

So much for the big splash. You could mop this one up with a Kleenex. Not that splash matters anyway. Cannonballs and bellyflops produce the biggest splashes, and how artful is that?
Sports

Blanchette: Athletes, careful what you wish for

Welcome, football players at Northwestern University, to the wonderful world of work. On Wednesday, a district executive of the National Labor Relations Board threw a chop block at the school – and by extension the NCAA and the entire college athletic- industrial complex – by ruling that players can unionize as employees.
Sports >  Gonzaga basketball

Rebuilding year ends in blowout

SAN DIEGO – Once Kentucky, those gritty underdogs, siphoned off the day’s 8-vs.-1 karma, there almost didn’t seem to be a point to tee it up here Sunday evening. But who’d have presumed that they drained the tank?
News >  Spokane

John Blanchette: Zags’ Karnowski only concerned about getting the ‘W’

SAN DIEGO – The Gonzaga Bulldogs got another NCAA Basketball Tournament victory on Friday – and an apology. CBS/Turner broadcaster Andrew Catalon sought out Przemek Karnowski in the Gonzaga locker room after the 85-77 win over Oklahoma State to express his regrets for calling the Zags’ center a “Polack” during a second-half exchange on the TNT telecast with color man Mike Gminski.
Sports

Blanchette: Time for Cougs to show coach the money

If Bill Moos doesn’t have a new basketball coach on board sometime this morning, we’ll have to wonder if he’s losing his touch. That’s going off the wham-bam-dollars-be- damned shuttle he orchestrated a couple years ago in Washington State’s football program. You’ll remember that Paul Wulff was carting the last box of coffee mugs and Cougar pennants out of his office as a workman was stenciling Mike Leach’s name on the door.