John Blanchette

By now, Kyle Rowley can find some amusement in being cast as some sort of indoor football amalgam of Cesar Chavez and Eugene Debs.

Does the West Coast Conference need to work on its expansion encores? The Church League made an outlandish splash in its first growth spurt in 30 years: Brigham Young. Even post-Jimmermania, the Y’s global mission, outsized student body, vast resources and never-on-Sunday policy altered the face of the pre- dominantly Catholic WCC when it signed on 19 months ago and now … Pacific?

Does the West Coast Conference need to work on its expansion encores?

PULLMAN – Where was the marching band? The Mike Leach era – Washington State football as You’ve Never Seen it – made the first tentative steps from the abstract to the earnest here Thursday with actual troops on the ground and the man himself swaddled in crimson.

PULLMAN – Where was the marching band?

Ever so slightly overlooked in Gonzaga crashing yet another Sweet 16 in the NCAA women’s basketball tournament this week was the morsel of the Bulldogs holding the nation’s sixth-highest scoring team 22 points shy of its norm.

Michael Chiesa didn’t think his family took him seriously when he began mixed martial arts fighting, and when they realized it wasn’t a lark, they worried for his safety. So when he finally convinced his parents, Mark and Teresa, to come watch him in action, he almost wished he hadn’t.

PITTSBURGH – This is about the stage of March Madness when the Gonzaga apostle begins peeking at Faust’s bracket and weighing the bargain. Do you give up everything you have for just one shot at having it all?

This is about the stage of March Madness when the Gonzaga apostle begins peeking at Faust’s bracket and weighing the bargain.

PITTSBURGH – In a city that regards itself as a barometer for toughness, a remarkable clinical trial unfolded here Thursday evening. The result couldn’t have been more astonishing – or affirming.

PITTSBURGH – In a city that regards itself as a barometer for toughness, a remarkable clinical trial unfolded here Thursday evening.

PITTSBURGH – Our last view of Bob Huggins was from the rear, as he trundled his way up the tunnel at the Huntsman Center in Salt Lake City back in 2003, a killjoy ejected from another giddy Gonzaga party during March Madness. A funny thing’s happened between then and now – today’s date between his West Virginia Mountaineers and the Bulldogs in the NCAA basketball tournament second round.

PITTSBURGH – Our last view of Bob Huggins was from the rear, as he trundled his way up the tunnel at the Huntsman Center in Salt Lake City in 2003, a killjoy ejected from another giddy Gonzaga party during March Madness.

Well, it was more fun than a work stoppage. Hey. That sounds like a slogan.

Got a bone to pick with the bracket architects. It’s simply indefensible that the NIT has been stacked in such a way that there’s no chance for an all-Pac-12 final four in New York City. Heh, heh. It might be Selection Sunday to you, but it’s also our National Day of Outrage, where everyone from Digger and Dougie and Dickie V to bucketzinsidur.com to @delusionaldawg can take issue with the parsing and pairing of college basketball’s best – and painfully mediocre – into their respective seed lines for the NCAA tournament.