Stories by John Blanchette for the Spokesman-Review

Sports > Gonzaga basketball

John Blanchette: From Courtney Vandersloot on up to Will Foster, we rank the all-time Gonzaga players by height

UPDATED: Thu., Nov. 1, 2018

That’s right. We decided to have the Gonzaga Bulldogs line up by height. Or rather, we lined them up.

Sports > Gonzaga basketball

John Blanchette: Game that started Gonzaga’s 20-year NCAA Tournament run was part fact, part fiction

Thu., Nov. 1, 2018

But for 20 consecutive years now, a Gonzaga basketball team has been in the NCAA tournament, and nearly as often as not, played into the second weekend.

Sports > NCAA basketball

West Coast Conference: BYU, Saint Mary’s likely to battle for second place

Thu., Nov. 1, 2018

The prize recruit in the West Coast Conference last spring wasn't a 7-foot center with forward skills, a jumping-jack slasher with a touch from 3 or a consummate playmaker at the point. The league kept Gonzaga. That was the catch of the year.

Sports > NCAA basketball

Pac-12 Conference: Elite players, teams lacking heading into season

Thu., Nov. 1, 2018

Whenever Pac-12 football needs to feel good about itself, all it has to do is look across the hall at Pac-12 basketball.

Sports > WSU football

John Blanchette: In unpredictable Pac-12, Washington State continues to be the cream of the crop

UPDATED: Sat., Oct. 27, 2018

There were a lot of 6-6s projected, or maybe five wins and you could even find a 3-9 prediction or two out there, though that seemed the fuzziest of math when you looked at Wazzu’s nonconference schedule. In any event, the best the Cougs were supposed to aspire to was a leaky raft and a roll of duct tape, and maybe a reward in one of those post-season games that sheds one sponsor’s name for another every year. And now look

Sports > WSU football

John Blanchette: Washington State’s Gardner Minshew is head and shoulders (and mustache) above Pac-12 competition

UPDATED: Sat., Oct. 20, 2018

Just FedEx the Player of the Year award – Trophy? Plaque? Key chain? – to Gardner Minshew right now.

Sports > WSU football

John Blanchette: Cougars lose a legend, if only to retirement

Mon., Oct. 15, 2018

Whatever the Washington State Cougars achieve this football season and beyond, they’ll do it without the comforting narration – or even just the avuncular asides – of Bob Robertson, who went into victory formation on Monday after 52 years as their beloved voice.

Sports > Seattle Seahawks

Blanchette: Seahawks don’t point finger at themselves

UPDATED: Sun., Oct. 7, 2018

Who wasn’t giving the Seahawks the bird in a 33-31 loss to the unbeaten Los Angeles Rams that was half heartbreaking, half forehead-slapping?

Sports > WSU football

John Blanchette: Oregon State’s hijinks-heavy attempt at upset of Washington State falls flat late

UPDATED: Sat., Oct. 6, 2018

Any number of things are contrary to official Pac-12 policy, including football games that get you back home before midnight. Another one: Washington State and Oregon State being good in the same season.

Sports > Gonzaga basketball

John Blanchette: Time to read up on your Kennel Club history

UPDATED: Wed., Oct. 3, 2018

John Blanchette: Whatever grand aspirations get attached to the authoring of history books, they all start with the same premise. Correcting memories that are faulty, or worse. Too much history, we know, is like a party round of the Telephone Game after uncorking the fifth bottle of wine. The original story almost never makes it to its destination.

Sports > WSU football

John Blanchette: On this day, defense defined the Cougars’ heart

UPDATED: Sat., Sept. 29, 2018

For nearly the entire second half Saturday, the wait was on for The Drive That Would Define the Season. But it turns out we were looking for Wazzu’s telltale heart in the wrong place. Because it was there all along. It was just the defense doing the defining.

Sports > Seattle Seahawks

Blanchette: Don’t pay Earl Thomas; instead cash in on the drama

UPDATED: Mon., Sept. 24, 2018

Here’s why you don’t pay Earl Thomas – not right now anyway – and you don’t trade him, as reports suggested might happen as soon as Monday.

Sports > EWU football

John Blanchette: Eastern Washington proves its ground game is plenty potent in throttling of Cal Poly

UPDATED: Sat., Sept. 22, 2018

Eight guys packed it for 19 yards or more on a single play Saturday – and this against a team that’s supposed to be the runningest thing this side of a toddler’s nose on a 20-degree afternoon.

Sports > WSU football

John Blanchette: Washington State has every reason to believe early-season momentum will carry into Pac-12 play

UPDATED: Sat., Sept. 15, 2018

So the Washington State Cougars have navigated their minefield of a non-conference schedule – they just took down the heavyweight of the first three weeks, Eastern Washington, in a fun 59-24 shootout-turned-beatdown Saturday to run their record to 3-0.

Sports > High school sports

‘Slick’ Shilo Morgan helps Coeur d’Alene stay unbeaten with 47-34 win over Mead

UPDATED: Fri., Sept. 7, 2018

Shilo Morgan can make a coach and a quarterback go deep into the playbook – if only for characterizations.

Sports > Idaho football

John Blanchette: Dennis Erickson embarks on another coaching journey while being honored for his time at Idaho

Fri., Sept. 7, 2018

Two things about football: One, any time someone suggests the game is at a crisis point or some moral crossroads, you can be sure a few rich guys will ready to gamble some spare change and create yet another professional league – or two – because they know America’s football thirst cannot be slaked.

Sports > WSU football

John Blanchette: Surrounded by oddities, Washington State quarterback Gardner Minshew was the Cougars’ key to staying calm

UPDATED: Sat., Sept. 1, 2018

What restored the psychic equilibrium, oddly enough, was something the Cougars had that maybe no one was quite ready to accept: an assured, tested, steady hand at quarterback, who looked as if he had years of flight hours in Leach’s cockpit.

Sports

John Blanchette: Football not under siege, but movies about the sport should be

Thu., Aug. 30, 2018

The football establishment has mobilized and its message is clear: football is under siege. Except it’s not. But I know what should be. Football movies.

Sports

The Hollywood All-Stars: Forrest Gump takes the kickoff, and it just gets better from there

Thu., Aug. 30, 2018

Uncle Rico, Rod Tidwell and Bobby Boucher are easy selections for our All-Star team

Sports > UW football

Role reprisal: With 0-12 season in the past, the Washington Huskies are once again national title contenders

Thu., Aug. 30, 2018

Even back in the bad, bad days of 0-12 – just a decade ago, can you believe it? – the Washington Huskies did their best to pass themselves off as a college football blueblood. OK, purpleblood.

Sports > Seattle Seahawks

Start rolling: Seattle Seahawks need to get ground game going to find way back to Super Bowl contention

Thu., Aug. 30, 2018

They can run, but they can’t save their hides. OK, well maybe Russell Wilson can – running is all that’s saved his in the past two seasons as quarterback of the Seattle Seahawks.

Sports > Idaho football

John Blanchette: Rob Spear, University of Idaho failed where it matters most – taking care of students

Thu., Aug. 16, 2018

On Thursday, Idaho’s state board of education finally cut loose University of Idaho athletic director Rob Spear after lots and lots of investigation and risk assessment and hand-wringing. And presumably even some empathy for the women both he and the university failed, and for those afraid they’d be failed again.

Sports > Seattle Seahawks

John Blanchette: Handing the ball to Marshawn Lynch in Super Bowl XLIX turns the Seahawks into an unstoppable dynasty – or he’s stopped short

Sun., Aug. 12, 2018

Not that you need any reminders. It is the wound that won’t scab over, the acid reflux that won’t go away. In this part of the country, it’s the rebuke applicable to every folly – and requiring not a stitch of explanation.

Sports > Idaho football

John Blanchette: Corner Club cornered market on true-blue Vandals

UPDATED: Sat., Aug. 4, 2018

Corner Club stories? There are too many – the place is 70 years old, after all.

Sports

John Blanchette: Bobby Hauck tasked with making Grizzlies relevant in football again

Tue., July 17, 2018

News is as unlikely as rain at college football’s mid-July conference gabfests, unless Nick Saban announces he’s changed his brand of coffee filters. As the coaches of the Big Sky Conference gathered in Spokane for probing and prodding on Monday, the drought was especially dire. The one woulda-been cloudburst – Montana State coach Jeff Choate benching the Bobcats’ starting quarterback for the year with the order to introduce himself to his textbooks – was released last week. This, sadly, pre-empted any hyperventilating here. There was this, however:

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