John Blanchette

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Sports >  Gonzaga basketball

John Blanchette: Count on out-of-this-world play during Gonzaga’s bright future

Tue., March 13, 2018

“Welcome to Selection Sunday 2038 on PBS. I’m your host, Greg Gumbel and, yes, I am 91 years old, but I’m going to keep doing this until we get it right.”

Sports >  Gonzaga basketball

John Blanchette: Battle-tested Bulldogs aiming for return to Final Four

UPDATED: Mon., March 12, 2018

For six months there was the happy hangover, the gratification of getting to where no Gonzaga team had been before. Then came the reset, the having to put it away and on to the mission of turning id into I.D. That done, now the Bulldogs can reach back for the lessons.

Sports >  Gonzaga basketball

20 for 20: Gonzaga basketball has produced plenty of memorable moments in NCAA Tournament run

Mon., March 12, 2018

The best plays, performances, games, quips and wild cards over two decades of dancing for the Gonzaga Bulldogs

Sports >  Gonzaga basketball

It all started with a tip-in: An oral history of Gonzaga in the NCAA Tournament

Mon., March 12, 2018

Gonzaga’s residence in the NCAA Basketball Tournament extends to 20 consecutive years now with the Bulldogs’ placement in the 2018 bracket, meaning there’s actually a player on the Bulldogs roster who wasn’t yet born when Casey Calvary’s tip-in against Florida started running on a loop in the memory of every Zags fan.

Sports >  Gonzaga basketball

John Blanchette: Gonzaga also feeling the self-inflicted pain of Saint Mary’s

UPDATED: Sun., March 11, 2018

Everything you need to know about why Gonzaga is exploring, weighing, entertaining – or even just aware of – a possible jump to the Mountain West Conference you could learn on Selection Sunday.

Sports >  High school sports

Gerry Lindgren inducted into National High School Track and Field Hall of Fame

UPDATED: Thu., March 8, 2018

Already a member of the National Track and Field Hall of Fame, Gerry Lindgren went a little further back in time on Thursday night.

Sports >  Gonzaga basketball

John Blanchette: Sixth straight tournament win just as sweet for Gonzaga

UPDATED: Wed., March 7, 2018

The last sliver of confetti had settled on the floor at Orleans Arena and the net had been scissored into souvenirs, so the Gonzaga Bulldogs drifted away toward their locker room, champions again.

Sports >  Gonzaga basketball

John Blanchette: Gonzaga’s Killian Tillie threw himself a birthday bash, San Francisco had a front-row seat

UPDATED: Mon., March 5, 2018

But on Killian Tillie’s 20th birthday here at the Orleans Arena, he did become very much eligible for the Most Outstanding Player award at the West Coast Conference basketball tournament, unless perhaps Brigham Young beats the Gonzaga Bulldogs in Tuesday’s championship game.

Sports >  Gonzaga basketball

John Blanchette: Zags to the MWC? That’s hysterical, or good sense

UPDATED: Mon., March 5, 2018

Wandered down to the sports book at the Orleans Casino and, you guessed it, those best of buddies and Zags fans, Hysteria and Horse Sense, were sitting side by side with Bloody Marys in hand, finding a way to fill up the West Coast Conference Tournament’s day off. And the topic was hardly a surprise, since it’s all anyone is talking about down here.

Sports >  Gonzaga basketball

John Blanchette: Gonzaga coaches sweat through quarterfinal with eyes on family matters

Sat., March 3, 2018

It probably should have been no surprise that Gonzaga had to work so hard to shed Loyola Marymount 83-69 in the prime-time game at Orleans Arena – not getting any extra oxygen until the game’s final six minutes.

Sports >  Gonzaga basketball

John Blanchette: Ronny Turiaf still keeps his Gonzaga memories close, no matter where in the world he may be

UPDATED: Fri., March 2, 2018

His ability to speak five languages made Ronny Turiaf – Zag by way of France by way of Martinique – the school’s international man of mystery. Or would have, except he made sure there was no mystery. His reflexive engagement of virtually everyone he encountered built relationships that transcended basketball, especially when you came to realize he was even more curious about you than you were about him.

Sports >  Gonzaga basketball

John Blanchette: Las Vegas has played host to plenty of memorable WCC tournament moments for Gonzaga

Fri., March 2, 2018

The marriage of the West Coast Conference tournament and Las Vegas turns 10 this week, an anniversary of such happy construct that it’s hard to remember the Pliocene days when the event was played on an assortment of rotating home courts – the road inevitably doubling back to Santa Clara, it seemed, and later San Diego.

Sports

John Blanchette: Righting the Academy’s wrongs as sports films again overlooked at The Oscars

UPDATED: Thu., March 1, 2018

We know it’s behind us, because this year “Get Out” is in the hunt for Best Picture and because Denzel is once again hitting cleanup in the Best Actor lineup and because Mary J. Blige and Octavia Spencer are going to lose to Allison Janney and her parrot. What, there’s no award for Best Supporting Bird to a Supporting Actress?

Sports >  Gonzaga basketball

John Blanchette: Mountain’s ‘landscape’ offers Gonzaga potential dream of upward mobility

Wed., Feb. 28, 2018

You know the best fit for Gonzaga University in the college athletic universe? Easy. It’s the Big East Mountain West Coast Conference.

Sports >  National sports

John Blanchette: House of Fury rises from ashes with Pat Ferguson as main attraction

UPDATED: Tue., Feb. 27, 2018

There were great bouts and good ones, and the odd dud.

Sports >  Gonzaga basketball

John Blanchette: Tabbed as underdogs to start the season, the Gonzaga Bulldogs again showed the WCC goes through them

UPDATED: Sat., Feb. 24, 2018

On a day when everyone wanted to fly college basketball’s flag at half-staff, the Gonzaga Bulldogs went through the routine of raising another – all the way up. Another all their own.

Sports >  Gonzaga basketball

John Blanchette: Pepperdine coach Marty Wilson among many to say goodbye to The Kennel

UPDATED: Sat., Feb. 17, 2018

The merry old times made it back for Senior Night, and don’t kid yourself – winning the game makes all the difference.

Sports >  Gonzaga basketball

John Blanchette: Silas Melson has been key part of Gonzaga’s winning culture since first day on campus

UPDATED: Fri., Feb. 16, 2018

Silas Melson is an old soul. So says his mother, Deidre. His father, Tony, too. The description Mark Few summons is “throwback.”

Sports >  Gonzaga basketball

John Blanchette: Gonzaga proving that RPI is no longer the golden child of college hoops metrics

UPDATED: Thu., Feb. 15, 2018

But maybe the sizzle got doused way back on Sunday, when the NCAA selection committee did its in-season bracket preview for the second year. And the most revealing part of the big reveal was that the committee turned its latest statistical toy into the same old worn rag doll. Also, Gonzaga wasn’t one of the top 16 seeds.

Sports >  Area sports

John Blanchette: CC Spokane’s Cesar Sandoval, North Idaho’s RayQuan Evans have taken winding roads to hoops success

UPDATED: Tue., Feb. 13, 2018

Junior colleges are the blue highways on the basketball map, but they can still get you where you want to go. Sometimes it just takes a little recalculating of the personal GPS – reorientation, if you will.

Sports >  Gonzaga basketball

John Blanchette: Josh Perkins more than atoned for Gonzaga’s slip-up against Saint Mary’s

UPDATED: Sat., Feb. 10, 2018

College basketball’s ultimate sardine can – McKeon Pavilion – was stoked for a coronation Saturday night, and best of all it was going to come at the expense of Gonzaga, overlords of the realm.

Sports >  Gonzaga basketball

John Blanchette: Never mind the white shirts; Gonzaga treasures blue-collar win

UPDATED: Sat., Feb. 3, 2018

The Bulldogs put an end to this hex or voodoo or whammy or whatever it was that Brigham Young held over their heads in the McCarthey Athletic Center the previous three years.

Sports >  NFL

John Blanchette: Destiny better be knocking on Jerry Kramer’s door come Pro Football Hall of Fame decision day

UPDATED: Fri., Feb. 2, 2018

Saturday is decision day for the voters of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and destiny day for Sandpoint’s – and Idaho’s – favorite football son, who will either be in come nightfall or forever wondering why not.

Sports >  Gonzaga basketball

John Blanchette: Nail-biting victories become the new normal for Gonzaga

UPDATED: Thu., Feb. 1, 2018

One possession game, three minutes to go. Two minutes. A stop needed in the last 40 seconds, or a play call that must produce. Double-digit leads evaporating in five laps of the court, up and back. Once-easy marks evolving into gritty puzzles, with no particular dread of what’s historically been a hellhole or a second thought to even recent history. Nobody seems to care anymore that Gonzaga is, well, Gonzaga.

Sports >  Gonzaga basketball

John Blanchette: Former GU coach Adrian Buoncristiani returns to The Kennel after 40 years

UPDATED: Mon., Jan. 29, 2018

The Kennel Club was at its pile-driving loudest, butt-cheek-to-cheek across the south bleachers, doing its Kennel Club thing. That reminded Adrian Buoncristiani of ... well, of nothing at all proximate to what he experienced coaching basketball at Gonzaga.