By Whatever Name, New Card A Star

Get familiar with the name: Vasilis Tsimpliavidas.

OK, if it’s easier, use the Americanized version: “Little Vas.”

He made his North Idaho College debut last weekend and an already talented basketball team became much better. He scored 32 points in roughly 42 minutes of playing time as NIC defeated Colorado Northwestern and Eastern Utah.

Little Vas waited for weeks for his release from Howard College (Big Spring, Texas), his previous school. He finally received clearance last week and quickly made up for lost time.

Little Vas’ arrival came at an opportune time. The word is out on Steve Bonner, the NIC forward who is leading the Scenic West Athletic Conference in scoring. Try to guard Bonner with one defender and the school scoring record is in danger.

Colorado Northwestern and Eastern Utah double- and triple-teamed Bonner and held him to reasonable point totals. The attention given to Bonner left operating room for Little Vas and fellow wing Dusan Milicic.

“They doubled Steve and he kicked it back out,” NIC coach Hugh Watson said. “Dusan hit a couple of big-time 3s for us. Little Vas missed some free throws down the stretch, but he’s such a good shooter he expects everything to go in.

“Nobody knows too much about him right now. That’s a plus. But he practiced with us all along because we thought we’d have him from the start.”

Little Vas, a native of Greece, is a pure shooter, giving NIC several perimeter threats to go with Bonner’s inside ability.

During one practice, Watson watched Little Vas hit 22 straight 3-pointers. NIC assistant Doug Thibault, who coached at Howard College last year, watched Little Vas hit 196 out of 200 free throws during one practice.

“Fundamentally, he’s as sound as anybody shooting the ball,” Thibault said. “He was really upset about making 7 of 10 at the free-throw line (against Eastern Utah). He doesn’t think he should ever miss.”

Panhandling

The last thing Timberlake girls basketball coach Brian Kluss probably wanted to do after a 91-11 loss to Priest River was describe how it happened. But Kluss called Wake Up and Read It headquarters to make sure we had the details, even though it was a road game and home coaches are responsible for phoning the paper.

That’s classy. Wish some other coaches with selective dialing fingers would follow suit.

The long drive back from Moscow after Idaho’s loss to Long Beach State on Saturday was made a bit easier when I drove into range of KVNI-AM 1080. The Coeur d’Alene station aired a delayed broadcast of the NIC-Eastern Utah men’s game.

KVNI is broadcasting selected NIC road games this season. Kudos to KVNI, even if it means an announcer butchering the pronunciation of the Cardinals’ foreign players.

Tisn’t the season for golf news. Tough. Here’s some, anyway. About 18 months ago, I wrote about Wallace’s Ernie Hill, who told me he had played golf every day for at least four years. Hill isn’t playing quite as much these days.

He recently withdrew from the second stage of PGA Tour Qualifying School. Doctors discovered he had been playing with a broken wrist for perhaps two years. He’s in a cast for 4-6 weeks.

He played on the Tear Drop Tour last year. He plans on tackling the Canadian Tour Q School in February.

Young Casey Murphy, 14, of Twin Lakes hadn’t played a round of golf since October, but he put together scores of 72-76 to tie for sixth in the Future Collegians World Tour event at Arizona State University’s Carsten course last weekend. Murphy actually played in the 15-19 age bracket.

Murphy attends St. Paschal, a small Catholic school in Spokane, partly because the Lakeland school district was uncooperative toward allowing Murphy to occasionally miss school to attend tournaments, his father said.

Coeur d’Alene High volleyball coach Bret Taylor is losing his assistant to College of Southern Idaho. Steve Bishop will join CSI, winners of seven of the last eight NJCAA titles, as the second assistant. Taylor assisted on one of CSI’s title teams.

Grad school

Former NIC center Jason Keep has started two of five games at Oklahoma State. The 6-foot-10 junior is averaging 12.8 minutes, 6.8 points and 2.6 rebounds for the Cowboys (4-1).

Dixie’s Maurice Baker, another former Region 18 player, leads Oklahoma State in scoring (18.6 points), assists (4.0) and nearly in rebounding (6.2) - impressive for a 6-foot-1 guard.

Front row

Wrestling’s best convene at NIC’s Christianson Gym for the 29th annual Tri-State Tournament all day Friday and Saturday. The finals are Saturday at 6.

Basketball rules the rest of the week. There are three showcase games tonight - West Valley boys at Lake City, Cheney boys at Coeur d’Alene and Post Falls girls at Lakeland. The boys’ games begin at 6. Post Falls and Lakeland tip at 7:45.

The improving Coeur d’Alene girls visit Post Falls Thursday at 7:45.

Friday’s boys’ slate features Moscow at Coeur d’Alene and Post Falls at Lake City. Each game starts at 7:45.

Rumor du jour

LSU is looking for a new athletic director, but is torn between hiring someone with LSU ties or a qualified outsider, according to The Advocate newspaper in Baton Rouge.

Two of the outsiders are Oregon State’s Mitch Barnhart and Arizona’s Jim Livengood, the former Washington State A.D. Outgoing A.D. Joe Dean apparently is endorsing Baton Rouge district attorney Doug Moreau, a former LSU football player.