In brief: Rested Zags set for challenge
College basketball: The Gonzaga men’s basketball team has gone a week between games. The Bulldogs (7-5) return to action tonight with three games in five days, capped by a 2,050-mile trip to North Carolina, before they enter West Coast Conference play.
Gonzaga entertains Lafayette College (4-8), a Patriot League member located in Easton, Pa., at 5:30, followed by a visit from Oklahoma State on New Year’s Eve. GU takes on Wake Forest in Winston-Salem on Sunday.
The Bulldogs have won three straight, including momentum- building wins over Baylor and Xavier. Senior guard Steven Gray (pictured), sidelined with a back injury since late in the first half of the Dec. 18 win over Baylor, has been limited at practice and is questionable for tonight’s game.
Senior forward Jared Mintz, 6-foot-9 and 243 pounds, leads Lafayette at 16.2 points and 5.6 rebounds per game. Junior forward Ryan Willen made four 3-pointers and scored 21 points in a loss to Rhode Island last Wednesday, the Leopards’ most recent game.
Jim Meehan
Texas school enters red zone
College football: The Red has spread.
Eastern Washington’s 4-month-old red Sprinturf football field has already spawned an imitator.
The Comal Independent School District in New Braunfels, Texas, will install a new surface at Canyon High School that will be red with black end zones and sidelines.
This would be the sincerest form of flattery – except that Boise State’s blue “Smurf Turf” was cited as the inspiration in a story out of KSAT-TV in San Antonio.
Student Denise Herfurth was quoted as saying, “We’re going to be different from any other school I’ve seen.”
Sigh.
John Blanchette