G&T Blog matters: Bone’s final day, What about Tramaine?, Chief all-stars

A sampling from the past week of entries in The Spokesman-Review blog SportsLink at spokesman.com/ sportslink.

Rejoice, anti-Bone blog commenters. Your long-awaited day has arrived. Washington State athletic director Bill Moos fired basketball coach Ken Bone earlier this morning in the fifth-year of his seven-year contract.

Before he left, Bone and I spoke in-depth about next year’s roster and what he expects to see from certain players. His thoughts:

On the team: It really is a group, and I told them in the locker room after the (Stanford loss in the Pac-12 tournament opening round), “It’s one of the most favorite teams I’ve ever had a chance to coach, and yet maybe one of the worst teams I’ve coached in 30 years.” But it’s because they’ve had really good attitudes, they’ve been extremely coachable, they’ve been a close-knit group. They play together and they have fun, it’s hard to have fun when you’re not winning games. It’s hard. But because of the character with a lot of these kids and the leadership, believe it or not, it was a great group to work with.

The losses have been very difficult. It’s hard to lose. This isn’t Little League. So that is difficult, but what a great group of guys if you’re going to go through a losing season and it was a great group of guys to have to go through it with.

On WSU-bound recruit Tramaine Isabell: We need scoring and he can score. It’s not like, “Well, he needs another year or two.” No. He could step in and help out right away. He can handle the ball. He’s a good ball-handler and he can create opportunities for others and he can definitely score. I think he had a really good year and physically he’s strong, too. It’s not like he’ll need a year or two to get a little bigger and stronger – some kids do. He’s strong, he’s put together. ”

Spokane Chiefs Mitch Holmberg (first team) and Mike Aviani (second team) were named to the Western Hockey League’s Western Conference all-star team, the league announced Thursday. Holmberg, the winner of the Bob Clarke Trophy as the league’s top scorer, is also the conference’s finalist for the Brad Hornung Trophy as Most Sportsmanlike Player.