G&T Blog matters: GU hoops notebook, 2015 WSU football schedule, Vandals’ tackling woes
A sampling from the past week of entries in The Spokesman-Review blog, Sportslink.
3: I put together a Gonzaga notebook for Thursday’s S-R with the first item concerning Angel Nunez’s hardship waiver appeal. It was denied by the WCC, which means Nunez is now listed as a senior. Gonzaga plans to appeal the decision to the NCAA. I’ve added notebook items on Matt Santangelo returning to the analyst role on GU radio broadcasts, Mike Hart returning to the program to be the video coordinator and John Jakus being hired as director of operations. He’ll spend this season learning from Jerry Krause, who is stepping down from the director of ops position he’s held since 2001.
With the exception of the Apple Cup, which makes a premature return to Black Friday, the 2015 Washington State football schedule doesn’t include any weekday games. By contrast the Cougars have already played games on Thursday and Friday this season, with another Friday contest coming up when WSU travels to Stanford.
Now if only they can do something about those night games.
Jacob Thorpe
Vandals
Confident they had something to build on when they came home from their season opener at Louisiana-Monroe, the Vandals instead find themselves picking up the pieces after a nasty lesson delivered by Western Michigan on Saturday in the Kibbie Dome. Coach Paul Petrino dissected the 45-33 loss on Tuesday.
Nothing too complicated about what the Vandals are working on this week in practice, Petrino said.
“Tackling, No. 1,” he said. “We’ve just got to tackle better, and we can’t have blown assignments on defense.”
There has to be a little alarm about this statistic: Idaho has surrendered 393 rushing yards in its two games, an average of 4.9 a carry. That’s twice the Vandals’ per-play average on the ground.
• Apparently, the Broncos celebrated their victory a little too hard. As reported by the UI Argonaut, there was some damage done to the visitors’ locker room and Vandals athletic director Rob Spear said WMU is resolving the issue by paying for repairs and additional custodial work.
John Blanchette