A Grip on Sports: No matter the results, sports always adds a little salt to life, even when it is raining
A GRIP ON SPORTS • There was a right of passage as youth growing up during the decade highlighted in the first iteration of “The Wonder Years.” There was the day your parents explained to you what the heck the Morton salt motto of, “when it rains, it pours,” meant.
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• Hard to believe isn’t it? There was a time when salt wouldn’t pour in high humidity. Back before science discovered the ability to add an anti-clumping agent to the seasoning to allow it pour even when it was raining.
In sports we understand a little bit about such things. Bad news has a habit of clumping together, doesn’t it? And when it’s raining, as it is today in Spokane, we get soaked by it.
Take the weekend for example. Saturday one top-10 college basketball team lost. Then another. And another. When top-ranked Gonzaga trundled off Saint Mary’s court late that night, seven of them had – for the first time in history. That’s clump-i-tude of the worst order.
Will that type of rain continue this week? The loss could have cost the Zags their top ranking. But because of Saturday’s downpour it won’t. The margins will narrow, sure. It’s hard for most folks to understand just how difficult it is to win in Moraga when McKeon is rocking. Which makes it difficult to understand why the loss wasn’t as bad as it might seem. Maybe the ranking number next to the Gaels at the beginning of the night enlightened the myopic.
Washington State had a bunch of salt poured on its collective heads as well Saturday, courtesy of its archrivals. But the Cougars have to brush it away quickly. They are in Corvallis tonight for another Pac-12 game (8 p.m., ESPNU) with tournament seeding consequences. No, not that tournament. The conference one. Making the NCAA one will take a miracle. Or a confluence of good luck unseen in Pullman since Morton’s salt still clumped when it was damp.
• Pac-12 wins have poured, if not easily, at least with consistency, for Washington State’s women. Enough of them, in fact, the Cougars have more wins in conference (11) and overall (19) at any time since the NCAA deigned the women worthy of being part of its monolithic bureaucracy.
So many wins, in fact, WSU has earned a bye in the tournament as the third seed. That’s also a first for the Cougars, who over the years usually played the first day, lost and were back in Pullman in time to catch The Wonder Years on TV.
Not this season. As the third seed, Washington State will get to watch Utah and California play Wednesday night, knowing it will match up with the winner on Thursday in a game scheduled to start at 8:30 p.m. All the action will take place in Las Vegas, a city used to late-night games (of all sorts), so there is that. For the rest of us, stuck at home hoping the basement doesn’t flood, we’re going to have to set the alarm. And pray the Pac-12 Network doesn’t glitch on us.
• By the way, if you want to watch the women and men play Thursday – the men have a rematch with Oregon State in Pullman – you’ll have to use two TVs. And a good cable package. The men start at 8 on FS1.
• Rainouts are rare this time of year. Mainly because the last day of February isn’t a big day of professional baseball in North America, even in a normal year. But this year is anything but normal, so expect a long rainout even without a deluge.
The players are locked out of spring training. Owners are seemingly unwilling to make much in the way of concessions. Contract talks are moving slowly, if at all.
How do we fix it? The players need to grant the owners all the silly changes they want to the game. The ability to ban shifts. To expand the playoffs. To institute a universal DH. But they also need to hold firm on the important matters. Earlier arbitration. No more manipulation of service time. A better minimum wage.
If such steadfastness means baseball doesn’t happen in April or May or whenever, so be it. The players have lived with owners tampering with the agreements for too long, finding whatever loophole they can to cheat the majority of players with short careers. It’s time for that to stop. The game would be better if it did.
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Gonzaga: For the first time in months, Jim Meehan is looking back on a GU loss. One that started on the inside and spread. … The WCC used an analytical results model to seed its tournament again this season. With teams playing an uneven number of games, it was needed. Or maybe the conference just could have enforced its forfeit rules and not allowed Santa Clara to back out of a game when everyone was healthy. Maybe that’s just me. Anyhow, Theo Lawson has this story. … The rankings will be revealed later this morning. Seth Davis still has Gonzaga No. 1. … Around the WCC, maybe BYU doesn’t need another game. … The Cougar women need to win the conference tournament if they want a top-four NCAA seed. … Portland is seeded higher in the men’s tournament than it has been in years.
WSU: As we said above, the women won Saturday and earned the third seed in the conference tournament. The men play at Oregon State tonight. It’s a makeup game. … Elsewhere in the Pac-12 and college basketball, last weekend’s results show the tournament probably won’t be easy for Arizona, USC and UCLA. … The Bruins play at Washington tonight. It will be the end of a three-game Northwest road trip. … A new Utah player is happy in Salt Lake City. … Colorado is happy with how it is playing. … In football news, Arizona State has a transfer quarterback from Alabama with a special lineage. … Oregon will have a quarterback competition once again.
EWU and Idaho: Around the Big Sky, Montana started fast and held off Montana State in Missoula.
Preps: We counted wrong yesterday. The Greater Spokane League had seven basketball teams playing on Saturday for a chance to play in Tacoma. All seven will be. Dave Nichols looks at their matchups.
Track and field: One more day of John Blanchette in The Podium, covering the USA Track and Field Indoor Championships. Sunday was the most important day of the bunch and John has three stories to cover all the action – and the world news. … There is also this photo gallery from Jesse Tinsley.
Mariners: Today is deadline day, according to the owners. No deal, no on-time start of the regular season. No matter what is going on behind the scenes, we don’t believe a deal will be reached today. See you in May, maybe, baseball.
Sounders: Another mistake yesterday. (Sorry. We have an excuse. We weren’t feeling well and probably should have taken the day off.) Nashville traveled to Seattle to face the Sounders. And to win, scoring late to get the latter done 1-0. A season of promise starts on the wrong foot.
Seahawks: The Hawks have six picks – now. If that’s it, whom should they take? … The defense wants to play with more aggression.
Kraken: Seattle lost at San Jose.
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• If you haven’t noticed, it’s raining consistently in Spokane this morning. So much so, it is hard to get the dogs outside. Or for me to want to do anything but sit here in front of the computer and price flights to places like Hawaii or Arizona or, at the very least, Ontario. No, not the one in Canada. The one in Southern California. It’s my go-to airport when visiting the area. Until later …