At the end of a tough season, Washington State women’s basketball coach Kamie Ethridge was ready turn the page.

Coaches around the Big Sky Conference believe experienced, talent-stocked Eastern Washington has the means to clear a hurdle that’s tripped the Eagles the last two seasons: The Big Sky Tournament championship game.

Gone is Violet Kapri-Morrow, who led EWU in scoring (18 ppg) and rebounding (6.4 rpg), and starters Alissa Sealby and Uriah Howard.

Interim coach Zac Claus says the team he stitched together from four key returners plus Wilson and 10 newcomers is talented and fully invested in playing for the Vandals.

It’s time for someone else to make a splash in Moscow, and it probably will be Gina Marxen.

Having established a foundation of excellence, the Whitworth Pirates are doing their best to maintain it.

The Northwest Athletic Conference’s East Region flexed its muscle on the 34-team junior college athletic association in March.

Whitworth was a hair short of reaching the Northwest Conference Tournament in coach Joial Griffith’s first year, a transitional season with a relatively young squad.

Falcons’ Dan Quinn may be coaching to save his job – just in time for visit from Seattle’s Pete Carroll, his former boss.

The bye week, as boring as Eastern Washington football players say it is, presents two gifts: Time to heal and two weeks to hone in one particular team.

The Loggers are a game behind Whitworth, which is tied with Linfield atop the NWC with five games to play.

Anthony Gordon would’ve been a few bad injuries away from seeing the field the previous time Washington State visited Oregon. So, because the quarterback never had to worry about strapping on a helmet, he was able to take in the ambience of one of the game’s most revered venues.

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The Trail Blazers got a taste of playoff success last season and that’s shifted their mindset. Simply making the playoffs is no longer the goal, a championship is.

Always underrated, often overlooked and rarely mentioned in any conversations about who is the NFL’s best quarterback, Russell Wilson is outplaying every one of his contemporaries.

Before Roc Bellantoni’s group interview in Pullman on Wednesday – not his first, but his first as Washington State’s interim defensive coordinator – the man who’ll be making the tough decisions for the defense going forward briefly pivoted away from football.

If Idaho’s offense has difficulty getting untracked against Portland State, it is because the Vandals’ past has come back to haunt them.

Rarely does Eastern Washington not have a number attached its football-rich name.