Grip on Sports: Seahawks, Cougars win, which is the bottom line
A GRIP ON SPORTS • Anyone watch the Seahawks’ 25-23 win over the 49ers yesterday and come away convinced this team is going to make lots of noise in the playoffs? Me neither. Unless, by “lots of noise,” I meant the wails and lamentations of the Hawk fans. Read on.
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• Sorry for the biblical terms, but that’s how I felt Sunday. Only a miracle can save this Seahawk team over the next month or so.
Someone, Tom Cable maybe, needs to lay hands on the offensive line to improve their blocking. Someone, Pete Carroll maybe, needs to mend the obvious differences in the locker room, some of which boiled out onto the sidelines against the 49ers. And, honestly, someone, Jonas Nightengale maybe, needs to heal Earl Thomas’ broken leg in time for next week.
The Hawks’ defense just isn’t the same without Thomas back in his centerfield position, flying all over the secondary to eliminate others’ mistakes.
The 49ers, one of the NFL’s two worst teams, showed that. They moved the ball on the formerly formidable Legion of Boom in the first and fourth quarters, enough to make a game of it.
Mainly because the Seattle offense, facing the worst rush defense in the league, could only muster 87 yards on the ground, 55 of those coming from rookie Alex Collins late.
It doesn’t bode well for the postseason, which will include, more than likely, road trips to Atlanta and Dallas for a chance at another Super Bowl.
As I said, it will take a miracle.
• The big news on this side of the state is WSU rallied behind freshman point guard Malachi Flynn and got past host Washington 79-74 Sunday evening.
It’s a big deal for the Cougars. Such a big deal Ernie Kent tried to use it as a kickstarter for his campaign to change a long-time, Voldemort-type term about Washington State athletics.
Sorry, coach, it’s not going to happen.
But on the other side of the state, Sunday’s result has to re-ignite the debate on Lorenzo Romar’s future. Losing is one thing, and the Huskies, despite year after year of highly rated recruiting classes, have been doing that way too often.
But losing, at home, to your rival is another.
Especially when your rival puts a bunch of local guys on the floor you passed over in pursuit of players from Washington D.C. and elsewhere.
Flynn is one of those guys. A Bellarmine Prep graduate from down I-5 in Tacoma, he wasn’t wanted by the Huskies.
To be fair, hardly anyone else wanted the freshman point guard either. And it might take longer to get to Tacoma to watch him play than to hop on a plane and view a 5-star guy in L.A., traffic being what it is in the Puget Sound.
But when Flynn negotiated the traffic-free Husky defense the final couple of possessions last night, he may have sealed Romar’s fate.
UW is not going to make the NCAA tournament as an at-large team. Too many bad losses on its resume. And another stellar recruiting class may not be enough to get the longtime coach another year.
Romar’s a good guy. He’s a good role model and mentor. He just hasn’t won enough recently. And that’s college hoops’ bottom line these days.
• Today is one of the more fun days of the year. The Rose Bowl is on.
There was a time not all that long ago when the Rose Bowl, one of America’s largest stadiums, was used for one college football game a year. On January 1 (or 2, if New Year’s Day was on a Sunday).
That was before UCLA moved out of the Coliseum and up the Arroyo Seco to Pasadena. Sure, there was an occasional high school game on the field – my high school, St. Francis, lost its annual contest with Pasadena High on the field my freshman year – and Super Bowls, but that was it. Other than the Rose Bowl game.
And that game was always special. For some reason, Jan. 1 seemed to be sunny and 70 more often than not in Southern California. That usually followed a week of rain and cold, dusting the background mountains in snow. A perfect picture to someone living in upstate New York, buried under three-and-a-half yards of the white stuff.
It was also a perfect advertisement for homes in Sherman Oaks or Covina, even if they were never shown.
And, sometimes, the game was really good.
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Gonzaga: As we mentioned yesterday, the Zags are dealing with the flu. It showed Saturday. And it’s the subject of Jim Meehan’s follow-up story in today’s paper.
WSU: Jacob Thorpe was in his old stomping grounds to watch the last-minute stomping and he has this game story as well as video of interviews with Kent, Flynn and Josh Hawkinson. … Being the game was in Seattle, there is also quite a bit of coverage from the area newspapers, including this piece from old friend Todd Milles at the New Tribune. … The WSU women also won yesterday, defeating Oregon in Eugene 75-59. … Around the Pac-12 in basketball, Arizona finished up its sweep of a Bay Area road trip by getting past Stanford on Sunday. … California bounced back with a win against visiting Arizona State. … Utah opened the Pac-12 schedule with a convincing home win over Colorado. … In football news, the Huskies learned something about themselves in the loss to Alabama. … USC found its quarterback this season and found its way.
EWU: Offensive coordinator Troy Taylor has left Cheney after a year and will move on to Salt Lake City. He was hired by Utah for the same job today.
Preps: We linked the Tacoma story on the WIAA’s ranking system yesterday. Today we have a couple we can pass along from the Times.
Seahawks: Honestly, it looked for all the world as if the Hawks were trying to lose to the woeful 49ers yesterday. Maybe they were trying to save Chip Kelly’s job. The first quarter looked like it. The fourth quarter, when Carroll cleaned his bench nursing a nine-point lead, looked like it. But they didn’t. Now they host the Lions on Saturday night.
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• Sorry for the short column today. Not feeling all that well. I’m hoping a nice day of college bowl games will perk me up. Can’t hurt. Until later …