Jim Meehan

Given the sequence of events over the last eight months or so, it makes perfect sense Spokane’s Dave Christenson is teeing off Thursday at the prestigious U.S. Senior Open. Almost like it was meant to be – in an improbable, meandering sort of way.

The West Coast Conference took significant steps by adding Washington State and Oregon State as affiliate members for the next two years and the Western Athletic Conference’s Grand Canyon and Seattle as full members beginning in the 2025-26 season. The moves provide the WCC with stability as well as strength in numbers in case Gonzaga leaves for another conference down the road. The Zags have had multiple conversations with the Big 12 but those talks have cooled off with the conference expanding to 16 this fall with four former Pac-12 schools in the fold.

The two games remaining on the Gonzaga-Washington men’s basketball series are no longer on the schedule, Zags athletic director Chris Standiford confirmed.

The expected addition of Senegal native Ismaila Diagne to Gonzaga’s basketball roster became official Tuesday. The agile, 7-foot post has signed a financial aid agreement and will join the Zags for the upcoming season, according to a Gonzaga release.

As the awards ceremony began, site manager Dave Tikker offered a sincere thank you to MeadowWood and its staff for hosting, noting that it’s not always easy to line up courses willing to take on two-day state tournaments. It stuck in my mind as a topic I hadn’t explored in more than a dozen years of covering state golf, so I made a few calls to learn about the process involved for staging the events and positives and negatives for courses on the schedule.

The Denver Nuggets’ playoff run coming to an end. A new job. Relocating to New York. Attending former Gonzaga teammate Rem Bakamus’ bachelor party in Southern California. Squeezing in a few visits to the Portland area to see family and friends. Upcoming trips to Canada, Las Vegas and France for the Paris Olympics with Canada’s national team. Welcome to Connor Griffin’s whirlwind spring and summer.

Jakob Chicoyne is a few months from playing for the Washington State men’s golf team, but the grad student has teed it up in a PGA Tour event in his native Canada. And he spent a few minutes chatting with Rory McIlroy.

Washington State’s Nate Plaster and Sam Renner, former Cougar Derek Bayley, Gonzaga’s Guillermo Polo Bodart and Idaho’s Matt McGann came up short in their bids to qualify for the 124th U.S. Open.