Pac Ten Alley

This morning it became official, Charlie Baggett has been named WR coach at UW. Ty and Charlie have been friends since college, and both hail from North Carolina. Baggett has coached 10 years in the NFL, and Randy Moss had his greatest success under Charley. He also spent 14 years as an assistant at Michigan State. This is a great hire! Losing Yarber was unfortunate, but we replaced him with a better postion coach, the question remains can he recruit as well as Yarber who had great South Central LA ties?

Our weekly poll question last week was do you think the Huskies will make the NCAA Tournament? Well the life of that question lasted about two days as the Huskies fell to both Oregon St, and Oregon last week. For the record, I thought they would sweep the final four. I also thought we would see a 20,000 Nasdaq in 2001.

Well let's take a walk down Pac Ten Alley to see what our West Coast neighbors are up to.

Pete Carroll picked up a couple of early commitments at USC despite the sighting of more smoke out in the NCAA Violations area's. Seems like the Trojan's have adopted a few pages out of Rick Neuheisel's book of inadvertant bumps. Plenty of smoke around this program right now as the Trojan staff in it's arrogance seems to have little regard for the rules. You have to wonder when the NCAA is going to get more involved.

We all know fair isn't fair as far as the NCAA is concerned, some coaches like Carroll can do whatever they want, while a guy like Neuheisel gets put on the cross, along with his program for much less. I guess the old adage is, it isn't who you know.....you can guess the rest.

Chris Polk (5-11, 190, 4.45) from Redlands East Valley committed to USC tonight. The REV wide receiver/defensive back was offered a scholarship a week before the 2007 signing day.

Things keep getting more bizzare at Cal in the continuing tree sitting protest going on near the football stadium.

A leader of tree-sitters who oppose a proposed athletic training center next to UC Berkeley's Memorial Stadium was charged Monday with two felony counts of threatening a police officer. Zachary Runningwolf Brown, 44, was arrested Friday after he threatened to shoot a campus police officer, said UC Assistant Police Chief Mitch Celaya. Celaya said that Brown told the officer: "You're going to get yours. ... We're going to do what we have to do. ... We're going to shoot you (expletive)."

Can Oregon State defend its National Championship in Baseball?

The Beavers started the tourney with a bang on Friday, winning by 9 over Cal Davis. Oregon State again rallied off big innings in the second and ninth (5 runs apiece) to build up a sizable lead. This game was closer than it looked, however, as UC- Davis left 13 runners on base, 10 of those in scoring position. Oregon State got the win, but was well aware that they didn't have a very good game.

Oregon beat Washington in a great Basketball game on Saturday. The story of the week though was the infantile behavior of the new AD. Perhaps Michael Wines can share his thoughts on that. As I have said I find it interesting that Oregon thinks a guy that made his fortune selling auto insurance to high risk people such as drunk drivers, and repeated speeders has what it takes to run an Athletic department.

Aaron Brooks' peace offering to Ryan Appleby (both pictured here), was the only thing that Brooks was denied on Saturday.

UCLA is getting ready to play WSU, and I hope the Cougar's kick their ass.

Frankly I think Josh’s comment re. the WSU defense is dumb. I am not sure “weak” would be the word I’d use to describe a Cougar defense which as Dohn notes may be the best in the Pac-10. From what I saw in our first game if anything Cougar defense appeared to be very smart, and it reminded me a lot of our defense from last season. Luckily for us it appears Coach Howland knows what his boys will be up against on Thursday.

As he noted in the OC Register Bruins better be ready because in his words playing the Cougars is just like having a “root canal”:

The Coug's look back on a tough road loss to Oregon who seems to have their number this year.

The thing with this team is that they will always be in games because of defense--and there are not many teams out there like the Quack who can really chuck from all corners with that 3 ball, who, quite frankly, the Cougs really don't match up with.

Arizona is having a sub par year and rumors have been floating around that the old coach has Parkins disease.

Lute Olson rarely reveals matters of his personal life. So when he opened his usually bland weekly news conference with a "nonbasketball-related'' thing, we all perked up.
A rumor that the 72-year-old Arizona coach has Parkinson's disease "is a complete lie,'' he said Tuesday, adding his shaking comes from old age and nerves.

The Tree look like they are going to make the Big Dance.

If you include Stanford, the Pac-10 will have six teams in the NCAAs, its highest total in five years.

At ASU not much is going since they are at the bottom of the Pac Ten, but they are looking back at the blown shot against Ohio State for the National Championship in 1997.

Finally, Gaddabout at Wired Devils has written a story defending Phil Snow, Bruce Snyder, and the supposed "prevent D" that doomed ASU in the 1997 Rose Bowl. If you've been hating them since 1/1/97 like I have, it's a tough read but valid points are made. To my friend Patrick, if you can hear me, don't read the article-your head may explode