Westside Cougs to have slightly longer drive for three WSU home football
games in Pullman
From Cougfan.com
See graphics/maps which go with this article:
DETOUR (IN RED) AROUND THE S-R 26 BRIDGE PROJECT. (WSDOT)
FOR WESTERN WASHINGTON Cougar fans, the drive to Martin Stadium for the
first three home games this season will take 16 minutes longer than usual due
to bridge construction work on S-R 26 that will begin in mid-August and run
until mid-October. The Washington State Department of Transportation says the
project, originally planned for 2019 outside of football season, couldn’t wait
because technicians believed safety would be compromised if the current
structure had to endure another winter.
“This closure will impact both the beginning of fall semester and Cougar
home football traffic. It will also affect commercial trucks involved with the
Columbia Basin’s potato harvest,” WSDOT notes on the project's webpage. The
average traffic count on the route is just under 2,000 vehicles a day but can
double on WSU event weekends, WSDOT reports.
If the timeline follows, the detour will affect Cougar games on Sept. 8
(San Jose State), Sept. 15 (EWU) and Sept. 29 (Utah). The Cougars’ October
schedule begins at Oregon State and is followed with a bye, so the drive for
the Oct. 20 contest in Pullman against Oregon should be unaffected. The Cougars
open the season at Wyoming on Sept. 1.
The 154-foot long pre-stressed concrete girder bridge in southern Adams
County has a deck that is deteriorating at a rapid rate, WSDOT reports. The
new, $1.1 million bridge deck will enhance safety and protect "the
high-volume tracks for the train traffic below."
The detour covers 32 miles to get around the 17.5-mile closure but the
net additional driving distance is 14 miles, thus the estimated 16-minutes of
additional drive time. For eastbound drivers, the detour starts with a turn to
the south at Othello, then a turn east to Connell, and then a turn north on US
395 before getting back on S-R 26. Westbound traffic from Washtucna would
follow the same route in reverse.
"We purposely picked this route because it's a road that can handle
that extra traffic," WSDOT Barbara LaBoe told the Moscow-Pullman Daily
News last week. "It'll be more congested than normal but it's not a small
county or city road that would be overwhelmed with that.”
WSDOT says alternative routes include eastbound traffic staying on I-90
to just beyond Ritzville and then turning south on SR 261 to SR 26. Westbound traffic on SR 26 from Pullman would
turn north at Washtucna on SR 261 to I-90.
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Vince Grippi of Spokane S-R says WSU: Around the Pac-12 yesterday, before we get to football news,
and there is a lot, this
piece by Bruce Pascoe on the proposed basketball
recruiting changes is a must-read. And it’s not just because it makes the same
point I’ve been making for months: The NCAA screwed up by not including the
people behind summer hoops in its discussion. And the proposed changes are just
going to make the problem worse.
Here’s the article by Bruce
Pascoe of Tucson’s Arizona Daily Star
College basketball: Possible
changes to basketball recruiting events could limit apparel company influence
By Bruce Pascoe Arizona Daily
Star July 29th, 2018 Updated 5 hrs ago
LAS VEGAS — Of the 2,986 games that Hal Pastner crammed into
his Las Vegas Classic basketball tournament this week, this one, he’s
convinced, is special.
It is late Thursday morning inside at Spring Valley High
School’s main gym, an air-conditioned basketball refuge on a stifling
110-degree day. A nearly half-full crowd is on hand, most to see the powerhouse
Oakland Soldiers and their perennial collection of high-major talent. But the Broward
County Cougars are making a game of it, at least early on (they lost by 27
eventually).
“Look at these kids,” Pastner says. “They’re from South
Florida. They look like they’re small. They did a phenomenal job against the
Oakland Soldiers, and probably each one of these kids is going to get an
opportunity (in college).
“With a camp, they probably would have gotten nothing. They
probably wouldn’t even get invited.”
The ever-energetic father of former UA player and current
Georgia Tech coach Josh Pastner, Hal could go on, and does.
He talks about the three games that ESPN will cover, the
fact that Carmelo Anthony and Chris Paul are making guest coaching appearances
for teams they sponsor, and about the fact that he turned away teams after
accepting 1,229 of them.
But the camps, Pastner says, could change everything.
Installing summer camps are one of the key recommendations
from the NCAA’s Commission on College Basketball, potential replacements for
the often shoe-sponsored tournaments that dominate the recruiting trail each
spring and summer.
The recommendations from what is informally known as the “Rice
Commission,” after chair Condoleezza Rice, are currently being studied by a
number of working groups and are expected to be voted on next month. They
include possibly holding NCAA-run high school team camps in June and USA
Basketball-run camps in July.
The idea, of course, is to lessen the influence that shoe
companies have over basketball recruiting, after two Adidas executives were
among those arrested — along with Arizona assistant coach “Book” Richardson and
three other coaches — last September as a result of the federal investigation
into college basketball.
Representatives for Adidas and Under Armour declined to
comment for this story, and Nike could not be reached for comment.
For now, nobody’s really sure how it could all play out.
The NCAA is expected to keep allowing coaches to view
shoe-company-sponsored camps in April. But the July period, which annually
concludes with a steroidal collection of events in Las Vegas, could be
superseded by regional camps that involve 2,500 or so teams run by USA
Basketball.
Or there may be a hybrid schedule of some sort, at least for
now.
“We are for adding events. We’re not saying ‘shut it down,’”
USA Basketball CEO Jim Tooley said Friday, after a USA senior team mini-camp
practice at UNLV. “We’re in favor of higher standards and more transparency to
make sure people are doing things the right way. And there’s a lot of good
there already. We want to make it better.”
Tooley said one discussion he’s had involves setting up four
regional camps of 700 players each, with half of the players coming in the
first few days of the week and the other half in the latter part . That means a
total of 2,800 players would get invited.
However, there are roughly that many teams playing in Las
Vegas alone this week: In the Las Vegas Classic, the Fab 48, the Under Armour
Association Finals, the Rebound Hoops tournament, the Las Vegas Summer Showcase
and others.
“That’s why we don’t want to blow up the universe,” Tooley
says. “The universe of kids is about 19-20,000 per class. So if we did
something for 500 or 1,000 or 2,000, what about 2,000 and up?
“As the national governing body, our job is to help grow the
game, not stifle it.”
Replacing all the summer recruiting events as they are now
also will be costly, more than the $9 million number being thrown around this
month, Tooley said.
The NCAA is expected to pay for it by dipping into its
massive media-rights pot, a sum that will reach nearly $1 billion a year with
its most recent extension to 2032.
Meanwhile, Tooley said USA Basketball is in discussions
about providing the manpower and other infrastructure. Although USA Basketball
already runs youth events and national team competitions all summer, Tooley
said he’s open to the idea of adding camps.
Especially if it can help the game.
“We want to be a bigger influence,” he said. “Does that does
that mean it takes away the other influencers? No. It has to be a holistic
approach. You have to have strong enforcement. Because if you do find something
bad, you have to take that seriously so it’s not a slap on the wrist and the
cost of doing that doesn’t outweigh the consequences.”
As of now, the travel-ball tournament system — often called
“AAU basketball” — is an opportunity for thousands of players and also one-stop
shopping for college coaches.
Typically, Nike, Adidas and Under Armour all run their own
circuits, meaning their teams will mostly play just against each other, though
there is some cross-pollination in independent tournaments and showcase events.
Against a Nike rep’s stated wish on Twitter, the Fab 48 even
featured a game Wednesday between the Compton Magic, the Adidas circuit champ,
and Team Takeover, the Nike Elite Youth Basketball League champ. The Magic won
an overtime thriller before a sold-out crowd of fans and coaches at Bishop
Gorman High School.
“The basketball game Nike and Adidas didn’t ever want to see
finally happened, and it was fantastic,” blared a CBS Sports recap of the
event.
Coaches and organizers say the whole system benefits high-
and low-major coaches alike, a chance to see so many prospects nearby in a
high-level environment.
“It helps a school like us budget-wise because I can bring
myself and all three assistants,” Northern Arizona coach Jack Murphy said.
“You’re covering the Las Vegas valley rather than jumping on flights and doing
everything else.”
Murphy said he will adjust to whatever the NCAA believes is
the right way to go, but says he grew up in Las Vegas working the tournaments
and has seen plenty of good come from them.
“My thing is that Under Armour, Adidas and Nike do a great
job of running these events,” Murphy said. “I mean, (Nike’s Atlanta-area) Peach
Jam is one of the top events of the summer, and this week the Under Armour
finals is fantastic and last week in Southern California there was the Adidas
finals.
“You know where the players are going to be, they’re well
coached, well organized and I think they do a great job.”
They also have played by the NCAA’s rules.
College Corruption Basketball
Dinos Trigonis, longtime coach of the Belmont Shore travel
team and organizer of the Fab 48 at Bishop Gorman, says he has to submit lists
of players to the NCAA, documenting that they are eligible to play.
In all tournaments, the stands at each gym are strictly
divided — fans, parents and friends on one side, and coaches and media on the
other. Security guards ensure nobody crosses the line.
The Fab 48 does it that way, too, though Trigonis finds it
laughable.
“In December, we have a tournament here with high school
teams, and Sean Miller can sit next to (incoming UA freshman) Brandon Williams’
dad and there’s no problem,” Trigonis said. “But god forbid he sits with him
this week. If Sean Miller — or anybody else for that matter — is inclined to
cheat, you’re telling me in December he’s not going to, but in July he’s
itching, he’s foaming at the mouth to do it? It’s a joke.”
While starting up a load of team laundry in a small room
adjacent to Bishop Gorman’s two main courts Thursday evening, Trigonis was
clearly heated over the topic. He says his Fab 48 is not largely underwritten
by a shoe company, but by corporate sponsorships, entrance fees, player
information guides to coaches. Yet the NCAA has tried to poke under his hood.
“The NCAA called me and wanted to do a survey. One of the
very first questions was, ‘Can you give us your 2017 tax returns?’” Trigonis
said. “What does that have to do with a college coach paying a player? Where is
that relevant?
“With all due respect, we had a good conversation, but show
me how it’s relevant to solving your problem.”
Longtime recruiting analyst Clark Francis says part of the
problem is that the commission didn’t have a representative from within the
travel-ball circuit.
“I don’t think they have a clue,” Francis said. “They have
people who have no idea about how this works, they’ve never been to it.”
Francis, Pastner and Trigonis said there’s a danger there,
too: If a new system results in fewer opportunities for players and/or event
operators, legal action may follow.
“You’re gonna see a class-action,” Trigonis said. “It’s
already in motion. I think they got wind of it.”
Trigonis said an anti-trust argument could stem from “mom
and pop” operators like himself, and maybe from players and their families,
too.
Maybe even players from, say, Broward County.
“Any player who doesn’t get invited to the camps, their
parents could file a class-action,” Francis said. “They think their kid is good
enough to get a Division I scholarship. Maybe not, but nobody knows. The only
thing that’s going to hold them back is, to beat the NCAA you better have
millions of dollars and three or four years to go to court.”
In addition, the NCAA can’t actually stop the shoe events,
just the coaches from watching them in person. So even if the NCAA allows
coaches to attend only the new camps, shoe companies could opt to hold their
own tournaments at the same time, and Pastner says the top players would show
up at them.
Coaches might watch from afar, too.
“It’s even more irrelevant now because we have live stream,”
Trigonis said.
So, to recap: The changes might benefit the college game
overall, but they also could create potentially angry event organizers, angry
coaches, angry players and angry parents.
Maybe.
“My personal hope is we all just take a deep breath and kind
of slow down,” said Gonzaga coach Mark Few, who is in Las Vegas for recruiting
and to assist USA Basketball’s national team mini-camp. “We all just need to
slow down and not rush into something without really looking at what the
effects are gonna be.
“We’re talking about so many things here — it’s not just
summer recruiting, it’s (potentially) letting agents in, it’s one and done,
it’s how we police and basically our whole kind of prosecutorial approach — how
we administer rules and penalties. I don’t think it’s something we should have
to get out in a month.”
At the earliest, changes would unfold next summer, and even
that’s a problem for Pastner, who says he needs to plan a year ahead of time considering
the massive scale of his Nike-sponsored event.
“This is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done,” Pastner
said.
Tooley, for one, said it wouldn’t be a complete overhaul
overnight. The possibility of holding four camps with 700 players each is just
one possible way to start.
“Version 1.0 is gonna look different than version 2.0,”
Tooley said. “You’ve gotta get in and get your lessons learned.”
Few is taking a careful approach, too.
“It’s an enormous entity, and it might have some shortcomings
like very entity does, but I don’t know that we need to blow the whole thing up
and try to reinvent it,” Few said. “I’d be more apt to just make some subtle
necessary changes to do our best to clean it up that way.”
“It’s something that we need to spend some serious time on,
and if we do it right we’ll have set this up for years and years to come.”
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