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January 28, 2008
Well they can’t say they
didn’t get a show for their money.
While his Barlow team
was busy showing the Hood River Valley boys basketball team why
they are contenders for the Mount Hood Conference title and
ranked as a top 10 6A team, Dustin Jones put on a one-man slam
dunk contest for the crowd.
While many high school
players would be worried missing a dunk, as one of his teammates
did in the second half, Jones, the cousin of former Barlow and
University of Oregon star Fred Jones, was more concerned about
using the same material twice.
“It’s rare that I miss
them,” he said. “But everyone tells me I have to switch them
up.”
He may have gotten a
little too fancy on the third of his four dunks on the night,
when he drew a technical foul for hanging on the rim. While
HRV’s Jordan Bryant took the technical shots, the chains above
the backboard at the other end of the floor continued to sway
for several minutes from the force of the dunk.
• The mark of a good team is that it can win
ugly. Coaches may hate the way it looks, and players would
probably rather have a chance to take it easy in the fourth
quarter, but come playoff time, things can get scrappy. So their
play may drive coach Ron Haynes nuts at times, and they may look
pretty tired at the end of their games, but the Horizon Hawks
have established themselves as one of the top teams in the
state.
Three of the top five 1A
teams in the state are in the Mountain West league, McKenzie,
Mohawk and Triangle Lake all have to play each other at least
once over the second half of the season. The fact that those
three teams will be beating up on each other over the second
half means that if the Hawks win out, they could be looking at a
top three ranking when the regular season is done. Meanwhile
though, after a scramble to the finish against Condon-Wheeler at
home on Saturday, Haynes knows his team is far from perfect.
“We acted like we had
never seen a press before,” he said. “So guess what we’ll be
working on at practice this week!”
• In the college basketball scene, Oregon
State coach Jay John finally was fired this week. John has been
a dead man walking for the better part of a year. His team was
bad last year, and even worse this year. John’s firing shows
what a crap shoot hiring the right coach for a program can be.
John was a popular assistant for Lute Olson in Arizona, but
didn’t work out when given the chance at a head job. Now Oregon
State fans want an established name, such as former Stanford
coach Mike Montgomery or Gonzaga coach Mark Few.
I can
practically guarantee Few does not even bother to return Bob
DeCarolis’ phone calls, and who knows if even an established
coach like Montgomery can resurrect the disaster that is Oregon
State basketball. If OSU wants a current head coach, they are
probably better off trying to pull someone in from a smaller
Division I conference, such as the West Coast Conference.
• Speaking of the West Coast Conference,
disgraced former Oklahoma State coach Eddie Sutton picked up
career win No. 799 as the interim coach of the University of San
Francisco against my alma mater, the University of Portland,
over the weekend. I’m still not sure how Sutton got the job at
USF beyond a dismal USF program looking for some publicity, and
it will probably take the two games against cellar-dwelling
Pepperdine to get him win No. 800. Then maybe he’ll finally go
away.
• On an unrelated note, do we really need two
weeks between the NFL conference championship games and the
Super Bowl? Particularly this year? We already saw this same
game just three weeks ago! Yes Eli Manning has shown some
strides in the last few weeks, but most of the good story lines
from this game were exhausted prior to the week 17 match-up
between the New England Patriots and New York Giants. So by Feb.
2 I’m sure we will be getting even worse dreck than your typical
feature on how much the practice squad tight end will be earning
from this game and how much it means to him. Let’s bump it up a
week and get it over with!
• Finally, your trivia for the week: Who
recorded the final out in the history of Seattle’s Kingdome?
Answer: The Texas Rangers’ Rusty Greer flied out to Seattle
Mariner left fielder Brian L. Hunter off a pitch from Jose Mesa.
That is reason
No. 1, 393, 209 to be glad I am your local sports reporter.
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