Friday, June 3, 2011.
The countdown is on. Kickoff for the 2011 football season is three months from today. And man, is it going to go fast. Summer means business for Boise State as Georgia starts to appear over the southeastern horizon. Summer conditioning and player-run practices begin imminently. And, presumably, the healing progresses for the leg defensive tackle Billy Winn injured in the Blue & Orange Game. The mending also continues for, among others, linebackers Byron Hout and Aaron Tevis and running back D.J. Harper, all of whom missed spring football. Summer is when on-field, non-verbal communication can improve by leaps and bounds between quarterback and receiver. Yep, Kellen Moore and Geraldo Hiwat.
It’s been quiet out of Georgia land lately. The Bulldogs will be without last season’s leading rusher, Washaun Ealey, when the season starts against the Broncos in the Georgia Dome. But Jacksonville State won’t. Ealey has decided he wants to play right away and has transferred to the Division I-AA school. He had one too many fallings-out with Georgia coach Mark Richt and left the program by mutual consent this spring. Ealey rushed for 811 yards and 11 touchdowns last season.
Boise State is pacing way ahead right now on the recruiting trail. Scout.com reports that the Broncos have landed their fourth commitment for the 2012 class with a verbal last night from Chaz Anderson, a cornerback from Loyola High in Los Angeles. Anderson is a 6-foot, 175-pounder, and—as much as the Boise State staff hates the rating system—he is tabbed a three-star recruit by Scout.com. Anderson had two pretty good salesmen working on him, as redshirt freshman cornerback Bryan Douglas is his cousin, and true freshman cornerback Lee Hightower is his best friend.
Did anyone else think it was ironic that, as the Statesman’s Chadd Cripe wrote in yesterday’s article about the NFL lockout, Austin Pettis slept on Sam Bradford’s couch during the St. Louis Rams’ player-run workouts? Pettis likely did the same thing at some other teammate’s house in the summer of 2007 when he was entering Boise State as a true freshman, and the Broncos will deal with that in front of the NCAA a week from today. The difference between the two situations for Pettis? Bradford has to have a really, really nice couch.
The WAC has long been a collection of strange bedfellows, and it’s going to get stranger in 2012 when Nevada, Fresno State and Hawaii leave the conference. Some of the remaining schools are having trouble dealing with new neighbors moving in, it appears. Utah Valley University hopes to become a non-football member of the WAC but feels that Utah State is being non-supportive, according to the Salt Lake Tribune. One notion is that the Aggies wouldn’t want to compete with the Wolverines for in-state recruits. I think prestige is the issue. Utah State is a land grant institution founded in 1888. Utah Valley was a junior college less than 20 years ago. The Aggies’ pride has been taking a beating. Last August they thought they were headed for the Mountain West. Now they’re supposed to consider mingling with these Wolverines?
For a guy who’s coated in rust, Graham DeLaet made a nice return to competitive golf yesterday in the Nationwide Tour’s Melwood Prince George's County Open in College Park, MD. The former Boise State star carded a one-under-par 70 yesterday in his first round since last fall, having been out more than six months with a shoulder injury that ultimately required surgery in January. DeLaet is six shots off the lead.
Bishop Kelly grad Josh Osich has started 15 games this season for Oregon State without a week off. Why stop now? Osich is slated to start the second game of the tournament this weekend as the Beavers host the NCAA Corvallis Regional beginning tonight. What’s remarkable about Osich’s workload is that he is coming off Tommy John surgery, which required 20 months of rehab before he could get back on the mound. But he’s been a key to getting OSU a No. 1 seed in the regional, going 6-4 with a 3.57 ERA in 75 2/3 innings. Osich threw a no-hitter at UCLA April 30 and has been clocked at 99 miles per hour on the radar gun. He has one more year of eligibility at Oregon State but is expected to go high in the Major League draft Monday.
There’s an 85th former Boise Hawk in the majors, as infielder Josh Harrison made his debut Tuesday night for Pittsburgh. Harrison had two hits in his first big league game, one of them a game-tying single in the Pirates’ 5-1 victory over the Mets. Harrison was a Northwest League All-Star in 2008 when he hit .351 with 25 runs batted in and 12 stolen bases. Another former Hawk is in his third season with Pittsburgh—shortstop Ronny Cedeno is struggling at the plate, though, batting .just 238 with 17 RBIs.
Gotta give a nod to the burgeoning lacrosse community in Southwest Idaho. The high school season ends with the Treasure Valley All-Star Games tomorrow. The girls tilt will be played at 11 a.m. at Eagle Middle School, followed by the boys’ game at 1 p.m. at Mountain View High.
This Day In Sports…June 3, 1971, 40 years ago today:
Only 22 pitchers in major league history have thrown more than one no-hitter, and on this day the Cubs’ Ken Holtzman became one of them. Holtzman threw a second no-no in a 1-0 win in Cincinnati. His first had come two seasons earlier against Atlanta at Wrigley Field. By the way, another one of those elite 22 is former Idaho Vandal Bill Stoneman from the same era. Stoneman tossed no-hitters for the Montreal Expos in 1969 and 1972.
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment Sunday nights at 10:30PM on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra and anchors five sports segments each weekday on 93.1 The Ticket. He also served as color commentator on KTVB’s telecasts of Boise State football for 14 seasons.)
