Wolf Pack on prowl for big men
Some random thoughts for a Saturday morning.
• Kudos to the Carson High School golf team for its second straight Sierra League win on Tuesday at Washoe Golf Club. Carson won by a whopping 32 shots, as the Senators are playing some of their best golf of the season. What's even more impressive about the Carson score is that Zach Rispin shot an 86 and he's capable of much better. Jonathan Singer continues to demonstrate that he is one of the top players in the league after posting a 78 in not-so-great conditions. Carson hosts its annual invitational next Wednesday and Thursday at Silver Oak and Eagle Valley.
• Carson's baseball team has a big series against North Valleys on Thursday and Saturday, and the Senators need to win the series. The Panthers are chasing Carson for the fourth and final playoff spot. I know that Carson's 14-2 loss to Bishop Manogue didn't really mean anything in the sense that it was a nonconference game, but it's certainly not the way you want your team playing toward the end of the season.
• The signing period started today for next year's college basketball season. Nevada already has locked up four players for next year - Luke Babbitt, Joey Shaw, Mark McLaughlin and London Giles.
Coach Mark Fox has two scholarships to give, and he said at JaVale McGee's going-away press conference that at least one of those scholarships would be used on a good big man. Nevada needs a big man who can come in and start right away.
The front line is a big question mark right now. I don't pretend to know anywhere near the basketball as Coach Fox, but I would bring in two center/power forward types. Nevada already has plenty of wing players and point guards on its roster now. There are rumors circulating that Fox may be trying to lure some overseas talent to Reno.
Heck, I don't care if they are from the North Pole as long as they can defend and rebound. I know Fox is a coach who doesn't like to waste scholarships. If he sees a talented junior big man, he certainly could hold onto one of the two remaining scholarships.
• Anybody that has followed Nevada basketball has probably heard by now of Ramon Sessions' huge game earlier in the week. Sessions, who left Nevada a year early and was a second-round choice of the Milwaukee Bucks, scored 20 points and dished out a franchise record 24 assists in a loss to the Chicago Bulls.
I admit to openly questioning Sessions' decision to leave early for two reasons. The first is that it obviously hurt Nevada's team, though Armon Johnson enjoyed a fine freshman season. The second is that I felt he could have been a higher draft pick if he waited.
It's obvious that school was secondary to Sessions, and that's OK. He obviously had a dream and now he's living it. It's nice to see the young point guard have some success. The Bucks hired a new general manager recently and will possibly have a new coach next season. It will be interesting to see how this affects Sessions.
• Marcelus Kemp and Jordan McPherson have been named the Doc Martie and Ruth I. Russell award winners. The honors go to the top senior athletes at the University of Nevada.
Kemp was a first-team all-WAC selection his junior and senior seasons for the men's basketball team. McPherson was named to the all-WAC Tournament team the last two years and carried the Wolf Pack softball team into the 2007 NCAA Tournament. She holds career records for wins, earned run average, saves, appearances, games started, innings pitched and strikeouts.
• Former Nevada and San Jose State football assistant Dave Fipp has moved onto the 49ers, where he will serve as a special teams assistant. Fipp spent a season at Nevada under Chris Ault and then spent two years at San Jose State under Dick Tomey. Fipp was a co-defensive coordinator with the Spartans, so either things stopped working out with Tomey or he wanted to give the NFL a try.
• As I indicated in my Western Athletic Conference notebook recently, the conference is in serious trouble of not having the host school, Louisiana Tech, represented at the season-ending conference baseball tournament next month. The Bulldogs are in seventh and last place with a 2-12 record.
The conference tournament includes the top six teams. A seven-team tournament would be very hard to manage. If there were eight teams, no doubt the conference would let everybody in. An even number of teams makes things much easier in terms of having byes etc. ... In this day and age, you have to pre-determine a site because of housing for teams and stuff like that.
I just wish the conference would wake up and realize that Fresno and Reno are the best two sites and rotate it from there. Honestly, I'd prefer it be the same site every year, and I would pick Fresno if that were the case.
• Drake's Keno Davis took the head coaching job for the Providence men's basketball team, so cross one name off the list of possible candidates for the vacant Stanford job. I admit I have not been following the situation closely in recent days. It will be interesting to see if Saint Mary's coach Randy Bennett gets a serious look.
• Contact Darrell Moody at dmoody@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1281.