Block U, a Utah Utes community

The Road to No. 1 will feature prominently on the front page of tomorrow's Spokane Spokesman-Review. I think there will be quite a few papers sold and framed on college dorm room walls come Tuesday night.

The Province has a nice story on Canada's own Robert Sacre as he jets around to work out for NBA teams in the hope of getting drafted at the end of the month. Our draft profile of the Gonzaga big man is available here.

Nothing to complain about. His analysis is spot-on, BYU should be the biggest challenge in the new WCC. Looking at the other teams listed, I think its possible the Zags could be in the preseason top 25 if some of the other teams end up losing their underclassmen to the NBA draft. The most surprising raking I see is Memphis at #9, which could mean they underperformed this past season even more than I previously thought, or that they have a monster recruiting class coming in.

WCC Commissioner Jamie Zaninovich made it known today that next year's conference tourney will undergo some minor facelifts to accomodate the newest conference member, the Cougars from BYU. There will now be an 8-9 game to determine who plays the #5 seed and the rest of the tourney format will remain unchanged. The tourney will last longer however, with the semis now played 2 days before the conference title tilt (still on a Monday while the semis move to Saturday now.) Another potential change involves the venue; the Orleans Arena will once again serve as host to the WCC Conference Tourney in 2012 but after that, no one knows what will happen with BYU joining the party. The final change involves the conference's regular season itself. With 9 teams in the WCC next year, conference play will begin on Dec. 29th instead of the first week of January. 16 total conference games will be played, which could mess with Gonzaga's non-conference scheduling (and may be an ulterior motive to the ultimate decision to drop the Memphis series amongst others). We'll see what happens with the Zags and their non-conf. schedule as well as the in-conference rivalry that may or may not develop with a significantly younger Cougars' squad. Either way, it should be fun playing two teams arguably on our level but the championship will still run through Spokane! Congrats on the tourney title Zags and let's get it done this year!!

Here's a newspaper story from Hyland's hometown of Portland, Maine. I hadn't heard that he was having so many problems from a concussion suffered in a practice before the first game of the season. I pray for his health and his success at a school closer to his family.

Brock and Salk ask a question that we already know the answer to.

Some love from the westside of the state.