Some Quick Hits on Reaffirming the Fact that Gonzaga is the Best Team in the State of Washington (Also Maybe the Country…)

Washington’s big three of basketball schools, Gonzaga, the University of Washington and Washington State University, have all had a good deal of success in the past decade. Each has made it to the Sweet Sixteen while producing numerous pro players.

It should be noted that historically, and in general, UW and WSU are good programs. But this year has been a down year for them both.

  • GU has one more win (27) than UW (15) and WSU (11) combined.
  • Gonzaga’s RPI is 10th in the country, Washington is 74th and WSU chimes in with a resounding thud at 184th. Yikes.
  • The Zags BPI (or Basketball Power Index) per ESPN.com is fifth in the country. U of W comes in at 72nd, and Wazzu rounds out the group again at number 99.
  • Gonzaga has the same number of conference wins in the month of February than the Huskies do all season.
  • Gonzaga has more conference wins in the last ten days than WSU has all year. (It’s apples to oranges when you compare the WCC with the Pac 12, but the leagues are pretty even against each other by my count, with the WCC taking three scalps to the Pac 12’s four.) Continue reading

Future Sonics Need to Go Get a Big Name or Two

The Kings have won 17, 25, 24, 22 and 19 games the past five seasons. Obviously the second to last number was during a lockout-shortened season, but the winning percentage still equates to .333. Not very good. Not at all.

The Kings’ current group isn’t cutting it.

Last month I wrote a piece on the Kings’ to-do list. In it I said the team should start Thomas Robinson. That obviously isn’t going to happen. Robinson is gone, off to Houston, and the return is Cole Aldrich, Toney Douglas and Patrick Peterson. Not the biggest or best return, but fantastic if you consider that Francisco Garcia and Tyler Honeycutt’s collective contracts are gone.

The idea was inspired by an audio trinket on ESPN’s website. On it Bill Simmons and Ryan Russilo talk about trades they would make.

Simmons brought up a deal that would send Rondo to Sacramento Seattle for DeMarcus Cousins, Jimmer Fredette and one of the Kings’ Sonics’ bad contracts to Boston.

This is what Seattle needs, a big time player to build their team around Continue reading