Another interesting week

A Seattle professional team won another Major League championship over the weekend when the Seattle Sounders captured the MLS crown in a 5-4 penalty kick shootout victory over Toronto.

The match was played in Toronto which means that one Seattle team has had success on the road when it really mattered. This was the first MLS championship game end 0-0.

That is when the penalty kicks take over and the hope is that your team has great kickers and the other team’s goalie lets a ball go through the net.

Now that the soccer season is over maybe the Seahawks can take some strides in the final few weeks to take care of business and win out and make the playoffs and get a first round bye. We’ll see.

I have to confess that the Sounders have the best nickname for a sports franchise. It is descriptive of the area where Seattle is located as in Puget Sound. I’m sure some of the Sounders fans thought about changing it to the ‘Penalty Kickers’ on Saturday but only for a moment or so. What a turn around to a season.

Another Seattle team traveled east this week when the University of Washington (UW) Huskies battled the Gonzaga Bulldogs in the McCarthy Center on the GU campus for the first scheduled contest in 10 years. The Bulldogs dismantled the Huskies in a game that was never in doubt from about eight minutes into the game.

A lot has been said about the transfers that are playing for the Bulldogs. Those transfers came from UW, U of California Berkeley and Missouri. The reasons varied but mostly it came down to wanting to win, play in the NCAA tournament and become better players through development.

Listening to the interviews with some of these ball players it is evident that they believe they made the right choice and are happy that the coaches’ have instilled confidence in them. They are playing well and even though most were the leading scorers for their previous teams they don’t mind sharing the ball because winning has been the result.

UW is having difficulty winning consistently and being energetic enough to play on both sides of the court. The Huskies have had some great recruits in the past several years with Nigel Williams-Goss, who transferred to Gonzaga being one of them.

But some of these great recruits played one or two years and made themselves eligible for the NBA draft. That looks good to recruits but fans want to win consistently and right now that isn’t happening.

The Huskies have another one and done type player in freshman Markelle Fultz. He’s leading the Huskies in scoring and can by a human highlight reel at times. The problem seems to be that he is auditioning for the NBA and not for another 1, 2 or 3 mores seasons for the Huskies.

If you are a UW fan enjoy watching him play now because that uniform will most likely change next year.

You can say what you want about the transfer rule I would much rather a player transfer to my favorite school than to transfer away from it. Just saying!

Finally, it has been an interesting week for us EWU Eagle football fans. Early in the week EWU Head Coach Beau Baldwin interviewed for the University of Nevada football coaching vacancy.

Nevada decided to hire someone else and I’m glad they did. I’m sure part of the problem is that Baldwin is still coaching the Eagles in the FCS playoffs and it was going to be difficult to coach EWU and recruit for Nevada.

So the Wolfpack decided to hire an assistant from Arizona State. And Beau signed a five-year extension to his contract.

Does that guarantee that Beau won’t leave in another year? Of course it doesn’t but at least he knows he’s loved in Cheney by the administration and the fans.

And what about the distraction of Coach Baldwin and the interview?

Final score: EWU 38 Richmond Spiders 0.

Now it was cold enough last Saturday but this week could be downright miserable as into the negative numbers. And yes, I’ll be there with wool socks and layers upon layers on. Go Eags!!