On the Corvallis Knights, Pac-4, Scott Barnes, Roberto Nelson, Damon Stoudamire, Jordan Kent and more …
Updated 8/24/2023 9:55 PM
This and that about a lot of things going on in our sporting world …
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Dan Segal is the CEO, chairman of the board and mastermind of the Corvallis Knights success (courtesy Corvallis Knights)
When you think of dominance in sports, UCLA basketball, the Boston Celtics of the ’60s and the New York Yankees of, well, almost any era but today come to mind.
I offer the Corvallis Knights as a worthy addition to the list.
Last week, the Knights beat the North Division champion Victoria HarbourCats to claim the West Coast League championship — their seventh straight and 10th in their 16 years of existence. The Knights were voted Summer National Collegiate Team of the year back to back in 2019 and ’21 (there was only abbreviated play during the pandemic in ’20).
“I’m a little surprised nobody has written about them for national consumption,” WCL commissioner Rob Neyer says. “It’s one of the most impressive feats in all of sports.”
Commissioner Rob Neyer calls the Corvallis Knights’ run of seven straight West Coast League championships “one of the most impressive feats in all of sports.” (Courtesy Rob Neyer)
The WCL is a 16-team wood-bat circuit for college-eligible players, with franchises in Oregon, Washington and western Canada. The Knights were founded as the Aloha Knights in 1990, with Penny Knight — better half of Nike patriarch Phil Knight — the primary sponsor. The Knights started play in a rec league, joined the Portland City League in 1994 and then the semi-pro Pacific International League in 1999. In 2005, the Knights were one of the inaugural members of the WCL. They moved to Corvallis in 2007, playing their home games at Oregon State’s Goss Stadium.
There is no player draft. WCL teams procure players from West Coast colleges, with a limit to four players from any one school.
“Some people, who don’t know how summer collegiate baseball works, thinks teams just get good players and keep them (for a number of years),” Neyer says. “Not true. A roster is almost completely turned over from one year to the next.”
The Knights have mined OSU’s program of the likes of Matt Boyd, Nick Madrigal, Steven Kwan, Jace Fry, Adley Rutschman and Travis Bazzana through the years. The top hitter this season at .319 was incoming Beaver freshman Levi Jones, an infielder from Jesuit High.
But they also have had other standouts hailing from throughout the West, future major leaguers such as Mitch Haniger (Cal Poly), Stephen Nogosek and Tyler Anderson (Oregon), Matt Duffy (Long Beach State) and Jake Wong (Grand Canyon). This year’s team featured players from Oregon, Utah, Stanford, Southern Cal, Cal Santa Barbara, Texas A&M and the University of Portland.
Representatives of each of the 16 teams develop relationships with college coaches, who play a major role in where the players land in the league. For Corvallis, the rep is Dan Segal, long-time CEO and chairman of the board. Dan — a former all-conference first baseman at Northwest Missouri State — and brother Joe Segal founded the team more than three decades ago.
“There is a little bit of recruiting, but with the top guys, their college coaches point them toward collegiate summer teams,” Neyer says. “Everyone has connections with different college coaches. That’s one of the most important parts of building winning teams — good relationships with college coaches.”
“Everyone in the league has the same guidelines and rules to build a roster,” says Mike Parker, the Knights’ veteran play-by-play radio man. “The Knights have just done a better job than anyone else. It’s not by accident. They have a great organization from Dan on down. They have built trust and done an excellent job of networking.”
Adds the team’s media relations director, Brooks Hatch: “They have done it through a culture of winning, development of players and continuity of coaching staff.”
Former Oregon State catcher Brooke Knight — no relation to Penny or Phil, ironically enough — has been the Knights’ head coach for 15 years. There is no question he has done an outstanding job.
“Bottom line is, they do everything really well,” Neyer says. “They have an analytics team. They do a great job recruiting. They have fantastic coaches. They create an environment in which players want to play there. Summer collegiate teams don’t typically keep their players for a whole season. Some arrive late; most players leave early. The Knights suffer attrition as well, but if you look at their key players, including some pitchers — they are there for the whole season. That shows up especially in the playoffs.”
Segal is the common denominator.
“Dan sets the tone for the organization, no question, and he has been there from Day One,” Neyer says. “He is a tremendous leader who not only is the guiding light with the Knights, but has contributed a great deal to the WCL as a whole. He probably wouldn’t want to take any credit, but Dan is the glue that holds it together.”
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Bay Area writer Jon Wilner sheds some light on what may have lured Oregon and Washington into the Big Ten. Washington State president Kirk Schulz, chairman of the Pac-12 Board of Directors, points the finger at Fox, which owns the Big Ten’s media rights and was responsible for the about $375 million the Ducks and Huskies will reap over six years (2025-30) of the conference’s media contract.
Fox has little investment in the streaming market, Wilner writes, the TV network focusing on the delivery of sports content through its linear networks. Apple, if you remember, provided the mostly streaming package that Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff presented to its member schools. Apple has distribution deals with Major League Baseball and Major League Soccer and was attempting to secure some of the college football market through the proposed agreement with the Pac-12.
Pac-12 presidents were poised to sign a grant-of-rights contract with Apple that would have kept the conference together. A few minutes before their crucial meetings on Aug. 4, officials from UO and UW announced they were leaving for the Big Ten.
“Was it a strategic move on (Fox’s) part to say, ‘If we kill the Apple deal, that gives us five or six years without them in college football?’ ” Schulz asks rhetorically in a discussion with a member of WSU’s Board of Regents, published on the university’s YouTube channel. “If I were Fox and ESPN, I’m not sure I want Apple in the marketplace. I don’t want somebody with pockets that deep as a rival if I can afford it.”
The network’s plan, then, was to head off any competition at the pass.
“The more you pull competition out of the marketplace, the easier it becomes for some of those funders to really, really call the shots,” Schultz says. “We are down to two dominant players that can determine what happens with expansion. … what is happening is, the commissioner calls them and says, ‘We’d like to add X and Y,’ and (the networks) get to make the decision. … I would argue that’s the golden rule: Whoever has the gold makes the rules. And that’s where we are right now.”
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As if the news weren’t bad enough for Oregon State:
Athletic director Scott Barnes is rumored to be a candidate for the job at Washington, where AD Jennifer Cohen is leaving for Southern Cal.
Losing Barnes would be adding insult to injury.
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Look for Oregon State to hire Roberto Nelson for a position yet undetermined on the men’s basketball staff. Nelson played at OSU from 2010-14 and was second-team All-Pac-12 as a senior, averaging 20.7 points per game. He ranks sixth on the school’s career scoring list behind Gary Payton, Tres Tinkle, Steve Johnson, Mel Counts and Stevie Thompson Jr. Nelson has been living in Tualatin and selling commercial real estate in the Portland area.
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Damon Stoudamire has big goals as he begins his first year as head coach at Georgia Tech
I had a recent conversation with Damon Stoudamire, the former Trail Blazers point guard who recently accepted the head coaching position at Georgia Tech.
I have known Damon — who turns 50 on Sept. 3 — since he was a pint-sized sophomore point guard for Wilson High’s state championship team of 1989. I have always appreciated his love for basketball and his appreciation of the sport’s history.
Stoudamire — a Blazer from 1998-2005 — has had a variety of coaching experience since his playing days ended in 2008. He started his coaching career with two years as an assistant with the Memphis Grizzlies. After that, he spent two years as an assistant at the University of Memphis, two more as an assistant at Arizona (his alma mater), another year back at Memphis, and then five years as head coach at Pacific, where he made a down program respectable, going 23-10 in his final full season.
In 2021, Stoudamire returned to the NBA as an assistant with the Boston Celtics, where he spent the 2021-22 season and most of the 2022-23 season before accepting the Georgia Tech job. He takes over for Josh Pastner, fired after his fourth losing season in seven campaigns. Stoudamire loves Atlanta; he owned a house there for several years toward the end of his playing career.
“It’s a great place to be,” Stoudamire says. “In terms of building, I couldn’t have bumped into a better slot. Like I tell pretty much everybody I talk to I wouldn’t have left the pros if it wasn’t for the situation. To be honest, I had a good job.”
Georgia Tech returns its top four guards — Miles Kelly, Lance Terry, Deebo Coleman and Kyle Sturdivant — and not much else. Stoudamire is bringing in five transfers — mostly front-court players — along with five freshmen.
I know Damon well enough that his aspirations include climbing up the ladder of the difficult ACC — featuring programs such as Duke, North Carolina, Miami and Virginia — and eventually a spot in the Final Four.
“That’s the goal,” he says. “I didn’t come here to lose. I came here to put my best foot forward. You build brick by brick. I did that at Pacific. I saw it done with the Grizzlies. I know what the bottom looks like, so it doesn’t scare me. I know how to get there. It takes work. That’s what we’re going to do.”
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Jordan Kent’s busy schedule this fall includes the birth of identical twin boys
Jordan Kent has a busy autumn ahead of him.
The former Oregon three-sport athlete and Portland sportscaster will be doing play-by-play for six Navy games on CBS Sportsnet this season. Kent is likely to call football and basketball games again on the Pac-12 Networks this year. He also serves as executive producer for four weekly Pac-12 fan shows on Root — Talking Ducks, Talking Beavers, Talking Huskies and Talking Cougars.
“People in our area love their schools,” says Kent, 39. “There’s a demand for more programming around those four programs.”
Oh yes, one other thing. Kent’s wife, Tiffany, is soon expecting identical twin boys. The Kents already have Calvin, 4, and Landon, 2, in their household. Will they go for a fifth child for a starting five on the basketball court?
“I have my relay team,” says Kent, once a national-caliber sprinter for the Ducks. “We’re pretty good with four. Tiffany has been a champ through all of this.”
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Ryan Crouser overcame blood clots in a calf to claim his second gold medal at the World Athletics Championships in Hungary
One of the least-appreciated greats in state-of-Oregon sports history did it again last weekend. Dealing with blood clots in a leg that threatened his participation at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest, Hungary, Ryan Crouser unleashed a throw of 77-1 3/4 to claim the gold medal in the shot put.
It was the second-best throw in history behind Crouser’s world-record heave of 77-3 3/4, a testament to his courage and dedication.
“It has been the most stressful 20 days I’ve ever had,” Crouser told reporters after claiming his second straight gold at the World Championships, who wasn’t sure if he could compete until the day of the meet. “Luckily I have a great medical team working with me. They got me safe to fly, so it felt like a relief just to get here, even though I didn’t have the proper training and preparation.
“After all that, it was the best performance of my life, given the health issues, the stress and all of it. It wasn’t quite a world record, but to me, it was.”
Crouser, 30, has achieved everything possible in his sport — a world record, back-to-back gold medals at the Olympics and World Championships and status as perhaps the greatest thrower in history. The Barlow High grad, who now lives in Fayetteville, Ark., will next compete at Hayward Field Sept. 16-17 for the Prefontaine Classic/Diamond League final.
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Sad to see Dale Murphy on a recent Atlanta Braves’ TV broadcast, speaking with enthusiasm of his support for his hometown Salt Lake City’s bid for a Major League Baseball team.
It was only a couple of years ago that Murphy, a Wilson High grad, was a voice behind the Portland Diamond Project in its quest for an MLB franchise.
Hope I’m wrong, but it sure feels like an opportunity missed.
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It has not gotten much attention, but the FIBA World Cup basketball tournament begins Friday in Manila, The Philippines. The U.S. is the favorite, led by a young group of players including Anthony Edwards, Jalen Brunson, Mikel Bridges, Brandon Ingram and Jaren Jackson Jr.
The coaching staff, however, is a veteran collection of some of the best names in the sport. Steve Kerr is head coach, with assistants Erik Spoelstra, Ty Lue and Mark Few.
Few, a 60-year-old Creswell native who has won 689 games in his 24 seasons at Gonzaga, is soaking up his time with some of the NBA’s greatest minds.
“It’s as cool a lifetime opportunity as you can imagine,” Few tells Joe Vardon of the Athletic. “It’s fun to just sit back, look around the coaches’ room and go, ‘Wow.’ ”
Few has enjoyed being around Miami Heat coach and fellow Oregon product Spoelstra, a graduate of Jesuit High and the University of Portland.
“When he walks in, he automatically brings out all the respect the players, the people on the staff, everyone has for the Heat,” Few says. “He and I talk about culture a lot. That’s something we pride ourselves on at Gonzaga.”
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The Athletic’s Seth Partnow rates the NBA’s top 125 players and put them in five tiers.
The top six (tier 1A and 1B): Giannis Antetokounmpo, Stephen Curry, Nikola Jokic, Kevin Durant, Joel Embiid, Luka Doncic.
Partnow puts Damian Lillard in the 2B tier, behind LeBron James, Kawhi Leonard, Jimmy Butler, Jason Tatum, Devin Booker in 2A and grouped with Anthony Davis and Ja Morant in 2B. So Lillard rates somewhere between the 13th- and 15th-best player in the league.
No other Blazer is mentioned until Jerami Grant comes in at 4C. Anfernee Simons is at 5A. Former Blazers among the top 125 are CJ McCollum (4A) and Gary Trent Jr., Norman Powell and Gary Payton II, all at 5A.
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