Book Signing at CJ's Sports Bar & Grill Thursday Night November 4, 2021 In Oak Grove
Join me Thursday night in Portland at CJ's Sports Bar and Grill. I will be signing my eighth book "Jerome Kersey: Overcoming The Odds" from 5-7 PM.
I will give a short talk about about the book, a biography on the late, great Trail Blazers' forward. I will also have a Q & A session. I will also have a selection of my other books for sale including "Jail Blazers," "Civil War Rivalry" and "The Bill Schonely Story."
The wonderful part of this book event is that CJ's owner Terry Emmert -- a good friend of Jerome's -- and Bucky Buckwalter will join me in a discussion about the late, great Blazer forward that will begin about 6 p.m.
Iconic coach alive and still kicking at 90: ‘Linfield might as well be called Rutschman U’
McMINNVILLE — The mid-week lunch crowd at Golden Valley Brewery is bustling, but few of the customers seem to notice the sporting royalty in their midst. Then again, perhaps they are just giving Ad Rutschman some privacy as he dines with sons Don and Randy while conducting an interview with some guy holding a digital recorder.
With Neil Everett and Dewayne Hankins, talking Blazer broadcasting for 2021-22
Summing up the Blazer broadcasting scene for the upcoming season — and there are plenty of changes …
• Neil Everett sounded like a kid in a candy store when I caught up with him via phone while he was at his vacation cottage in Seaside.
“I just found a vintage Trail Blazers jacket at an antique store in town,” Everett told me. “I don’t know what year it’s from, but it has to be 30 to 40 years old and it looks like it’s never been worn. I’m so fired up.”
Everett paid $300 for the jacket.
On Oregon State’s historic takedown of Troy, along with a look at that win back in 1960, and a nod to the late Steve Hall
Pontificating on one of the biggest Oregon State football victories this century …
• Every 61 years, the Beavers beat Southern Cal on its home turf.
The way they did it Saturday night in a 45-27 dismantling of the Trojans in LA Memorial Coliseum was impressive.
This isn’t a great USC team, and it seems in some disarray following the Sept. 13 dismissal of Clay Helton as head coach.
That doesn’t lessen the impact that the victory has on Oregon State’s program in the fourth year under Coach Jonathan Smith.
Canham: ‘Looking at what we have back and coming in … I’m excited’
It can’t be that time already, can it?
Ah, but it is. Oregon State begins fall baseball practice on Thursday, Sept. 9.
Summer has flown by, and the fall portion of the second full season of the Mitch Canham era in Corvallis is around the corner.
The 2022 campaign will be one of redemption for the Beavers, who fashioned a credible 37-24 record (16-14 in Pac-12 action, tied for fifth) and came within whisker of advancing to a Super Regional in 2021.
Some old, a lot of new make Scott Rueck optimistic about his 2021-22 team
An interview with Scott Rueck is like a cruise on the Portland Spirit down the Willamette River. You feast on the information he provides, then relish the flow of the conversation. When you pull up to shore, you know it has been a worthwhile trip.
Oregon State women’s basketball was the subject as we spoke for most of 45 minutes about the second-favorite subject in Rueck’s life.
First, a note on No. 1 — his family — and the golf exploits of the oldest of three children to Scott and wife Kerry. Cole Rueck, soon to be a senior at Corvallis High, is making a name for himself on the links.
On the Pre Classic, Rich Brooks’ 80th birthday party, Adley (and Ad) Rutschman, Damian Lillard, Kevin Calabro and the Trail Blazers …
Sporting items on my mind as we swing into a new week …
I’ll put the Prefontaine Classic up against any 2 1/2-hour sports event in the state of Oregon — and yes, I’m including a basketball game involving the Trail Blazers.
The 47th annual invitational — with a crowd of 8,937 looking on at the newly refurbished track and field shrine called Hayward Field — featured nine meet records and seven world-leading marks in the first international meet since the end of the Tokyo Olympic Games two weeks ago.
The day I got the best of Barney — and inspired his career game
By Bob Robinson
(Editor’s note: Robinson, now 87, wrote sports for Oregon newspapers for 42 years, the last 37 at The Oregonian. “Robbie” was the paper’s beat writer for the Trail Blazers when they won the NBA championship in 1977. The Central High and U of O grad was a renowned golf writer at The Oregonian and is the author of four books.)
When Barney Holland died on July 21 at 89, it brought a flood of memories to sports followers in Oregon — including me.
During a long high school basketball coaching career at Lebanon, North Eugene and Aloha, the
former University of Oregon athlete compiled a record of 406-224 (.644) and won three state championships and seven league titles.
Holland earned several individual awards, too, including McDonald’s National Coach of the Year selection in 1977 after his North Eugene team won the second of back-to-back state AAA titles and lost only one of 54 games over two seasons, with All-American Danny Ainge leading the way.
Tinkle begins work with ‘deep roster’ as Oregon State basketball prepares for 2021-22 campaign
Once a college athletic program climbs a mountain, the trek doesn’t end. In some cases, it is only getting started.
That’s what Wayne Tinkle hopes is happening with Oregon State basketball.
Tinkle, soon to begin his eighth season at the OSU helm, will be coming in off the glow of a remarkable late-season run that saw the Beavers reach the Elite Eight in March.
After starting the regular season 11-10, Oregon State reeled off nine victories in 11 games — including three straight to rule the Pac-12 post-season tournament and subsequent wins over Tennessee, Oklahoma State and Loyola Chicago in the NCAA Tournament — before finally being eliminated 67-61 by Houston a step from the Final Four.
The Beavers, who claimed the first Pac-12 Tournament title in program history, became the second No. 12 seed ever to reach the Elite Eight in their first trip there since 1982. They finished the season ranked 20th in the final Coaches’ Poll, the first time they have been ranked in any poll since March 1990, when they were No. 22 in the Associated Press rankings. At 20-13, it marked the second time since 1990 the Beavers have reached 20 wins.
Tom Jordan’s labor of love will end with this year’s Prefontaine Classic
An era with the Prefontaine Classic is ending. And no, I’m not talking about a demise of the greatest single-day event this side of Civil War football on the state’s sports calendar.
The 46th running of the best track and field meet in the United States is set for August 20-21 at revamped Hayward Field, and — with fingers crossed due to COVID-19 implications — it promises to provide 2 1/2 hours of sensational entertainment as always.
But this will be the swan song of Tom Jordan, who serves for the 37th year as meet director.
Jordan, 72, is stepping aside because, frankly, the job calls for the energy of a younger person.
The Heart of Football: Why the Small College Game Matters
Phil Maas loves just about everything about football and the coaching profession.
That shines through in his book, “The Heart of Football,” which focuses on what he believes are the merits of the sport, in particular at the lower levels.
Maas, 75, lives in Weed, Calif., a town of about 3,000 situated at the base of Mount Shasta, just an hour south of Ashland. A high school and junior college coach for 50 years, he still coaches running backs at College of the Siskiyous, a member of the California Community College Athletic Association located in Weed. Chris Knudsen, the well-respected long-time coach at Gresham’s Centennial High, says Maas is a bit of a legend in coaching circles.
Talking Dame before Tokyo
Prior to the start of the Olympic Games in Tokyo, Jon Teitel of HoopsHD.com interviewed me about Trail Blazers guard Damian Lillard. The results of our discussion are here.
For Chad Forcier: 25 years in the NBA, and now two rings
Most coaches never get to experience the thrill of an NBA championship.
Chad Forcier has done it twice — once with the San Antonio Spurs in 2014, this year with the Milwaukee Bucks.
“I was so fortunate to have gone through it once with the Spurs,” says Forcier, a long-ago assistant coach at both Oregon State and the University of Portland. “To have a second shot at it with the Bucks … I’m not sure that ‘living a dream’ adequately describes it. I’m keenly aware of how many players and coaches never get to taste that. I feel very blessed.”
Forcier was on the bench alongside head coach Mike Budenholzer as Milwaukee took the Phoenix Suns in six games to secure the franchise’s first NBA title in a half-century. The city was agog over the prospects. An estimated 65,000 people jammed into the Deer District surrounding Fiserv Forum to watch Tuesday night’s Game 6 on a big screen outside the arena and then celebrate afterward.
Offering a final salute to the legacy of Bud Ossey: ‘He went out on top’
I thought Bud Ossey would live forever.
I don’t really mean that, of course. Forever isn’t in the cards for anybody.
But after 101 very solid years on the planet, with his health reasonably stable and his intestinal fortitude beyond mortal levels, I figured those who called him friends — and there were so many of us — would be lucky enough to have him around for at least a couple of more years.
Looking at the Winterhawks Heading into 2021-22: A new logo and uniforms, Plus plenty of Other Changes
Change is inevitable and, oftentimes, beneficial to a sports franchise.
After 45 years, it was time for the Winterhawks to freshen up their logo and, in corporate speak, create a new “brand identity.”
Political correctness provided a push for Portland’s major junior hockey club to move away from its Native American-based logo — borrowed from the NHL Chicago Blackhawks when it moved to the City of Roses in 1976 — to an approach based on the “hawk” part of the team’s nickname.
Mick Challenge: A Worthy Cause And a Friend Worth Remembering
By Jim Wilson
Mickey Riley passed away in 2011 at 51 after a six-year battle with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Shortly thereafter, a group of close friends established the Mickey Riley Foundation, aimed at keeping the name of the former Oregon State baseball standout alive through scholarships, activities and events.
As a foundation board member, I have found that endeavor to be one of my life’s most rewarding experiences. Mickey was a great Beaver and even better friend to a ton of people.
“Mick had a great ability to make friends,” says Jack Riley, Mickey’s father and the coach who won 613 games in 22 seasons as Oregon State’s baseball coach, second only to Pat Casey in the program’s 115-year history.
Herb Brown, Mark Warkentien Endorse Blazers’ selection of Billups as head coach
Herb Brown was an assistant coach with the Detroit Pistons for only one season — but what a season it was.
The older brother of then-Detroit head coach Larry Brown was on hand for the Pistons’ ride to the NBA championship in 2003-04. One of his favorite players to work with on that team was the new head coach of the Trail Blazers, Chauncey Billups.
“I love him,” says Herb, now retired and living in Traveler’s Rest, S.C. “He was terrific when I was with the Pistons. He’s a major reason why we were successful. He was a great leader. He took coaching. He understood coaching. He was truly professional.”
Ex-Beaver standout, coach Andy Jenkins back in Pac-12 —With the Washington Huskies
For nearly two decades, Andy Jenkins was a dyed-in-the wool Oregon State Beaver.
Now he is a Washington Husky.
The former slugger and assistant coach at OSU has been hired as an assistant coach for — of all people — Lindsay Meggs
On Kevin Calabro and Jordan Kent, the sports broadcasting scene in Portland, Ime Udoka, James Allen, the Cambia Portland Classic and much more …
Knocking it around on a potpourri of sports topics …
• Kevin Calabro’s return to the broadcasting booth with the Trail Blazers is not a done deal.
The Blazers, who let Jordan Kent go last week as their TV play-by-play announcer, have extended an offer in principle to Calabro, who served as their TV play-by-play man from 2016-20 but gave up his job during the COVID-19-interrupted 2020 campaign.
Bud Ossey Gets 75-year Pin, Scholarship Named in His Honor: ‘God, That’s Out of this World’
I was on a short list of friends and family invited to attend a recent reception for Bud Ossey at his home at Bonaventure of Tigard as the Centenarian received yet another award.
The Society of American Military Engineers presented the No. 1 fan of Oregon State athletics with a 75-year pin as one of the organization’s “distinguished Fellows.”
Buddy Barnes, a retired lieutenant colonel with the U.S. Army, a professional engineer and the 100th president of SAME in 2019, was on hand to present the award to Ossey.