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December 24, 2018 A Christmas (or anytime) tale of two former on-field rivals In November 1970, my father's Oregon Ducks faced the undefeated Air Force Falcons at Autzen Stadium.
It was notable for
several reasons, including that it was the coming-out party for Oregon's rail-thin sophomore quarterback, Dan Fouts, who led
the Ducks to a 46-35 victory. Plus, at one point, Oregon's
star middle linebacker, Tom Graham, used his trademark move, trying to step on the back of the opposing snapper on a field
goal attempt and then block the kick. Tom even was
capable of completely leaping over the center in a time when there was no such thing as a long-snapper specialist.
Invariably, the center was the snapper. Period. And this case, the Falcons' center -- Orderia Mitchell
-- happened to be the best center in the country and a certain NFL prospect but for the requirement that military academy
players fulfill their post-graduate active duty obligation, as had Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach after winning the Heisman
Trophy. The man most came to know as "O" got angry. "Don't you ever
do that again," he snarled at Tom. I'm bringing this up because the other night, we
attended an annual Christmas party at the home of our friends, Pam and "O' Mitchell, in Colorado Springs. We've been friends for more than
20 years, brought together by mutual friends and the realization that "O' had played several times against the Ducks,
including in thst 1970 game in Eugene, which I to this day consider one of the most memorable and entertaining college games
I ever have seen. That game ended up the basis for one of the games in my novel, The Witch's Season, and I didn't
do a very good job of concealing that the Cascade Fishermen's star middle linebacker, Alex Tolliver, was Tom Graham; and that
the Air Force Falcons' star center coping with virulent student protests of the Air Force's role in the Vietnam War, Andre
Orderia, was Orderia Mitchell. In 2001, Tom officiated at Jerry Frei's memorial service, and during the informal gathering
afterwards, we hooked with with "O" on a speaker phone in Colorado Springs between his scheduled surgeries. Fouts
was at the service in Denver and joined in the conversation. By then, "O" Mitchell was a renowned orthopedic surgeon,
having settled for going to medcal school instead of to the NFL. 'Tom
died of brain cancer on May 30, 2017. I was an honorary pallbearer at the service, representing my father and my family.
Here's the piece I did here on Tom and his death. "O"
Mitchell retired this month. Hs had a great career, and it lasted longer than his stay in the NFL would have been. I
had written a July 1997 newspaper piece on "O." That's pasted below. To two great men. Playing doctor: The Colonel is now Doctor
O July 20, 1997
COLORADO SPRINGS — In January 1973, the Hula Bowl was the premier postseason college
all-star game. The experience was a week of beachcombing, of luaus, of tours, of laughing through non-pad practices, of nocturnal
excursions through Waikiki ... and a no-pressure game. Just down the street from the all-stars' hotel, a military rest and
recreation facility was the respite for many soldiers taking a break from the war in Vietnam. President Richard Nixon's second
inauguration was days away, and his "Vietnamization" policy at least meant American involvement was lessening. That Hula Bowl
group quickly came up with a nickname for Orderia Mitchell of the Air Force Academy, who had been a second-team
Associated Press All-America center that season. "They called me "Colonel,"' Mitchell recalls. "Everybody was talking about
the contracts they were going to sign. They'd get to me, and they'd say, "Hey, Colonel, what are you signing for?' "I'd say,
"Five years!"' The popular vice wing commander had neither a way nor a desire to avoid what then was the inflexible postgraduate
military commitment. Five years. Many of Mitchell's football peers went on to pro careers. As a junior, he was on a Black Sports Magazine All-America
offensive team, for example, with Reggie McKenzie, Lionel Antoine, Greg Pruitt, Jerome Barkum and Ahmad Rashad. "I
have been blessed with the opportunity to do things most people only dream about," Mitchell says. "About the only
thing I didn't do was play pro football. But there were six centers drafted my year who started at some point for NFL teams,
and I know I could have played with, or better than, most of them. But I was happy to go to the next life." * . * . * The doctor is in; and, like
his partners in the Front Range Orthopaedic office in Colorado Springs, Dr. O. Mitchell, 47, is swamped. (Orderia has
become "O." on the Front Range roster of doctors; his friends have called him that for years.) It is a Tuesday, the final day
Mitchell will see patients before he takes a trip to Las Vegas to, among other things, attend a high-school all-star basketball
tournament with his friend, Air Force basketball coach Reggie Minton. In a normal week, Mitchell is in the office Monday,
Tuesday and Thursday, and does scheduled surgeries Wednesday and Friday. In exam room No. 7, Taylor Kelly is 4 years old, and he has come from
Limon with his mother. He has had trouble with his bone development, but that doesn't matter now as he turns to his friend,
the doctor, and says conspiratorially: "I got to tell you something!" "What?" Dr. O. Mitchell asks. "I saw the new Turbo Rangers!"
Taylor says, and a moment later strikes a muscleman's pose. "Oh, man, don't hit me!" Mitchell says in mock horror. Mitchell
assures Taylor that he is going to be a fine athlete someday, reassures his mother that Taylor is making progress and tells
them he will see them again in a year.
* . * . *
At Elkhart Central
High School in northern Indiana, Mitchell was an unlikely football center, at 155 pounds, and he also was a basketball center
and a third baseman. His father was a chemist; his mother worked for the local company that made band instruments. When Mitchell first
was making his college choice, in 1969, many of his contemporaries were in contempt of establishment authority; Mitchell accepted
an Air Force Academy appointment. "I wanted to fly and fight," Mitchell says. "Everybody wanted
to do that. The authority part of the academy wasn't any big deal to me because my father was an authoritarian, and I was
used to that."
* .
* . *
Ruth Brooks and her husband are retired and about to embark
on one of their cross-country trips in a motor home. Brooks is making progress from ambulatory problems, and now is taking
walks. As
she sits in her wheelchair, she has a question about what she is permitted to do while she is on her medication: "Can I have
a Manhattan?" Mitchell smiles and says one is OK.
* . * . * When he arrived at the academy, Mitchell wasn't
considered a football prospect. He played one basketball season as a teammate of current San Antonio Spurs general manager-coach
Gregg Popovich. But he also went out for football, and before long he was bigger, stronger and starting in the middle of the
line. Like
almost all cadets, Mitchell went through some ambivalence. But he had his friends, including father figures. Capt. Reggie
Minton arrived on the academy staff when Mitchell was a freshman, and he also was close to athletic trainer Jim Conboy and
assistant basketball coach Hank Egan. "Reggie took me under his wing," Mitchell says. "Him, Jim Conboy, Hank Egan;
their homes were my homes. I ate their food, I tore up their cars. It seemed like every day I was saying, "I'm going
home.' Reggie would sit me down. He was my strength at that time." When Mitchell was a sophomore
in 1970, the anti-Vietnam War sentiments meant that the nationally ranked and Sugar Bowl-bound Falcons heard much taunting
— from the stands and on the street.
"People would ask," Mitchell recalls, ""Why are you doing those things? Why are
you killing babies?' I'd just look at them and say, "I'm not killing babies.' But it wasn't really that bad."
* . * . * Ron Parlin, a jet-ski mechanic,
suffered a severely broken leg in - what else? - a jet-ski accident. Mitchell surgically implanted a rod in the tibia, and
the original half-cast has just come off so Mitchell can take a look and then put on a more sturdy cast. "Look what you did to me!"
Parlin says, joking, on a table in the cast room, nodding down to the stitches and angry purple bruises. Mitchell says the healing is coming along fine, then not-so-gently points out that smoking inhibits bone
regrowth and strengthening. He and Parlin talk seriously about what the patient can do on the leg, but they are ribbing each
other as well. Mitchell puts on a cast, then as he leaves, points to Parlin's cigarette box - stuffed in a sock - and delivers
another reminder.
* . * . *
When Mitchell, an academic All-American,
was approaching graduation, he was offered a choice between flight school and medical school - on the Air Force's tab. He no longer wanted
to fly and fight. While so many of his football friends from that Hula Bowl game and All-America teams were playing in the NFL, Mitchell
was attending the Tulane University medical school in New Orleans. After an internship in general surgery and family practice
in Dayton, Ohio, he decided to specialize in orthopedics, and the Air Force sent him back to Tulane for four more years of
study. "I was originally thinking about going into cardiovascular or neurosurgery," Mitchell says.
"Then I did rotations on it and I didn't like the personalities I ran into. They were aloof; they had that elite personality.
In orthopedics, you did things and people got better." * . * . * Pratyush Buddiga, 8, has severe internal femoral
torsion - meaning he is pigeon-toed and his bones haven't grown completely straight. Mitchell has prescribed orthotics for
his shoes, then - with Buddiga's brother, Akshay, 7 , and his mother, Rekha, watching intently - he shows Buddiga some exercises.
Finally, Mitchell lifts Akshay onto the examination table and has him go through the exercises with his brother, so they can
do them together. If the orthotics don't help enough, Mitchell says, he eventually might perform surgery to "twist" the bones. But that's not necessary yet.
* . * . * After leaving Tulane the second time, Mitchell returned to the academy, where the former All-American
became the team doctor and the chief of the orthopedic department at the academy hospital. In 1986, he left the Air Force and went into private practice,
remaining in Colorado Springs. "I had that support group," he says. "I had my friends. It's a beautiful area.
I had no reason to go anywhere else."
His practice quickly was built up, and he joined
Front Range Orthopaedic partners in 1992. "Being in solo practice was very hard because you have to be on call all the
time," he says. "This is a better way of doing it with less stress."
* . * .
* Amanda Job, a high-school volleyball player, has had a broken wrist that has just come out
of the cast. "Guess what?" Mitchell says after looking at the X-rays. "It's healed 95 percent and we're going to
leave you out of the cast." "Guess I can't play volleyball for a while?" Amanda asks. "No, because if you try to set, or dig," Mitchell
says, pantomiming the moves, "you'd let out an unbelievable scream." He offers another rehabilitative exercise, though. "Washing
dishes is good."
Thanks
a lot, doc.
* . * . * Mitchell doesn't advertise his athletic past; just his athletic interest. In the hallways
of his end of the Front Range Orthopaedic offices, he has football action pictures on the wall and a framed and signed Michael
Jordan jersey, but no evidence from his own career. His own pictures and awards - All-America plaques, team pictures, the
shot of his induction into the Indiana Sports Hall of Fame - are in his office. He attends as many Nuggets, Avalanche, Rockies and Broncos games in Denver as he can, and
he talks sports, especially with his younger patients. He can afford those tickets; private practice has made him affluent. Mitchell never has married [NOTE: He and Pam married a few years
later], but his nephew - Dennis - lived with him and attended Air Academy High in Colorado Springs, where he
was a basketball standout. At home, Uncle O's standards were stringent. So stringent, in fact, that Dennis must have thought
he'd joined the Air Force. Done your homework? Done the dishes? You're not going anywhere until you've studied. "It's the thing I tell all the kids who come into my office," he says.
"They play sports and they talk about how important sports are, and I tell them how important the academic background
is. People can be good, even great, at sports, and it's not enough. You need something to fall back on." Heard that before, haven't we? And haven't all those
kids who pass through his office? But this man — who never even had a chance to try pro football — can say it
with unusual credibility.
December 19, 2018 The three young(ish) stars on Denver's court, ice and field   
I'll start with a quiz. Who's the oldest? Avalanche sixth-year pro Nathan
MacKinnon?
Nuggets fourth-year pro Nikola Jokic?
Or Broncos rookie Phillip Lindsay? And the correct answer is... Lindsay. He was born
in July 1994 and is 24. Jokic, born in February 1995, is 23. MacKinnon, born in September 1995, also is 23. Yes, the hockey player who in
2014 broke in as the NHL's rookie of the year, or the Calder Trophy winner, is the youngest of the three. That's not meant to
be a manifesto about the merits of the young stars in the NBA, NHL and NFL. I'm not hockey-centric
to the point of subscribing to the sport's most aggravating argument, that if you're not a hockey-first fan, you shouldn't
be allowed to be a hockey fan at all.
I'm from a football family and I've covered the NFL, NBA and NHL — and in different
ways, like them all. Lindsay, whom I covered at CU (that's my picture when I spoke with him after the USC
game a year ago), is a terrifc, heartening story, especially in Colorado. I'm not going to insult you by saying why. You know
why. You've heard the reasons 17 kazillion times, to the point where they have become cliches. Rather, it's an illustration of just how different the sports' pipelines are.
MacKinnon took time to develop after being the NHL's top overal pick in 2013, when
he still was 17 years old. Other No. 1 overall picks, usually those touted as "generational" talents, have been
immediately among the league's absolute elite. MacKinnon wasn't until his breakout 2017-18, when he finished second to New
Jersey's Taylor Hall in the Hart Trophy (MVP) voting. Accept that at face value, and he was his league's second-best player
last season. The truth was, he deserved to win it. Now ... I know someone's going to try to make this a knock on
Jokic and Lindsay. It's not. Actually, I think it's pretty darned exciting and invigorating that Lindsay, Jokic and Lindsay
all are on the Colorado sports scene at the same time. They're all elite.
But MacKinnon came close to winning his league's MVP at age 23. As terrific as they are, is anyone pretending that
Lindsay or Jokic are among their league's top handful of players? I
don't think so.
That's how far MacKinnon has come
in a year. |
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December 17, 2018 With raised expectations, mediocre isn't good enough for Avalanche 
Semyon Varlamov, all by his lonesome at the top of his crease
Monday nght. I now check in with the Avalanche
intermittently, and always at home. That's as opposed to being part of the coverage when Denver's newspaper sent a writer
on the road for Avalanche games. I was on the NHL beat when it could mean sandwiches at Patrissy's, pizza at Gino's
East, wings at Gabriel's Gate, calamari steak at Original Joe's, a burger while standing in the parking lot at Tommy's, even an orchestra seat at "Mamma Mia." Well, that and hockey, of course, being around the Avalanche and immersing myself in
the day-to-day routine of practices, morning skates, games and the contact work that's a part of doing a major-league job
covering a major-league team on a beat-writer basis. But
now that my contact is infrequent, checking in for snapshots, my perspective is different -- including this season. In one
sense, stepping back enables me to see a bigger picture. I'm not caring about lines at the morning skate. (Actually, I never
did, but at least had to pretend to.) Two years removed from the worst bang-for-the-buck season in NHL history, when Colorado
amassed a dreadful 48 points while scraping the salary-cap ceiling in 2016-17, and one season removed from an unlikely rebound
to a playoff berth, the Avalanche has been mercurial so far this season. And we're grousing -- yes, me,
too -- about that inconsistency, about the ups and downs, about what seem to be the too-frequent clinkers interspersed through
the road-dominated schedule so far. I get it, but
then I look at the NHL standings for the first time in a few days, rather than checking them daily, and I see that the Avalanche
is ensconsed in the top five of the Western Conference and then consider that the NordiCanadian top line of Nathan MacKinnon
centering Mikko Rantanen and Gabe Landeskog remains the most electric in the league, and it strikes me that the standards
have been raised. Not quite back to what they were in the franchise's glory years, when anything but the Stanley Cup was a
disappointment, but at least getting back into that realm.
After their 4-1 loss at home to the Islanders Monday night, the Avs were 18-10-6, positioned to
meet the Predators again in the first round if the standings look this way at the end of the regular season. (Which they likely
won't., but...) Colorado has been 1-3-1 in its last five and 3-4-2 in its last nine. But I'll come back to this: When I took
a look at the schedule when it came out, my initial reaction was that if the Avalanche could be in a playoff position at Christmas,
that would be praiseworthy. Of the 37 pre-Christmas games, 16 are at home. The biggest problems are that the Avalanche is only 7-4-3 at home, and it has gotten
substandard goaltending. Yes, Semyon Varlamov and Philipp Grubauer have had good nights, and folks have slobbered all over
themselves pointing it out, but major-league goaltenders are supposed to play that way consistently. Varlamov is 22nd and
Grubauer – who at least has benefited from great goal support — is 41st among qualifiers in goals-against average,
and Grubauer's save percentage (.897) is below the Astrom Line. They were supposed to be 1 and 1A. They've been more like
2A and 2B. (By the way, can
we stop portraying every opposing goaltender as having been larcenous, even when giving up four goals to the Avalanche in,
say, a 6-4 Colorado loss? In the NHL, when the opposing goalie is good and makes some tough saves, it's called ... the NHL.
) When the Colorado
coach is condescending, it's a sure sign that the goalie hasn't been good enough, as was the case when Varlamov allowed three
goals on 20 shots against the Islanders. "He was OK," Jared Bednar said of Varlamov.
"Our whole team, I thought we were just OK. I thought they (the Islanders) were the hungrier team tonight." There's
no excuse for that. "It changes daily for me," Bednar said of his perspective. "I'm not
concerned. I believe in our team and what we're capable of doing. I just feel like we're just not as sharp and as crisp as
we were earlieer. And that's why we win one, lose one, and that's where we're at right now. I think the urgency has to come
back in our game. "Look, I didn't feel like our team was real urgent, right from the drop of the
puck. And I thought they were. They're a hungry team and they're playing well. They're one of the best defensive teams in
the Eastern Conference right now for goals-against, so it's hard to come by. I think at times we want it to be easier than
it's going to be." It's never easy. |
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December 7, 2018 
Stories in December issue of Mile High Sports Magazine,
available now. Awards issue: Nathan MacKinnon (professional athlete of year) Jared Bednar (professional coach of year) Read them here in Digital issue
November 28, 2018 Nathan MacKinnon's biggest accomplishment: Building on, not resting on, his breakthrough as he fuels Avalanche's NordiCanadian Line 
Nathan MacKnnon aftef the game Wednesday night -- and after the pack discovered him. While the post-game media pack initially flocked to and surrounded defenseman Erik Johnson on the far side of the Avalanche dressing room Wednesday night, I instead pounced on the opportunity to sit down alone with, first, Mikko Rantanen, and then Nathan MacKinnon. (I'm not going to try to
explain it, other to confess it often involves letting team broadcasters
to lead the way and ask at least the first wave of questions. That's
just the way the post-game media approach has evolved -- from
maneuvering to get into one-on-one or small-scrum conversations
with players, to comfort in numbers.) This was after the Avalanche's
6-3 win over the Penguins at the Pepsi Center. The Avs have won
six straight, are 15-6-4 and haven't lost in regulation since Nov.
9. And their top line, with MacKinnon centering Rantanen and
Gabe Landeskog, is the top story in the NHL. A Canadian between a Finn and a Swede, two wingers from Nordic nations? I'm calling them the NordiCanadian Line. It's my choice and I'm sticking to it. Against the Penguins, MacKinnon had an empty-net goal and three assists; Landeskog a goal and an assist; and Rantanen two assists. At the end of the night, Rantanen (42 points) and MacKinnon (41) remained 1-2 in NHL scoring. "It's not magic," MacKinnon said of the line. "We're even keel and we come out and dominate. That's our mindset. We're not wondering where one another is on the ice. It's second nature now, which I think is real cool. Even when we came in last place (in 2016-17), Mikko and I developed a good chemistry. Last year, when Gabe got put on our line, we took off from there." MacKinnon finished second to Taylor Hall in the Hart Trophy voting last season. I had written dozens of columns and stories in his first four seasons, addressing the issue of whether -- or even when -- the first overall pick in the 2013 NHL draft would break through to superstardom. He was flashy, he could be breathtaking, but even his terrific games made you wonder: Why can't be do that every night? He wasn't billed as a "generational" talent when he went at the top of the draft in 2013 -- at least not to the extent that Connor McDavid and Auston Matthews were in ensuing years -- but he needed to be better. And the switch seemed to flip
last November. After his terrific 2017-18, he has been even more
impressive so far this season. It's all praiseworthy, but
now mostly so because he came back hungry, determined to prove that
he hadn't just arrived at superstardom; he was going to stay there. "You know what?" MacKinnon began. "You always have some doubts if you can repeat it. That was uncharted territory for me last season, when I put up almost 100 points. Coming from 50 the season before that to 100, you don't really know if you can do it again. I feel comfortable now I can do it again. Obviously, playing with Mikko and Gabe, we're continuing on
our
success from last year. I've had tons of help, but it obviously feels good that I can repeat it and hopefully be a dominant player in this league for a long time." 
Because both the Avalanche (at Nashville) and Penguins (at Winnipeg) had played on the road Wednesday night, MacKinnon and Sidney Crosby, 'who had a hat trick against the Avalanche in accounting for all three Pittsburgh goals, hadn't been able to go to dinner the night before their teams' meeting in Denver. The two buddies from Halifax -- offseason training partners and co-stars of hilarious annual Tim Hortons commercial campaigns in Canada -- will have to wait on that until next week, when their teams meet again at the PPG Paints Arena. "I said hi to
him after the game," MacKinnon said. "When we go to Pittsburgh
next week, it will be fun to catch up with him. He's one of my
closest buddies. We work out together every day in the summer, but
it's more than a professional friendship. We're close and I took at him
as a brother. In the back of my mind, or whatever, it's cool to see him get a hat trick. He's such a legend and it was a real cool game to be part of." In assessing the Avalanche's start, MacKinnon played the us-against-the- world card. "It's a lot of fun," he said. "At the beginning of the season, we were
kind of written off again. Obviously, we're on a good winning streak
right now. I think we're a really fast team. We're coming
together. To beat Nashville and the Penguins back to back is cool.
It shows our growth and our maturity. We gave up a three-goal lead
tonight and we didn't panic." Rantanen's two
assists against the Penguins left him with 32 for the season, also
a league-high and two more than Toronto's Mitch Marner. The question
becomes: Is MacKinnon making Rantanen or is Rantanen making MacKinnon.
And the answer is: Yes. "We're just helping each other,"
MacKinnon said. "I don't think one or the other i helping each
other more. He's such a special player. 'I think we're just making each
other better." At that point, the mob arrived, I thanked MacKinnon and stepped away. A little earlier, Rantanen told me (and these are not biiled as revlations): "It's a lot of fun. The team is winning now and it feels good. It's th best feeling when you win six in a row."
The Line, he said, "as been together a long time. We've
been together almost the whole season last year and 25 games here,
so you get to know each other. It's two good players there. We like
to talk before the games about what we do and there's a natural
chemistry there." Whatever it is, it's working. November 25, 2018 A Fun -- and Freezing -- afternoon with small-town, small-school football 
As Strasburg coach Jeff Giger addressed his team after the Indians' 13-7 loss to Limon
in the Class 1A state title game Saturday, a few -- OK maybe more than a few -- of the
players couldn't hold back tears.
STRASBURG –
Let me check my splotchy notes and scoring summary, scrawled in
a stenographer's notebook with a green Flair pen — not a savvy
choice — as I alternately wandered up and down each sideline at
Strasburg High's Winter Field Saturday afternoon. It looks as if someone named "Gzuw%hdy$@Z" scored the tie-breaking touchdown for the Limon Badgers in their 13-7 win over the Strasburg Indians in the Class 1A state championship game that was a matchup of schools in the small towns along Interstate 70 east of Denver. In the fourth quarter,
a driving, wet snow turned horrible, game-long windswept conditions
into something worse. For the record, sophomore fullback Kory Tacha scored that tie-breaking touchdown, two plays after Braden Sandersfeld made
a spectacular leaping and then falling catch of a Cannan Bennett
pass for a 38-yard gain that got the Badgers to the 1. It was Tacha's
second TD of the game, and it stood up as the Badgers won their
18th football state championship. Here's how windy it was, with the gale blowing north to south: One of the key plays in the game was a 1-yard Strasburg punt, giving Limon possession at the Indians' 22 early in the third quarter, leading to Tacha's first score. It wasn't even a bad punt. In mid-flight, the wind just shifted it into reverse. And
Limon won another state championship. To many Coloradans, Limon is known for three things. It's the town that serves as
directional reference at Colorado highway
and freeway intersections, even if Siri mispronounces it "Limb-un."
You've seen it mentioned on signs thousands of times, even if you've never been there. It's also the home of the wonderfully
old-school, old-world Lincoln Theatre — which has "The
Grinch" and "A Star is Born" coming up on its marquee
and its screens over the next couple of weekends. And its high school
long has been a Colorado lower-enrollment football power, dating
back to when the Badgers won 10 state titles in 38 seasons under
legendary coach Lloyd Gaskill, who was inducted in the Colorado
Sports Hall of Fame in 1981 and died in 1998. I was at the game helping jump-start the Greeley Tribune's new venture, The Playbook, tied to the Patriot League -- of which Strasburg is a member in most sports. Only in football, it instead is in the Class 1A Northern Conference. The Indians, who
had fallen 36-6 to Limon in the regular season, almost pulled off
the upset of the undefeated Badgers Saturday. I enjoyed the rejuvenating
visit to small-town high school football — all except for
weather. 
Strasburg's Trystan Graf (34) heads left against Limon. Other Indians are Chad Sutherland (51), Collin
Russell (5), Eddie Duron (57) and Owen Strain (75). In
the short drive from the I-70 exit to Strasburg's Main Street, a
parked rig was strategically positioned with signs cheering on the
visiting Badgers as they passed by in their bus. Nobody in Strasburg
seemed to object. At the high school, windows of trucks and cars parked outside the gym and locker room were painted with the Strasburg players' numbers and best wishes. Near the entrance gate at Winter Field, if you bought an official program, encompassing the state playoffs in all classes, you were pre-warned
before handing over your $5 that the roster information
for Limon was wrong. (Caveat emptor.) On the visiting side of the
stadium, many Limon boosters pulled up to the fence
and watched from the heated interiors or braved the elements as they stood near them. Near them, the heavily costumed Badger mascot turned out to have made the best clothing choice in the stadium. 
Anybody hungry? At the concession hut on the Strasburg side, an event grill
was set up, and for $3.50, you got a hot dog, chips and drink. Or
a burger for $3. The weather was beautiful an hour before the 1 p.m. kickoff. The game should have started then, or at 10. It was almost as if the coin flip flipped a switch, and the winds began, soon whipping angrily from north to south and making being on the field or in the stands an adventure, long before the snow started. 
Check out the flag. That's how hard the wind was blowing. And
it was unrelenting. I gave the tiny Del Hemphill Press Box a shot, climbing up the metal stairs beyond the top of the bleachers, and picked up a sheet with
correct roster
information from both teams. The public address announcer, Strasburg math teacher Kevin Hemphill, pulled out an extra
copy from his clipboard for me and as he
ran down the starters on the public-address system
on both sides of the ball for both teams — yes, most starters play both ways — I noted their positions. In green.
There was a
story there, as I was reminded when former Longmont Times-Call
sportswriter Steve Hemphill entered the press box wearing a Strasburg jersey and told me that he now is the sports editor of the Roanoke (Va.) Times. Wait.
Hemphill? It turned out that Steve and Kevin's father, Del Hemphill, for
whom the press box and the adjacent middle school are named, was the
district's superintendent and the P.A. "Voice"
at the Indians' games for nearly 30 years
before his 2004 death. And now Kevin's son
and Steve's nephew, A.J., was a sophomore wide receiver for Strasburg, part of the team hoping to knock off their I-70
rivals. 
The Strasburg side of the field. Fans were bundled up, and so were the cheerleaders. From there, I went down to the field, determined to be reminded of my early days in the profession, when keeping my own play-by-play and stats on the sideline — while seeing and overhearing the banter on the benches and field — were part of the fun. Bad call. At
one point, I dropped my roster sheet and panicked as it flew away. I
never did properly thank the man who stepped on it and handed it to
me. At halftime in the car, I took a picture of the sheet
for backup, because I wasn't sure how many copies existed and I
didn't want to climb back up those stairs to see if there were
more. Amid the awful weather conditions, the Indians came close. 
Limon fans celebrate the final seconds rolling off the clock
and another state championship. When it was over, as Strasburg coach Jeff Giger gathered
his team around him and, perhaps noticing the tears and sobs
around him, told the Indians he was proud of them.
He told them that coming up short couldn’t change that. A few minutes later, after stepping
away from his team, he told me why. “All year, we’ve had adversity and they bounced back,” Giger said.
“We had so many different injuries to different guys in different
places, and they kept fighting and giving themselves a chance. That
was a good football team we played. We had every opportunity. They
just made the play.” The Indians scored
on their first possession of the game, going 45 yards in eight
plays and finishing it off with sophomore running back Trystan Graf’s
5-yard run. But that was it for Strasburg, and the heartbreaker came
midway through the fourth quarter, when Limon had the 13-7 lead.
Strasburg sophomore quarterback Collin Russell scrambled on fourth-and-3 from the Badgers’ 21 and hit a wide-open receiver standing alone just over the goal line. The problem was, the receiver – this is high school, we’ll leave his name out – dropped it. And Limon held on. “It sucks,” Russell told me as I hoped the wet recorder was working. “I just feel bad for the seniors. I know the sophomores and juniors will come back next year. And we’ll get one.” Senior linebacker
and lineman Eddie Duron stopped to take hugs of consolation from
his family as he walked to the dressing room. “We got to where we wanted to be,” he
said. “But we didn’t come up with the big one.”
He conceded that the weather played a factor. “It
affected our passing game a lot,” he said. “We have a real excellent quarterback and now I have to wish him luck in the future. We all worked our butts off, beginning in the summer workout program in June, and we’re really disappointed to come this far and not get the victory.” Even if they're
not in the Patriot League in football, they represented the Patriot
League well. 
In this terrific shot by Jeff Tucker, Limon's Braden Sandersfelt makes the crucial catch that gets
the Badgers to the Strasburg 1 and sets up the tie-breaking touchdown. POSTSCRIPT: Then I went to the Steelers-Broncos game Sunday. The press box was a little bigger. November 13, 2018 Nuggets' rainbow skyline logo back on the horizon 
Jamal Murray The Nuggets are wearing the new version
of their rainbow skyline logo uniforms against the Houston
Rockets as I type. As the unveiling approached, I was asked about them by several who knew or discovered that I was covering the Nuggets -- as a young beat writer who covered both NHL and NBA teams for seven seasons while still in my 20s -- when they first wore the
skyline logo. It was a long time ago and I won't guarantee the accuracy,
but this is how I remember
it.
The Nuggets had a contest. They unveiled the new jerseys
at a news conference and also
surprised us by bringing out a fellow named Kiki Vandeweghe as the model in the jersey and saying he just had agreed to a new contract. This was after weeks of checking with his agent,
Gary Vandeweghe (his uncle),
about the progress of the negotiations.) Later,
the winning jersey designer came and saw me at the Denver Post. (Some of you might know ... I used to work there.) He brought his designs.
As I remember it, he was mildly upset that the team hadn't followed his design EXACTLY and showed me his original drawings just
to have it on the record. I think the differences were minor. I did an item on it for the notebook of odds and
ends on Denver's teams we did on the scoreboard page. I don't remember the exact time frame of the meeting,
whether it was before or during the season. I don't remember the artist's name. Sorry. But it's in the Post archives
somewhere. I'm pretty certain he wouldn't like
these latest incarnations with its lines rather than solid colors.
November 11, 2018 State of Colorado football season officially is a fiasco  
 
One Nov. 17 addition:
I admit it was harder to make the argument to bring back Mike MacIntyre at CU after he this week trashed the players he inherited, noting the program was at low ebb and a laughingstock when he took over and it took a while to get "my
guys" in to the program. He's right. But it's bush league to say it, even after the fact. The best coaches, even if for solely pragmatic reasons,
embrace the players they inherit
and get the most out of them. (See Jim McElwain...at CSU.) Perhaps one of the
reasons for the Buffs' inability to win games even when competitive in MacIntyre's
early seasons was the perception
within the program that their coach wasn't buying into the team concept. I was pondering which dateline to put on this column about the NFL and the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision college season in Colorado. Denver. Boulder. Fort Collins. Colorado Springs. I came back to this: In 2018, on the football
front, we are... FIASCO, U.S.A. -- The 3-6 Broncos didn't lose Sunday, thanks to their bye. I don't agree that Vance Joseph, shown above after the loss to the Texans at home last week, invitably will be fired, because if Denver wins, say, five of the final seven and/or seems to demonstrate that its inexperienced head coach has made significant progress down the stretch, a case can be made to bring him back. I'm serious. It could happen. Look, despite all the hand-wringing over Joseph's clock management and decision-making against Houston, the fact is if one one the best kickers in the NFL, Brandon McManus, had just done his job and drilled the 51-yarder in the final seconds, the Texans would have been walking off despondently, the Broncos would have been celebrating a one-point win and there would have been no discussion about whether John Elway would fire Joseph the next morning. When McManus ran back over to the sideline and unleashed a practice kick into the net before coming back on to try to make the game-winner, it had the look of a guy tightening up. (Yes, I wondered that at the time.) Short of a bold and even surprising
move in choosing an interim head coach, firing Joseph at this point
would accomplish nothing. Finish out the year, give him a chance
for the shocking turnaround, take stock -- and then make the change,
if it still seems warranted. I'll
say the same alternatives should be on the table if the Broncos are
blown out on the "road" against the Chargers and are 3-7 heading into the final six weeks. Keep Joseph or do something that cuts against the grain of the concentional in that situation. What qualifies as a
surprising move? Go back to the Broncos' quarterback depth chart from the 1980s. John Elway or Gary Kubiak. Bear with me. Elway
could put on a coaching hat and headset for the rest of the season
and get a close-up, hands-on look at the roster he has created. That
includes taking stock of whether Case Keenum ever can be anything
more than a stopgap -- which is what he appears to be now. He has
been, well, Case Keenum. Absolutely, Elway does that sort of evaluation
and conclusion-drawing all the time from the exexutive's office
and often walks with the ex-quarterback's hurting gait onto the
practice field, but this would be different. Make no mistake, the coordinators
-- Bill Musgrave and Joe Woods -- would "coach" the team.
Elway would be the coaching staff's overseeing CEO (with sideline
involvement, it would be more direct than it is now), making the
time-management and basic (Punt? Field goal? Go for it?) strategy
decisions, plus pitching in with opinions about the basic play- calling
outline. The same outline could be in effect for Kubiak, who of course has head-coaching experience and would be capable of more direct involvement. Granted, unless
we're all misreading the situation and Kubiak, he has washed his
hands of coaching -- mainly for health reasons -- and wouldn't
want to do this. Neither would Elway, the son of a coach who early on realized what a fickle business that was. But if the decision
is to fire Joseph during the season, it's worth a try. To whatever extent possible in the NFL under the CBA
and frontloaded contracts, have the players auditioning for the
boss. BUFFALOES: I was fooled, too. Five weeks ago, I was at Folsom Field, watching CU beat Arizona State to get to 5-0, and listening to Mike MacIntyre, plus Leviska Shenault and his teammates after the game. This was a nice story, a CU program rebounding from a desultory 2017, which notably closed with a horrific showing at Utah that left the Buffs looking as if they had zero interest in achieving bowl eligibility. The start was illusionary. Nebraska is awful in its first year under
Scott Frost, UCLA is awful in its first year under Chip Kelly, Arizona
State is only mediocre in its first year under Herm Edwards (sense
a trend here?), New Hampshire was the paycheck breather and CSU is ... well, I'll get to CSU in a minute. Shenault was an electric difference-maker until his turf-toe injury, but his absence until the Wahington State loss Saturday, and the Buffs'
other injuries, doesn't completely explain the collapse. This is a team with a schedule that looked tougher, based on programs' traditions,
than it was. This is a 5-5 football team.
The record is what the Buffs are. The
weird thing is that even the subsequent road losses at USC and Washington
wouldn't rule the Buffs out of contention in the Pac 12 South.
The leader, Utah, has three conference losses. So what of MacIntyre in his sixth season? Bring
him back. And when I say that, I'm not going along with the reason
often cited for the retention of coaches in this era. You've heard it, and
it will come up again when I get to Mike Bobo's situation at CSU. They
can't afford to fire him. The position isn't rdiculous. MacIntyre would be due just a shade under $10 million if he's fired after this season. That's not all that eyebrow- raising -- well, maybe it is, but you know what I mean -- in this era, 'which is why I long ago felt "sympathy" for fired head coaches regardless of how absurd boosters' expectations are. That's nice work if you can get it. CU can't start over again. It's
that simple. MacIntyre is recruting with facilities that at least stack up
with the rest of the Pac 12 -- outside of Oregon -- and required some fudging
of the original financial requirements to get them built. MacIntyre
inherited a program at low ebb. Give him one more year. At least.
I despise giving boosters the right to fire coaches, but the fact is, if
someone truly wants MacIntyre out, the out-of-whack financial parameters
of the coaching profession mean that if the money can be raised
or ticketed to oust him, that changes things. But I'm saying pragmatic
reasoning, involving the good of the program and not sympathy for Mike MacIntyre, should lead to his return. RAMS:
When I spoke with Bobo in his office during pre-season practice
for a Mile High Sports Magazine profile, he remarked after the formal interview that he was having numbness issues in his feet
in the wake of his offseason knee replacement. It turned out, of
course, that he was away from the program for a spell and then was
affected through the season. He's still struggling, as evidenced
by watching him on the sideline during the 49-10 thumping at Reno
Saturday night.
That affected CSU this season. It's part of the explanation for the 3-7 season, but not sufficient rationalization. Here's why the Rams' struggles
are even more problematic than CU's: All momentum toward becoming
a perennial Mountain West power, and a bona fide candidate to step
up to a Power Five league, is gone. We probably overrate the current state of programs in assessing chances of programs moving up, but it's still an issue. CSU was taken seriously as the
Big 12 considered, and deciding against, getting back to 12 teams. That probably wouldn't be the case now, and the chief spokesman for the cause -- Tony Frank -- is stepping down as presidnt to concentrate on his chancellor duties for the CSU system. But even the more modest goal, and one that is eminently reasonable, of joining Boise State as the Nountain West's most recognizable and nationally respected program, is in danger of becoming a longshot. Given
the investment in the stadium and facilities, and even CSU's burgeoning
reputation as a vibrant, first-class public university, this is
an impossible-to-justify setback. Bobo himself is refreshing, often sounding
like an unhappy booster in both setting expectations and reacting
to setbacks, but when you have those buyouts ... and Bobo's would
be $8 million if he's fired after this season. Jim McElwain and his staff did a tremendous job in
building up to, and coaching through, that 2014 season. But to be
fair, he at times took an approach that sacrificed longer-term for
the present, and Bobo has had to deal with that. But he also has
been victimized by what now has to be considered a suspect strategy
of recruiting the Southeastern Conference territory hard. There have been major successes there, most notably Michael Gallup (and that was via the JC route),
but on balance the conclusion has to be
that accepting second-tier talent from
SEC country won't lead to Mountain West dominance. Blindly
saying focusing on Colorado prep talent is the way to go is the
wrong approach, too. It has to be a mix. The same goes for Bobo's buyout and future. He should have a chance to dig out. Until 2017, he was recruiting off a model and plans and later a construction site. Absolutely, that should have kicked in sooner, and it hasn't. But I'm pretty sure that if there isn't a turnaround, nobody's going to have to chase out Bobo. FALCONS: This isn't going to change. In today's era, Troy Calhoun
-- former AFA quarterback, cadet and assistant coach -- is the right
man in the right place. The Falcons are 4-6 and they beat Navy and
lost to Army. Air Force generals are restless, but nobody else
should be. October 26, 2018 Matt Duchene's return to Denver with Senators a bit misty 
In the good, ol' days ... Matt Duchene as an Avalanche As
tributes go, it was understated. But the first-period mention on the Pepsi
Center scoreboards with a welcome back still got to Ottawa Senators
center — and that still seems a bit funny to say — Matt Duchene Friday night. "My favorite part, for me, was the tribute and the reception from the fans," Duchene said in the visiting dressing room after the Avalanche's 6-3 win over the Senators. "I teared up, for sure." I asked him how misty he got
... and why he got misty. "Because I think it was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life," he said of his late 2016 trade request. "It was never something I wanted to do. It was something I felt I had to. Sometimes that's life and that's the business. Just the signs in warmup and the people that were being so kind. You touch the puck, you're going to get booed, that's normal. Avs fans are competitive and you kind of expect that.
"But I'm very
grateful to the Avalanche organization for how they received me
all night and the fans also. They mean a lot to me and they always
will." About 30 seconds after the tribute, Duchene — who came into the game with only one goal for the season — scored the first of his two goals of the night. "I think I saw
tears in my eyes and [Cody Ceci] just hit my stick," Duchene said.
"I had so mch emotion going until midway through the second, I could hardly breathe out there. The altitude definitely doesn't help, either." His second goal, at
10:32 of the second, gave the Senators a 3-2 lead before the roof
caved in. 
Matt Duchene and his wife, Ashley, at a Nuggets game shortly before
he was traded a year ago. Duchene's friends and
family — including his pregnant wife, Ashley, who is from
the Denver area — watched it unfold from the private box Matt bought for the night. Duchene still owns a home in the area, and that's not likely to change in the near future. "I'll never cut ties here," he said. "Denver will aways be a home for
me and I could definitely see myself coming back here one
day, whether it's to play or to retire here. It's definitely in
the realm of possibility, absolutely. I grew up here. I feel like
I grew up more here than I ever did before. I'm eternally grateful
to the people of Denver and to the organization." This was such a story. One you could make up, but it would seem corny. The kid from Haliburton, Ontario, who grew up idolizing the Avalanche's glory years teams and especially the stars, including Joe Sakic. He had a framed and signed Sakic jersey hanging in his basement. and during Colorado's development camp attended Sakic's retirement news conference. He didn't get to play with Sakic, but eventually under him when Sakic moved to the top of the hockey front office hierarchy in 2013. And his coach was another of his heroes, Patrick Roy. 
Matt Duchene and Jared Bednar So what went wrong? Among other things involving dressing room and organizational politics, Duchene didn't like playing wing and preferred center, a problem given the emergance of Nathan MacKinnon. As tempting as it is to think of MacKinnon on the wing and Duchene centering the top line ... the issue is whether that would have slowed or even halted MacKinnon's development, and the question is whether the other wing is Gabe Landeskog or Mikko Rantanen. Or even whether it could have been anywere close to as effective and electrifying as the Landeskog-MacKinnon-Rantanen is now. Or whether Duchene could have accepted long-term centering the second line, for a team with scoring depth, or playing on MacKinnon's wing long-term. What's forgotten is something MacKinnon himself repeatedly pointed out when he went on a tear after the trade and he was asked if Duchene's departure had been a part of that. He and Duchene by that time weren't on the same line, anyway, and the top line had been seeing the opposing top defensive parirings. So nothing had changed there. Also, with Duchene's "bridge" contract and then a long-term deal that set the bencharks and a so-called Duchene ceiling for a team that touted its "structure," Duchene had been a good soldier there. So the Avalanche first
was open to listening to offers for Duchene before he made the request
himself, ultimately leading to the bizarre 15-second statement
he made to the media after reporting to training a year ago, and
then the Nov. 5 three-way trade that sent him to the Senators and brought
the Avalanche so much, Herschel Walker could have called into
a talk show and claim he no longer was the standard for a single player
bringing a haul in return. A year ago,
after the trade was announced during the Avalanche's game against the Islanders in Brooklyn, Duchene mused as he walked and the media followed, that there was a story to be told here and maybe some day it would come out.
I asked him about that. "I don't remember saying that," he said, matter-of-factly. "But what's in the past is in the past. I've moved on. I don't think I've ever been happier playing the game and happier with my personal life, obviously. I've got a a little guy on the way and I'm happy. That's what I was searching for, and that's what I found. We'll see what my future holds. I've really enjoyed playing here in Ottawa." Aw,
you know what he meant.
   Stories in October Mile High Sports Magazine*: *With an Avalanche on-the-glass season-ticket holder on the cover. - Joe Sakic feature
- A look at Eagles' move to AHL: Could it screw up a good thing?
  
Stories in September Mile High Sports Magazine: - Catching up with Joel Klatt
- The life
and times of Mike Bobo
 
July Mile High Sports Magazine: Can the Avalanche Chase Down Lord Stanley's Cup? Beginning
in July, Mile High Sports duty switched from web site to magazine.
Mile High Sports, July 2 Staying the course banks on improvement
Mile High Sports, June 30 Cam Morrison, Avs' No. pick in 2016, on remaining at Notre Dame for junior season
 Mile High Sports, June 14 How dare you go to Coors Field for fun! 
Mile High Sports, June 12 Shouldn't football be the last resort for good athletes?
Mile High Sports, June 7 Like sands in the hourglass, so are the days of the Avalanche offseason
Mile High Sports, June 5 The Big Stiff gets his due
Mile High Sports, May 31 Bring back baseball to CU, CSU
Mile High Sports, May 24 It's impossible to make too much of the Golden Knights
Mile High Sports, May 22 Colorado Eagles moving up
Mile High Sports, May 8 Jim Montgomery leaving was a matter of when, not if
Mile High Sports, May 3 You don't have to be a horse racing fan to love the Kentucky Derby
Mile High Sports, April 25 Don't let Nuggets off the hook
Mile High Sports, April 22 Great Season? Yes, if...
Mile High Sports, April 14 Nashville hitting all the right notes
Mile High Sports, April 7 Avs make the playoffs! Avs make the playoffs!
 Mile High Sports, April 3 How's this for half-full?
March 19, 2018 Mike Bobo was set on a QB, but his name is Collin Hill ... and
he's injured again 
FORT COLLINS -- In his opening remarks at his Monday
news conference Monday, Colorado State coach Mike Bobo ran down
the Rams' injuries heading into spring ball and alluded to what
was announced last week: That presumptive starting quarterback Collin
Hill for the second time in his stay in Fort Collins suffered a
torn ACL last week and underwent surgery last Wednesday. "He's doing good,"
Bobo said hours before the Rams' opened spring ball with an evening
practice. "He will not be at practice today but will rejoin
the meetings starting tomorrow." When the floor was open for questions, I asked: Will Hill be able to play this fall? "I think that's too early to answer, Terry," Bobo said. "That's obviously the goal anytime a guy gets an injury, is to rehab him as fast as possible where he's in good health and can play. If there is a silver lining, it happened now, not a month from now or in fall camp. It happened right now, so that puts us at about five and a half months, I think, before the first game, with the first game being in Week Zero (against Hawaii on August 25). "It's not out of the question, but it's definitely
a long rehab. I know his mindset's right. But you can only
go as fast as your knee will let you sometimes." That's two ACL
surgeries on the same knee in a year in a half for Hill, potentially
a redshirt sophomore in 2018. He isn't playing. OK, maybe that's too strong. It would be a major surprise if he does, and Bobo knows it. That means he's operating on the assumption he has to find a capable starter from among redshirt junior J.C. Robles, redshirt freshman Justice McCoy and walk-on redshirt freshman Judd Erickson. Or bring in a graduate transfer. 
At
Monday's opening workout of spring drills: Mike Bobo, J.C. Robles (10), Justice McCoy (2), Judd Erickson (12), new walk-on Salvetti D'Ascoli (13). "It was going to be a big spring for that position, anyway,"
Bobo said of spring ball. "Collin hadn't played since
his first year in game form. He obviously practiced some, but
he was a little bit rusty and now it's going to be a big development
for those two guys behind him. making sure they get a ton or reps
... The spotlight will be on them and we'll see how they handle
a little bit of pressure."
But then Bobo acknowledged the 2018 starter might not even be on
campus yet.
"We're actively
recruiting, as I said I believe after our first signing day, (when) we
did not sign a quarterback in this class, that we would actively recruit a
quarterback in this offseason, and we're still doing it," Bobo
said. Neither Dormady nor anyone else would be promised the starting job, of course. And it's probably unfair to hold the Bauta failure against anyone else, but another shot for a washout SEC quarterback isn't the way to go. The best hope is that Robles, at least established in and familiar with the program, steps up. Or that McCoy is a star waiting to happen to happen. The other issue
here is that there is no guarantee that Hill can ever completely
recover from a second ACL surgery this young and remain resilient
even if he makes if back on the field. As a true freshman, Hill had beaten out holdover starter Stevens and Bauta in 2016 before his knee injury against Utah State at midseason, on October 8. He redshirted last season as Stevens had a stong senior year. Then last week, Hill suffered the torn ACL the same knee playing basketball. "I was just heartbroken for that kid,
how hard he's worked," Bobo said. "He's really had a great
offseason in our fourth quarter program. He's stepped up as
far as being a vocal leader on and off the field. . . You can
say, 'Hey, he shouldn't have played basketball, live in a bubble,' but
I don't have that policy. Guys can get hurt walking down the street. "It's unfortunate. He has a long rehab ahead
of him, but I know if anyone can come back from it, it's Collin
Hill." Bobo conceded that the Rams' offense might have to be tweeked -- not overhauled, but tweeked -- depending on who emerges as the starter. "We'll have to do things around that quarterback, of what he can do and what he can handle," Bobo said. "There are a lot of offenses we've run here, there are a lot of offenses I've ran at (Georgia). We have to figure out what we can do as an offense, and we were going to have to do that anyway. We lost three offensive linemen, we lost some guys at the outside receiver. We were going to have to figure out who we were and spring practice will be part of that." Bobo said that Robles
"has got to be a more accurate passer to play in this system.
He's got to be better fundamentally with his feet. And he's got to play
confident. Part of that is as coaches getting him more opportunities and
not necessarily how he plays, but how he projects his voice, how he talks
to the teammates, how he leads." Justice McCoy is from New Orleans, and Bobo said he is a better pure passer -- and less of a multiple threat -- than he was portrayed to be in recruiting. "I would say J.C.'s probably more of a dual threat than Justice McCoy," Bobo said. He said McCoy "has put on about 20 pounds since he got here last fall," Bobo said. "I like the way he looks physically right now. It's going out and putting it together, processing information for Justice, taking it from the meeting room to the drills, to the team situations, to the scrimmages, how fast can he process it. And then Judd, he has gotten a lot of reps in individual and hasn't had a lot of team situations, and that's usually the case with a kid that gets redshirted his freshman year. Judd and Justice are pretty much the same, how do they process. And then it's going to be taking care of the football."   CSU's new coordinators also met with the media Monday. At left, offensive line coach-offensive coordinator Dave Johnson; at
right, defensive coordinator John Jancek. Bobo will remain his own de facto offensive coordinator. Johnson replaces Will Friend, who left to join the Tennessee staff. Jancek replaces Marty English, the Colorado
native who initially announced his retirement,
but Monday was named to the staff at his alma mater, Northern Colorado.  Mile High Sports, March 18 "MVP, MVP..."
March 11, 2018 Meanwhile, in Greeley, a legend in women's hoops has UNC in
March Madness   With all the considerable respect due Becky Hammon -- the most accomplished basketball player in Colorado State University history who deserves an interview and full consideration for the men's program head-coaching position at her alma mater -- there already is a women's game legend coaching in this state.
Kamie Ethridge, now 53, was a two-time All-American
at Texas and won the Wade Trophy as the nation's top collegiate
player in 1986. As a 5-foot-5 senior point guard, she led the Longhorns
to an undefeated season and an NCAA championship.
She has an Olympic
gold medal. She was inducted in the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in 2002. She is one of the true trailblazers in the women's
game.
And
now, in her four season as the head coach at Northern Colorado, Ethridge
has been instrumental in transforming the Bears into a nationally prominent program.
UNC won the Big Sky Conference regular season title, then on
Saturday routed Idaho 91-69 in the championship game of the league tournament at Reno. It all means
that on Monday at 5 p.m.,Ethridge and the Bears (26-6) will
gather at Cables Pub and Grill, 1923 59th Avenue in Greeley, to watch the NCAA Women's Basketball Tournament Selection Show and find out where they're headed for their first game. Ethridge
and the Bears are one of the most underplayed sports stories in the state, and that was true before they earned their way into the NCAA tournament -- a tournament the Pac-12 Colorado Buffaloes and Mountain West Rams will be watching from the outside. CSU beat
UNC 55-44 in Greeley in December, but the Bears' non-conference wins
include those over Louisiana State, DePaul, Denver, San Francisco, Pacific,
Missouri-Kansas City and Liberty. Ethridge came to Greeley in April 2014. She had been the long-time
associate coach at Kansas State, working for Deb Patterson, who now is the UNC program's director of basketball operations. Ethridge has hoops in her DNA. Her father, John, was a star at Texas Christian and her mother, Mitzi, was a high school standout in Dimmitt, Texas. The couple settled in Lubbock. The youngest Ethridge girls, Kriss and Kamie, went to play at Texas for renowned coach
Jody Conradt. As the Longhorns' wizard point guard, Kamie controlled games while rarely shooting. "Team-wise, it was the most fulfilling
experience of my career, winning that national
championship on an undefeated team with those
people you've grown up with," Kamie told me. Donna Lopiano, later
the president of Sports Management Resources in Connecticut, was the women's AD at Texas. "I always
had a list of all the Texas athletes I would want to be on my side if I ever got into a fight," Lopiano told me. "Kamie and (star swimmer) Jill Sterkel were right at the top. They were the definition
of the will to compete. Kamie
ran the team, and how Kamie went, the team went." Conradt coached
the Longhorns from 1976-2007. "I like to tell a story, but I make sure Kamie isn't
there when I tell it," Conradt
told me. "She was not very tall, not particularly quick, not a great shooter, but she won the Wade Trophy her senior year -- and won it averaging five points a game. There was something
special about her. We all look
to those players who make everyone else better, and that is the perfect description of Kamie. She demanded that her teammates play at a high level." Ethridge was
Team USA's point guard for the 1985 World University Games, for the 1986 world championships in Moscow, for the 1986 Goodwill Games and for the outset of the 1987 Pan American Games. Each of those American teams won a gold medal. But she suffered an anterior cruciate ligament injury at the Pan Am Games and was less than 100 percent for the 1988 Olympics, where she
accepted a backup role. "Kay Yow had been our world championships coach and she was picked again to be the Olympic coach," Ethridge said. "I was part of that group that had built that, and Kay Yow was very loyal. ... I
tell people all the time, if
you can think of anything you want to do as an athlete, standing on top of the podium with the national anthem going and a gold medal hanging around your neck, that is the ultimate." Deciding that a European pro career -- all that was available at the time; the WNBA didn't begin play until 1997 -- wasn't for her after playing one year in Italy, she spent two seasons as an assistant at Northern Illinois and five at Vanderbilt. When Patterson, also a Vanderbilt assistant, got the head coaching job at Kansas State in 1996, Ethridge went with her. "I just got to do so much, it felt like it was my program too as much as anything," Ethridge said. Despite a largely successful tenure at KSU, Patterson,
who had been under fire for
a variety of reasons, including what
many perceived to be mandatory attendance at chapel before games, was fired after an 11-19 season in 2013-14. The Wildcats went to the NCAA Tournament nine times in her 18 seasons. "I understand it's a business and understand an AD thinking that if he wants to make a change, he probably has to do it then
because the team is set to be
really good this next year," Ethridge told
me after she moved to UNC. "But
it's a stab in your heart." After UNC's Jaime White was hired
at Fresno State, Bears AD Darren Dunn called Ethridge and
interviewed her in Denver. Twenty-eight years after
finishing her college career, she was a college head coach. "When
she first graduated, I thought, no, I don't think she can be a coach," Conradt told me. "The reason had nothing to do with her knowledge of
the game or how she could relate to players. I thought she would be intolerant of people who weren't at her level,
it was going to drive her crazy. But when I saw what a tremendous teacher she became, yes, I thought it was past time for her to have her own program and put her own stamp on a program. I'm so excited
for her to finally have that
opportunity." Lopiano, who after leaving Texas in 1992 was the CEO of
the Women's Sports Foundation
for 15 years, said of Ethridge becoming a head coach: "I've been bugging her for
the past two decades -- 'be
your own boss!' Every time I'd see her, I'd ask when she was going to do that." She did it at UNC, and she and the Bears are thriving. UNC
is 83-43 under Ethridge. This season, her two guards named Savannah -- senior
Savannah Scott, from Campbell, California; and
junior Savannah Smith, from Fort Collins
-- combine to average 35 points a game. And the Bears will go into
the NCAA tournament riding a 13-game winning streak. Read about the Bears' Big Sky tournament title here  Mile High Sports, March 10 Uh, Nathan ... bad idea
March 9, 2018 Paul Millsap is back and adapting to young Nuggets
cast around him 
Veteran forward Paul Millsap played his sixth game
for the Nuggets Friday night since returning after missing
44 in a row with a wrist ligament injury. His return wasn't completely
seamless.
The team Millsap rejoined on the floor was different than the one he played with in the first 16 games of the season.
Nikola Jokic, 23, while still agonizingly inconsistent,
has looked on many nights like a star waiting to happen. Jamal Murray,
still only 20, and Gary Harris, 23, are breaking out. Emmanuel Mudiay, 20, was written off as a washout as popular choice at the seventh overall choice in the 2015 draft and sent to the Knicks. So now the mandate for the returned Millsap isn't so much to lead as it is to facilitate the progress of the remaining young core. And also for that young core to take advantage of Millsap's leadership aura and his game -- without excessively deferring to him, either. That doesn't mean
that the veteran forward is free of the obligation to be
the best player on the floor some nights. That's not too much
to expect for $90 million spread over three seasons. But for the Nuggets
to make it back to the playoffs for the first time since 2013, and
more important, come out of this season with restoked and justfiable
hopes for the near future, Millsap must be both that complementary
piece and star -- depending on the night. On Friday against the Lakers, Millsap had 21 points and 6 rebounds as the Nuggets won 125-116 and by the end of the night were percentage points behind the Clippers and tied with the Jazz in the battle for the No. 8 playoff spot in the Western Conference. Murray had 22 and Jokic 21, and one of Jokic's seeing-eye passes set up Millsap for a key three-point play down the stretch. That's the formula that can land the Nuggets
in the postseason.
"No matter who else is on the floor, Nikola has to play his game," said Nuggets coach Michael Malone. "And understand that he is our guy, he's our go-to guy, we're going to play through him. Paul is a hell of a player and once he gets his rhythm back, now we can even become that more dangerous in our frontcourt with those two guys playing at a high level. But their rhythm tonight was great, and they played off each other very well." I asked Malone how Millsap was molding to this roster of evolving expectations and roles -- and vice versa -- since his return.
"The great thing about Paul Millsap, and here's a player, a veteran player, who has 87 playoff games, four All-Stars (games) and he just wants to fit in," Malone said. "He's not asking for touches, he's not saying give me the damn ball. He's just out there trying to find ways to fit in and help this team win. He knew when he came back this team was playing at a high level. Not many vets would do that, who have accomplished as much as Paul Millsap has. He's just going out there and molding, to your point, just playing with our guys and helping Jamal and Gary and Will Barton, and Nikola, all young players in their own right who play withthe veteran to learn and make his points whenever he can. I think Paul's done a good job with his play, but also with his mindset and his professionalism." Millsap now is averaging 14.8 points and
6.2 rebounds. "I'm trying to help these guys along the way as much as possible," Millsap said. "Prepare them for what's next. They're also helping me, I get out there and have fun and run and gun with them." He said
it was his and Jokic's best game together since his return. "For sure," he said. "We're starting to get a feel for each other. He's got to be him. Don't worry about me. I'm going to fit in. We run through him. He's the engine that goes. We're feeding off him and playing off him and that's when we're at our best." They're figuring it out. 
Mile High Sports, March 6 14 years ago, Steve Moore played his final game for Avalanche
Mile High Sports, March 4 With month to go, Avalanche controls own destiny
March 3, 2018 Question: Would Eustachy's methods have been OK if Rams won more games? 
CSU's Larry Eustachy during the Rams'
Dec. 2 win over the Buffs in Moby Arena.
Answer to the headline: Of course they would. This is college basketball, the pastime
in which "legendary" coaches field questions from
fawning national commentators -- many of them ex-coaches themselves
-- who have a pretty good idea what it usually takes to build and
maintain perennially winning programs. The rest of us don blinkers, taking note of when the March Madness contest entry has to be in or of the Final Four credential application deadline. Short of the FBI getting involved,
winning answers everything. Vacate a title later? Who cares?
Whine about it, of course, say it isn't fair to "the kids,"
but that championship celebration isn't erased from the memory bank. On Friday in Fort Collins, CSU
athletic director Joe Parker met with invited members of the
media to discuss the process that led to the ouster of CSU coach
Larry Eustachy -- via the $750,000 settlement on the $3.12 million remaining on his contract. Eustachy was placed on leave on February 3, and a few weeks later, he was effectively history, despite the small print that ties him to the athletic department through June.
Parker made it clear that the
examination of the program's "climate" didn't begin
-- or restart -- until this calendar year. It (and Eustachy's apparent conduct) "saved" CSU $2.37 million. It doesn't take a sleuth to infer that the university at least could make
a credible case that Eustachy had violated the zero-tolerance
restructions he was operating under since president Tony
Frank in 2014 rejected then-AD Jack Graham's recommendation
to fire the Rams' coach. And that because of that, this was
a negotiated compromise heavily weighted in CSU's favor.
Reading between the
lines, or even taking the honorable Parker at his word, then,
this was all sudden. Suddenly, after the Rams' season headed into the toilet.
The tricky part there is that reacting to adversity is one of the tests of a coach. By saying that this came up once the Rams seemed destined for a disappointing year, I'm not arguing Eustachy was maltreated or he shouldn't have been held to the zero-tolerance standards he knew were
in force. What I'm saying is, if the Rams got off to a 6-1
start in the Mountain West, this wouldn't have happened. I'm not
going to go over the same ground I did in the February 21 commentary
below after attending the Rams' loss to Boise State at
home, an embarrassing combination of a horrible crowd and
a checked-out effort from the Rams with young interim coach Jase Herl in charge. Reading that would provide more context for what I'm adding here after additional developments. The major point I would re-emphasize here is that my I've expressed my respect for Frank and his accomplishments about a gazillion times in covering and opining about them over the years. My outlook hasn't changed, and I've been impressed with Parker since his arrival as Graham's replacement. In the end, it truly
was about not winning enough games. It's impossible to
believe that Eustachy's practice attitude, treatment of players and staff, or in-game demeanor were that much different in January than in November. Clearly, in
more ways than one, the painful upset loss to Air Force at home was a major impetus, beginning the season's competitive death spiral and helping cause Parker to conclude it was time to aggressively check into what else was out there, curiously in a program with closed, but always video recorded, practices as part of the watchdog process. The loss dropped the Rams below .500 in the Mountain West for good, at 3-4, and to 10-10
overall. Until then, a first-division league finish seemed
possible and the Rams seemed at least capable of playing
entertaining basketball at home.
The Coloradoan reported that Eustachy's obscene tirade at a player during
that game drew the ire of fans behind the bench, among
others, and that it was audible in the streamed (outside-the-region)
version of the AT&T SportsNet Rocky Mountain broadcast.
That was January 17.
It took six weeks
for that to come out? I was there that night. The press rows at Moby now are on the concourse level, at the corners, so it's not as if we were sitting next to the bench, but the truth is, so much of this could have -- and arguably should have -- come out sooner and we in the media were, if not asleep, at least lacking vigilance. Former Collegian sports editor Justin Michael broke the story
of the "climate assessment."
Granted, the circumstances
of the results of the 2014 investigation into Eustachy's conduct
not being leaked and disclosed until 2017 were complicated for
many reasons, but that material was there for three years. But after Frank stuck with Eustachy, zero-tolerance was
the official standard. Eustachy didn't live up to it -- in part, or even mainly, because winning would have trumped all. 
February 25, 2018 Up and down Buffaloes are up on Senior Day 
Dominique Collier in the post-game
senior ceremonies 
Then it was George King's turn BOULDER -- If you've got this Colorado Buffaloes team figured out ... let me know.
When CU completed a Pac-12 sweep of UCLA Sunday at the Coors
Events Center, beating the Bruins 80-76 four days after a devastating loss to USC at home, it enabled the Buffs to write an
upbeat ending for the regular-season home careers of seniors Dominique Collier, George King, Josh Repine and the injured Tory
Miller-Stewart.
With a road game remaining at
Utah in advance of the league tournament, CU now is 16-13 overall and 8-9 in the Pac-12. There still is an impression of underachievement,
because the good nights -- most notably the home wins over Arizona, Arizona State and Stanford and now the pair of wins over
UCLA -- have been tantalizing indications of what this team could (or should) be.
The Buffs shouldn't be in position to need to storm through and win the Pac-12 tournament to get an NCAA
berth, but that's the reality. (I threw in "regular-season" in the above in case the CU ends up with a home game
in the NIT or anything else.)
Fittingly,
the two CU seniors who play appreciable minutes had big games Sunday. Collier got his first start of the Pac-12 season and
had 19 points, his most productive home game in his four-season career, and King pitched in with 16. It was an emotional afternoon for both, but perhaps more so for Colllier, the former Denver East High star who was
a highly-sought recruit but has had a mercurial run with the Buffs.
I suppose you could
say "disappointing," because he didn't become what was projected for him, but he has hung in there, accepted the
downgrading of his role after the arrival this season of freshman McKenzie Wright IV, and ultimately will exit the program
with head held high. His successful recruitment was considered an important coup for Tad Boyle's program as it attempted to
strengthen the relationship with Colorado's high school coaching fraternity, and the way it played out shouldn't change that
part of the dynamic. Collier's final prep game came at the Coors Events Center in 2014, when he had 18 points as the Angels
beat Fossil Ridge to claim the 5A state title. "It was really emotional," Collier said of the
final home game. "Coming in this morning for pregame, and through warmups, I didn't think I'd get really emotional. But
when my family stood around me and I walked out there, I got real emotional. That's when it really hit me that it's the last
time playing in his building. I just wanted to come out here and play well and come out with a victory."
Collier came
about 30 miles to get to CU.
King came a little farther. Raised in Fayetteville, N.C.,
he attended high school in San Antonio. His mother, Tresse, is an Air Force master sergeant.
"I got extremely emotional," King said. "It was an emotional game, especially in
the beginning. But when tipoff started, that was all behind me. Leaving Coors in your last game with a loss when you're a
senior would have been really tough to swallow." Boyle opened
his news conference with a salute to the seniors and then eventually noted that they "played like seniors."
"Today's a special day," Boyle said, "not only because we beat
UCLA, a good team, but we had four really special seniors we wanted to send out on the right note, on a high note. And we
did that. Our players played with great passion and pride, toughness and energy, and I know they did it for those four guys.
. . You couldn't ask for more solid students, athletes, representatives of our program and university." Barring shocking developments from here -- hey, 10 more wins in a row and the Buffs will be the
national champions -- the season will go down as a disappointment. But one of the high points will be being able to send the
seniors out as winners at home.  
Senior Day: Dominique Collier (15) watches his 3-pointer go in with 7:23 remaining, giving CU a 62-56 lead over UCLA. Next, George King (24) knocks down another 3-pointer, putting the Buffs up 71-57 with 4:49 left. | | | | | | | | |
Mile High Sports, February 24 If Avalanche stands pat ...
February 21, 2018 It's Moby
Madness, all right:
CSU's season has become a nightmare 
By late in the game, as CSU interim coach Jase Herl (light blue
sport jacket) continued to work the sideline, the band had the end-zone student section to itself. FORT COLLINS -- What a mess.
And it keeps getting worse.
To think that 12 weeks ago, CSU
knocked off CU in a raucous atmosphere in Moby Arena. While
nobody pretended that the Buffs were Final Four-bound or anything
close, it still seemed to herald that the Larry Eustachy-coached
Rams at the very least could recover from a rough start to
the season and be competitive in the Mountain West. Boy,
was that ever wrong. Wrong wrong, wrong. The Rams had lost five in a row when Eustachy was placed on administrative leave on February 3. The slide now is nine losses in the past 10 games, with Eustachy lieutenant Steve Barnes taking over for two games before being placed on leave, too, for being too much like Eustachy; and then with Jase Herl -- who is greener than the Rams' road uniforms -- coaching the last three.
The third was the biggest embarrassment
of all, the dreadful 87-54 loss to Boise State Wednesday night
that came in front of an announced Moby Arena crowd of 2,850
that was down to an intimate gathering by the closing seconds.
BSU led by 21 (50-29) at halftime and by 42 (77-35) with a little over seven
minutes left before BSU coach Leon Rice sent in two student managers,
a student trainer, and two of standout Broncos guard Justinian Jessup's buddies from down the road at Longmont High for the remainder of the game.
(OK, I made that up. But Rice might as well have.) The Rams aren't this
bad. This is a demoralized, downtrodden bunch that, with confidence destroyed, has been able to beat only conference doormat San Jose State in the past five weeks.
They boycotted a practice; at times, it looks as if that carried over into games.
The emotionally devastated Rams have fallen apart
as fast and completely as five mismatched guys who missed
free throws and wound up on the same team during the noon
hour at the rec center.
In a revolving-door Eustachy program in
which showing up and staying for four or five seasons was
a rarity -- and that's being charitable -- unity and cohesion
are fragile, if ever attained at all. The instability of the modern college
game is infamous and seemingly universal, most often rooted
in disatisfaction over playing time, but it often has
seemed that tolerance of playing for Eustachy at CSU came
with an expiration date. If you're reading this, you know the history. The 2014 evaluation and investigation of Eustachy's methods led to athletic director Jack Graham's recommendation to fire the coach he hired before president Tony Frank overruled him. Frank went to bat for Eustachy; and one of the realities at CSU is that it is best not to cross the popular president and chancellor, especially after he has gone to bat for you. Eustachy stayed, with zero-tolerance standards and strictly defined parameters. He again was supposed to have cleaned up his act, learned lessons, mellowed out. Then there was the leaking of that report last year, albeit with extensive acompanying reporting, leading to the questions: Why did it take so long to become public in a college town of few secrets ... and why then?
And then Graham's successor, Joe Parker, was looking into the cultureof the program, with extensive and numerous interviews, before Eustachy was placed on leave. It didn't help Eustachy's cause that he apparently told the players Frank had given him a vote of confidence. Not so. That didn't go over well with Frank, either.
The Rams were 10-14
overall and 3-8 in the Mountain West at the time of Eustachy's
ouster.
It is not out of line to at least wonder if this latest assessment of Eustachy's methods would have been undertaken if the Rams got out of the gate well in the Mountain West. Abominable, unacceptable methods should be abominable and unacceptable regardless of the record. Guess what? College basketball coaches frequently yell, offer pointed criticism, and occasionally use words -- especially behind closed gym doors -- that would be bleeped on a broadcast network. Eustachy, with other issues also coming into play over the years, was a known commodity.
If this is more a
means of getting rid of a coach for not winning enough games,
and finding a way to avoid buying out his contract and saving $3
million, that's shameful. Regardless of how unsympathetic of a
figure is, that's not right. The aversion to his methods shouldn't
be in direct proportion to the numbers of games his team loses.
I
threw that out there because it has to be asked. It has to be the standard of
honor.
That
said, I respect both Frank and Parker too much to be accusatory. It's
something that CSU needs to be conscious of as it proceeds in what undoubtedly
will be Eustachy's firing. The stunning progress CSU has made
in recent years, all across the campus and on the nationwide image front,
can't be undone. I wasn't even talking about sports there. And
when you throw in the ambitious on-campus stadium project,
it adds to the momentum. This is just a basketball program and a
quirky coach, which should -- but realistically doesn't --
get overwhelmed by all the more important issues and projects
from College Avenue to Shields Street.
In that sense, simply announcing, either now or after the season, that it was time to make a change -- for a combination of reasons -- and ponying up the $3 million would have been a better way to go. You're playing with the big boys in a college sports landscape that included a big-money Florida payoff to CSU to free up football coach Jim McElwain, enabling him to make the ill-fated move to Gainesville, and sometimes you should just take the dose of horrible tasting medicine and move on.
As it stands now, the drama is dragging down the program.
Junior guard J.D.
Paige, from Aurora and Rangeview High, called the Wednesday
night embarrassment "by far" CSU's worst performance
of the season. "We just didn't bring it tonight," he
added. "There's no excuse for that."
He went on to say the turmoil wasn't an issue. "I don't
think it's (any) of that," he said. "I'm simply
telling you we didn't bring it tonight. I didn't know what
it was. As a while team, we ddn't bring enough energy."
The Rams close out
the regular season at Nevada Sunday and at home against New
Mexico Wednesday.
"We just have to show more heart," Paige said. "That's what it comes down to. That's all it is. It's heart. We didn't show (any) heart, no competitiveness tonight. And it's just baffling."
The Rams haven't just
been beaten.
They've been beaten down. "I think we just keep talking with them, keep trying to find ways to motivate them individually that will benefit the team," said Herl. "Talk about playing for Colorado State, playing for the name on the jersey. Either that, or play for the name on the beck of the jersey." You do that, though,
you're going solo. 
Part of the Wednesday night "crowd," announced as 2,850.
Mile High Sports, February 21 If NHL stays away next time, too, USA should go all college
February 17, 2018 DU goalie Tanner Jaillet has kicked it up a notch in his
senior season 
Tanner Jaillet in the Pioneers' net against CC Friday night. DU defenseman Adam Plant (28) and CC winger Branden Makara (18) are in front of him. Tanner Jaillet already has raised his arms in his crease at the final buzzer, then
joined in an NCAA championship celebration. Now, as he winds down his four-season
career with the Denver Pioneers, his statistics
are in the same stingy range as a year ago.
Beyond that, the eye test result is that he has taken his game to another level as the Pioneers begin the regular-season stretch run and prepare to shoot for a second straight national title.
 Jaillet stopped 21 of 22 shots Friday night against Colorado College, allowing only Nick Halloran's power play goal at 19:31 of the first period. That wasn't enough. Colorado College claimed a 1-0 win at Magness Arena in the fourth and final matchup in the Gold Pan rivalry this season when the Tigers' Alex Leclerc made 40 saves and shut out the Pioneers.
That came the night after the Pioneers clinched
the Gold Pan with a 5-1 win over the Tigers in Colorado Springs,
extending their unbeaten streak to eight games. DU was without Troy
Terry, off in PyeongChang and playing for the USA in the Winter
Olympics, but that hadn't slowed down the Pioneers Friday.
The third-ranked Pioneers
fell to 17-7-6 for the season and 11-5-4-3 in the National
Collegiate Hockey Conference, where they're in second place and trailing
first-place St. Cloud State by five points. So it was a lost opportunity to
get within three points of first place. "For the last month or so, we've been playing some good hockey, we've been getter each weekend," Jaillet said. "This is a good learning lesson for when we're playing elimination games. All it takes is a hot goalie, me looking at a wrong angle, guys miss a rebound. One thing can end your season. We'll learn from this and move forward."
At the end of the night, Jaillet's 1.88 goals-against average
and his save percentage of .928 both were seventh-best in
the country.
"I've been OK," Jaillet said. "At the beginning of the year, it was a little tough. I've been better as of late." The bearded and unflappable --
they seem to go together -- seems so calm at times, you wouldn't
be shocked to see him with eyes closed for a brief catnap
when the puck is in the other end. DU coach Jim Montgomery said Jaillet has been "exceptional," then added: "He's been great. We're pressing tonight, and they get a couple of breakaways and 2-on-1s and he just makes the saves and gives us an opportunity. . . He's just been incredible." Jaillet, from Red Deer, Alberta
-- the mid-point stop on the drive from Edmonton to Calgary
-- already is 24. Although that might dampen some of the enthusiasm,
as an undrafted free agent he likely will have mutiple offers
from NHL organizations after the season. The NHL's salary cap allows
for minimum flexibility, so it won't be even anything approaching a
bidding war, but he likely will be able to assess were he might
fit in with various organizations. "I'll
worry about that once this year is over," he said. "I live in the present and just take it a day at a time. Obviously, it's coming to an end here, but that's part of life and you move forward." 
The Pioneers' onslaught in the final seconds was unsuccessful,
and CC goaltender Alex Leclerc finished with the 40-save shutout,
leading to the celebration below. 
Mile High Sports, February 14 Kerfoot continues to show (Ivy League) worth
February
10, 2018 Brazilian Lucas Siewert coming into his own as
Buffs' sophomore 
BOULDER -- When Lucas Siewert arrived in Southern California
from his native Brazil to enroll as a freshman at Cathedral
High School, virtually across the Harbor Freeway from Dodger
Stadium, his basketball ambitions were limited. "I came to the
United States, focusing on high school," he said Sunday at
the Coors Events Center. "I didn't really know what college basketball
was when I moved here, and that just kind of happened with the
flow of me doing good in high school."
Tad Boyle and his staff noticed him as he quickly emerged as a star for the Phantoms and ultimately averaged 23 points as a senior for a team that reached the CIF-Southern Section Division 3A quarterfinals. "I actually ended up committed to Arizona State, but the (Herb Sendek) staff got fired and I decommitted," Siewert said. "They (the Boyle staff) recruited me again and they were my first option." That's how the 6-foot-10
sophomore from Joinville, Santa Catarina in Brazil came to
CU.
On
Sunday, in a 64-56 win over Stanford, he came off the bench to lead
the Buffs with 17 points, hitting 4 of 6 three-pointers, and adding
7 rebounds. His three-pointer with 3:00 left -- pictured above
-- gave the Buff breathing room, opening up a 59-52 lead.
From there, they went on to the win that made them 7-6 in the Pac-12 and 15-10 overall, preserving the hope that winning out in the regular season and picking up a couple of victories in the conference tournament might be good enough to sneak the Buffs in to the NCAA tournament. Otherwise, of course, CU would have to duplicate the unlikely run of the 2012 team to the Pac-12 tourney title to make the NCAA field. The strange thing now is that only the league leader,
Arizona (10-3) has fewer than five conference losses, and
the Buffs are part of an eight-team pack with five (UCLA,
USC, Washington, Oregon) or six (Arizona State, Utah, Colorado
and Stanford) defeats. So it's not as outlandish as it might seem
at first glance to say the Buffs have a legitimate chance to finish
third or fourth in the regular season. The resurgence against the Cardinal came after the Buffs were dreadful, passive and unenergetic in a 68-64 win over California Wednesday and Boyle spent the three off days letting his team know how unhappy he was about that. "Coach challenged me on the glass after the Cal game, so I tried to meet his challenge," Siewert said. "Then the shots were just falling
for me." Siewert's previous career high was 14 points, and
-- curiously -- that came against Stanford in Boulder last
season. He was 4-for-5 on three-pointers in that game, meaning
he has been 8-for-11 against the Cardinal behind the arc in
the Coors Events Center in two seasons. "I know last year, I had
my career high against them too," he said. "I thought
about that, so that kind of gave me some confidence as well."
In 23 games this season
-- he missed two games in November because of injury -- he
is averaging 17 minutes, 2.6 rebounds and 5.3 points. He spent
much of Sunday setting picks for McKinley Wright IV and the other Buffs'
guards on the perimeter, but also went to the boards and popped out
to receive a pass and take the three-pointer. And four of them,
including the crucial one down the stretch, went in. "I'm trying to
make this, how do you say, not a rare thing, but to be a standard
thing," he said. "That's the player I'm trying to be.
In past games, I've been doing really good and that's what I'm
trying to become every game."
Boyle noted, "Obviously he shot the ball well from three today. He really gives defenses problems because in screens are you going to guard McKinley or Dom (Collier) or one of those guys coming downhill or are you going to guard him on the pick and pop. But I'm more proud of Lucas' seven rebounds than I am the 17 points. Obviously I like him shooting the ball the way he is and he gives us a shot in the arm offensively, but when he defends and he rebounds like he did tonight, he really helps this team."
Wright had an off shooting afternoon,
going 4-for-15 from the floor, and finished with 10 points, and
fellow guard George King was the other Buff in double figures
with 11. Forward Tyler Bey, limited to 18 minutes because
of foul trouble, added 10 points and 6 rebounds. So now it's off to
Washington State and Washington for the Buffs.  
Left, Lucas Siewert setting a screen for McKinley Wright IV. Right, Siewert and Tyler Bey (1) at the offensive board. 
Tyler Bey follows through on the shot that went in, putting CU up 52-49 with 5:36 left. Mile High Sports, February 9 Bowman Brothers Reunion in Eagles' final ECHL season
February 8, 2018 My Mile High Magazine stories on Coloradans heading to 2018 Games at PyeongChang The final count, barring injuries or other adustments, of Colorado-connected athletes on the Team USA rosters for the Winter Olympics was 31.
I did stories on six of them for the February edition of Mile High Sports Magazine, now out and available.
Here the online versions
of those stories, each with links to the digital edition of
the magazine: 
Interview: Troy Terry, hockey
Mikaela Shiffrin, Alpine skiing
Lindsey Vonn, Alpine skiing 
Chris Corning, snowboarding
Bryan Fletcher, Nordic Combined 
Nicole Hensley, hockey February 8, 2018 With McKinley Wright leading, can Buffs get act together for stretch run? 
McKinley Wright IV BOULDER -- What a great idea. Give Colorado a Wednesday conference home game against California and for the benefit of ESPNU and schedule it for 9 p.m. Yes, do that for a network offshoot that doesn't even consider it important enough to have its announcers on site, but instead has them calling the game off monitors two time zones away. The announced crowd of 6,385 for the Buffaloes' 68-64 win over the Golden Bears mainly indicated there were a lot of unused tickets, and also that Tad Boyle's program isn't enough of an automatic draw to overcome the ridiculous slotting and fill the Coors Events Center under any circumstances. Boyle even went out of his way
to open his near-midnight news conference by thanking the
fans who did show up -- and apologizing to them for the Buffaloes'
play as they got back to 6-6 in Pac 12 play.
"I've never,
in my time here, and I can't remember another time in my coaching
career when I've been this disappointed after a win in terms of
our performance and the way we approached this game," he said. "Especially
after we really did a great job against Utah in terms of our effort,
our energy, our toughness. Tonight, we turned the ball over 19 times
and we give them 18 offensive rebounds. Thank god we won. And
we won for one reason -- and that's No. 25 for the Buffs. Thank god
we had him. . . I'm disgusted with our performance."
That's McKinley Wright
IV, the freshman guard from North Robbinsdale, Minnesota.
He didn't have a great night shooting, going only 3-for-7
from the floor, but finished with 17 points, 5 assists and
6 rebounds while taking control and hitting clutch free throws
down the stretch as the Pac 12's 11th-place team hung with the
Buffs. Wright has been the bright spot in a mediocre and up-and-down
season for the Buffs, and now the charge will be to lead a
closing rush through the final six conference games and the
Pac 12 tournament.
Now 14-10 overall, the Buffs' only shot at making the NCAA tournament likely would be winning the league tournament -- or maybe winning out until the title game. Otherwise, the NIT beckons. So how has Wright, the former Minnesota Mr. Basketball listed at a charitable 6-0, carried this team?
"Toughness, heart, will, grit," Boyle said. "It's
all the intangibles that make McKinley Wright who he is. There
are point guards who are better shooters. There are point
guards who are better passers. I'm not sure there's any point guards
who are better rebounders. But the intangibles that he brings to
the game and the team, you just can't put a value on them.
"And I said this
before the season. I said, 'McKinley Wright will will this team
-- will them -- to four or five victories this year. Well, you
just saw one tonight. He willed us to a victory tonight ... If
we didn't have him, we'd be leaving here with a loss and Cal would
be feeling real good about themselves." The game was tied 28-28 at halftime, and the Buffs were playing as if it was past their bedtime. "I just called the guys together and told them
us younger guys are playing for the seniors," Wright
said. "We're trying to do our best to get them to the
tournament. We know is we had lost this game, there'd have
been a slim chance for that. This was a huge game for us."
Expectedly and understandably,
Wright is clinging to high- ambition hopes that likely are
out of reach.
"We have a very good chance toreach our goal, to play in the tournament and win the Pac-12 championship," he said. "Postseason is our goal. I'm trying to get the guys like George (King), Dom (Collier), Josh Repine and Tory (Miller-Stewart), our four seniors, to play in the tournament. They didn't make it last year." The Buffs next play
Stanford Sunday afternoon at home.
Trust me, Boyle was genuinely perturbed, but he also clearly had started lobbying for a better effort against the Cardinal. "If we play Sunday like we played
tonight, we have no chance, zero chance," Boyle said.
"If we play the way we played against Utah in terms of
our energy, effort and toughness, we give ourselves a chance. Our players
have to understand that." February 7, 2018 From a quiet second NLI Signing Day at CU 
BOULDER -- A college football
coach -- head coach or assistant -- is sitting
in your living room, offering your son a lucrative full scholarship plus stipends to a major university.
To have that happen, you will have had to embrace
your son's participation in the sport, most likely from youth
on up, and he's at least a pretty good high school player
who enjoys it.
No, you're not likely to be sweating the potential negative long-term physical
effects of the sport.
Or, in 2018, are you? I couldn't resist asking Colorado coach Mike MacIntyre Wednesday if, on the recruiting trail, he's getting more questions from parents about whether the sport is safe ... enough. The question is premature in the sense
that the real effect on the talent pool might be coming in
a few years. That will be when it's more frequent for talented
athletes, with input or mandates from adults in their lives, to reach
their final years of high school without ever playing tackle football in
the first place. That happens now, of course, but it's usually
about early specialization; in the future it also and even
mainly could be about an aversion for football as a participatory
sport. Yes, that's coming in the wake of all the attention paid on the physical toll the game can take, especially in the realm of concussions and CTE.
It will be difficult to document the effects of doubts about the game, and to identify the athletes who in another time would be football recruits, but only the most blinkered of the sport's proponents will deny it all has become a factor. But I asked, anyway, knowing
that MacIntyre is the highest-paid man on campus, a former
player himself at Vanderbilt and Georgia Tech. He also is
the son of a college football coach, the father of a CU wide receiver,
and a man committed to the sport in a coaching career that has
taken him through the ranks, including NFL stints with the Cowboys and
Jets. Is he hearing those questions? "A little bit," MacIntyre said at the news conference called to discuss the Buffs' additions to its recruiting class on the second national letter of intent day. "Of course, it's all over the media. The things that I would say, it's safer than it has ever been, as you all know the stats and different things. There's more concussions and that type of things in women's soccer. There's all the other things.
"I always tell
them when they ask me that, and I'm being serious, we can all sit
in front of the television and play X-Box. Now we're going to be
obese, we're going to die of heart disease, there's all those different
things you have going on. I believe in the game tremendously, but
at the same time, I only ask, 'Does your son ride a bicylcle?'
And they go, 'Yeah.' I say, 'He's a lot more in trouble riding that
bicycle than he is playing football.' It's a proven fact. 'Does
he ride skateboards?' 'Oh, yeah he skateboards all the time
near my house.' "I go by a place all the time near my house there's kids skateboarding all
the time, flipping and doing (tricks). That's a lot more dangerous than
football. It's statistically proven and it all weighs out. I think
that's just a thing at the forefront right now, and yes, we've
gotten a lot better at the game, we've helped change the rules.
The helmets have gotten better and how we teach tackling, all
that type of stuff. I still think it's a phenomenal sport, but I do get asked about it some. "Those are some things where they go, 'Yeah, that's right. He does ride the bicycle, he does skateboard. 'Yeah, we've taken him to the hospital for those things.' I think there's a lot of issues out there that attack football, but I still think it's a phenomenal game." He's right: Other
sports, including hockey, lacrosse and soccer, have concussion
issues, too. Absolutely, heightened awareness and concussion protocol
-- quantum leaps from the "you-got-your- bell-rung" traditions
-- come into play in producing the scary data. Yet it's also
not ridiculous to wonder if at some time in the not-too- distant
future insurance and liability issues could kill the game at
the scholastic level.
MacIntyre was talking after the Buffs added two players to their recruiting class Wednesday -- linebacker Alex Tchangam of De Anza College in California, and running back Travon MacMillian, a graduate transfer from Virginia Tech who has signed a financial aid agreement. That leaves a class of 23, including 20 who signed in the new early NLI period in December and offensive lineman Kanan Ray, who signed a financial aid agreement in January after originally planning to attend UCLA.
The entire proceedings Wednesday seemed a bit strange, more of a P.S. than an annoucement, given the imbalance in the two groups and the rush to sign in the first year of the early period.
But that was fine
with MacIntyre, who argues that the early signing date should
be even earlier. A lot earlier.
"You weren't sitting on pins and needles that a kid was going to go somewhere else," he said. "I was just as busy or busier this January as I've ever been because I was kind of going out to high schools all over the country, to watch 2019 guys play basketball, work out in the weight room, all of that, so it gives us an advantage. . . In the past, I wouldn't be able to do that. I would be going to all the houses and all the homes, going to the certain schools where we had commitments. "December was really hectic
because after the Utah game to December, I went in 21 homes,
visiting with parents and making sure those young men signed
on December 20. So that was hectic. But I liked the early signing
date. I'm still a proponent. I'm going to keep pushing it. Some people
are still going to get mad at me. Now that we're having official visits
in April, May and June, if they take a few visits and they
decide, 'Hey this is where I want to go to school,' let's have
a signing date in July, over the dead period. They sign and then you
have another signing date in February. "Do just like basketball does. They have a signing date in November, then they have a signing date in April. Why don't we do the same thing? That's what I keep proposing to do. I think eventually that's going to happen."
I can't go along with going that far,
and for this reason: The numbers are so different, the situations
aren't directly comparable. Plus, I'm convinced the remorse
factor would be far greater in football than basketball. Even
now, the new signing date at least still is late enough to
allow new coaching staffs hired in time to attempt to hold on to "commits"
and add others in a system in which there isn't a commitment before
an NLI signing. With "commit," "de-commit,"
"re-commit" and anything-else- commit" part
of the lexicon, I'm surprised there hasn't been more talk of those who
signed in December having second thoughts. If anything close to half
the prospects sign on or briefly after a July signing date, so
much could happen in the next six months -- coaching changes,
whether the departure of an assistant coach who was the pointman,
a head coach of an entire staff.
Yes, you sign with the school, not the coach ... but that's the ideal, often not the reality. The only way a signing date that early could work -- and be fair -- would be for it to come with an official window, say in early January, to renounce the NLI. It should be that way for all, not just for those headed for programs that just changed coaches. That makes the early signing more of a flimsy "commitment" than a contract, but if that's not deemed feasible, then don't make the early date any earlier than it is now. Actually, the new system -- with the signing dates in December and February -- seems to be working. Mile High Sports, January 21 All Aboard the Avalanche Bandwagon!
January 18, 2018 Dom Collier living with coming off Buffs' bench 
 BOULDER -- Dominique Collier hasn't started in any of Colorado's
seven Pac 12 Conference games, but he played Thursday night as
if he considers it more of a relief than a miscarriage of justice.
The senior guard from
Denver East High had 13 points -- all but one in the first
half -- in the Buffs' 82-73 win over Washington State at the Coors Events
Center Thursday night.
He started the first seven games of the season, and only one, against South Dakota State on December 15, since.
That's not the way the much-touted recruit
from the Rudy Carey-coached powerhouse program at East was
supposed to go out as a CU senior. He's playing his home games
in the arena where the Angels won the 5A state championship
game in 2014, and his college career has been comparatively lackluster
when measured against expectations. In four seasons, while fighting through foot and ankle injuries, he has started 66 of 108 games and averaged 6.3 points.
Yet with Collier coming off the bench, the young
Buffs are winning, going 3-0 at home in the Pac 12 heading into
a crucial matchup with Washington Saturday afternoon. And
while Collier's minutes and numbers coming off the bench have
been up-and-down -- he had only three points as the Buffs split
in Los Angeles last weekend -- it seems to be working. The
weekend before that, he had 25 points in the big wins over
Arizona State and Arizona at home, going 5-for-8 from 3-point
range.
And he's OK with it.
Freshman guard McKinley Wright IV, who had 17 points against WSU, has been a season-long starter and was the Pac 12 player of the week two weeks ago after the Buffs beat Arizona and Arizona State at home. And he has earned Collier's respect.
"He's been great the whole year," Collier
said. "He's our leader, our point guard out there, he
makes our team run. As you guys saw, when(WSU) went on that run,
he just put his head down and was getting to the rack and
doing whatever he had to do get that lead back to where it was.
Yeah, he's been really good for us this year. He's just a beast."
Collier stayed hot
at home, making two of his three 3-point attempts against
the Cougars and got all 12 of his first-half points in a 12-minute span
as the Buffs took control.
"The guys just told me to come in and be aggressive," he said. "That's why I really took an emphasis on just being ready when ... whoever is driving, have my feet ready and be ready to shoot the ball. And then when I have the opportunity to drive, just attack. It's just being ready when they call my name."
CU is 12-7 overall
and 4-3 in the Pac 12. If the Buffs can continue to hold serve
at home in the conference and steal a few more wins, an NCAA
berth isn't an outlandish goal. And this with a team that has only
two seniors -- Collier and George King -- playing significant minutes.
"I love these
guys," Collier said. "I love the fight of these guys and I will
go to war with every last single one of them. I go against them every day
in practice, so I know firsthand how these guys work, day in and
day out."
He took note of the Buffs' response after a WSU second-half rally got the Cougars within five, at 63-58, with 8:15 left.
"This team just has a lot of fight," Collier
said. "I really noticed that when they came in, when
we first started practicing. They just have a lot of fight.
We overcame a lot this year with blown leads."
CU coach Tad Boyle
likes what he has seen of Collier coming off the bench. "Dom was terrific
in the first half," Boyle said. "It's awesome. Dom is like
a starter, he really is. The whole key with Dom is he's quit putting pressure
on himself and balling. You can see in his body language. Even if
he misses a shot now, it's not head down and pressing. It's just
play. I'm really proud of Dominique Collier, because he's
an important part of our team and I consider him a starter
even though he's not introduced with the starting five. He's
a senior, he's played a lot of minutes and he's a critical, ]critical
part of this team coming off the bench.
"There's a thought out there that you don't ever start your five best players. You ant to bring strength in off the bench. Certainly, recently we've been bringing strength in off the bench with Dominique Collier." January 17, 2018 Falcons' Ryan Swan, from Overland, determined to stick with it at AFA 
FORT COLLINS -- This seemed almost eerily like Air Force's football win over Colorado State in the fall.
It came in Fort Collins, the Falcons celebrated
raucously, and it was thunderously disappointing for the Rams. This time, in basketball,
the Falcons pulled off the 76-71 shocker Wednesday night
at Moby Arena, coach Dave Pilipovic got a drenching in the
visiting locker room, and the experience perhaps was
the most satisfying for AFA sophomore forward Ryan Swan, from
Aurora and Overland High, where he was among the suppporting cast
for phenom De'Ron Davis on a 5A state championship team. Swan had 12 points
and 6 rebounds as the Falcons came away with only their second
Mountain West Conference win, sending the intimate gathering of
3,216 out of the arena grumbling. This Larry Eustachy-coached CSU
team continues to be an enigma after knocking off CU at home
in the non-conference schedule and now falling to 10-10 overall
and 3-4 in league play. "It means the world to me," Swan said in the hallway outside the locker room. "I'm just glad for the team that we got a win because we've been working hard. I guess I don't know how I feel. Being a kid they (CSU) didn't recruit, it's a nice little, sweet victory for me when we get to beat them."
 Jamee Swan as a CU Buffalo Earlier in the season, the Falcons
fell 81-69 at Colorado, where Swan's older sister, Jamee,
was a standout forward for the Buffaloes for four seasons,
from 2012-13 through 2015-16. "I still want to get Colorado one time before I graduate," Ryan said with a smile. "Just one time, that's all I need."
Swan attended the
Air Force Prep School for a year as an intermediate step after
leaving Overland.
"It was definitely tough," he said. "I felt like I was ready right away and felt like I could make an impact. But the prep school year was probably the best thing for me because it made me stronger. I lost some fat. I got stronger, it just let me develop and make the next four years count."
Then he played sparingly as a freshman
last season as he dealt with academic issues. "I just
let too many things get to me," he said. "My mom
kind of took me and slapped me around a little bit." (He was smiling
when he said that.) "So I definitely felt that year helped
me. Over this past summer, I got my school right, got my body
right and now we're here."
He came off the bench this season until a single start at California- Riverside on Dec. 8, and now has started the last five games for the Falcons. In that stretch, he has averaged 15.0 points and 6.2 rebounds.
"Ryan's just been getting better and better," Pilipovich said. "I was
going to choke him when he missed that (late) layup there,
that dunk, but I hugged him afterwards. He's just getting
better and better. He's good." Swan said the Falcons "are
meshing together as a team. I feel like of all the teams,
this is probably the closest team because of all we go through,
the academy life. Coming from Overland, where we won, winning
is in my blood. That's all I want to do. Playing now is cool, but
we're winning now and that's all I care about." That life, of course, isn't for everyone, and Swan and his classmates still have the option of leaving the academy after his sophomore season. Basketball players have done that when it seems they might have other D-I options or higher aspirations, such as playing in Europe, but Swan is adamant that he's going to stick with it. "Everyone's going to have those days where they're like, 'Is this really me?'" he said. "The end goal is what you have to look forward to. It sucks some days, but I don't know, I'm a 20-year-old kid getting a free education, getting paid. It's all good. I'm getting a free education, probably one of the best educations I can get, plus I have a guaranteed job. Plus, it makes my mom so happy. That's the greatest part. . . I'm going to stay for sure. I mean, I don't have any NBA people calling me right now, so I'm not going to put all my eggs in that basket."
His mother, Diane, who played at Arvada West and
coached Jamee in high school, now is a special education teacher
at Overland. "She's a saint, let me tell you," Ryan
said. "I cannot do her job, for sure."
Ryan was born in Tucson
and raised in nearby Marana, before he and his mother moved
back to Colorado in 2013, when Jamee was about to begin her
sophomore year at CU. "Her freshman year, we were flying up
to Colorado like once a month, and we were like, 'We night as well move
up,'" Ryan said. "Growing up in Arizona was really different.
The part I was in was really slow, I was going to Marana,
in the middle of nowhere. I felt like a deer in the headlights
when I stepped into Overland. I was shell-shocked at first."
It helped that De'Ron
Davis, now at Indiana, noticed that. "He was the first person
that befriended me at Overand," Swan said. "I miss playing
with that guy. I talked with him recently to make sure he
was doing well."
So is Swan.
January 16, 2018 On Nikola Jokic: Why can't he do that every night? (The sequel)  That image of the Nikola Jokic is from the same digital board in the Pepsi Center arena level hallway that displays pictures of five Avalanche players on hockey nights.
Yes, one of the Avs shown is Nathan MacKinnon.
The Serbian basketball
center and the Canadian hockey center both are 22.
Their situations have
more differences than similarities, of course, but what strikes
me is that for several years, I've been writing about MacKinnon's obvious
talent -- yet his mercurial play.
One night, whether with the Avalanche or for Canada or Team North America in international play, he would tantalize, flashily producing goals and making plays, leading to the reflexive question: Why can't he do that every night? Then the next game, he would revert to
more flash than substance. And at the end of the season,
his numbers would add up to underachievement, as when he had
16 goals in the Avalanche's horrific 2016-17 season.
 Now, one of the major reasons for the Avalanche's stunning improvement is that since November 1, MacKinnon -- the NHL's No. 1 overall draft choice in 2013 now in his fifth season --has done it, loosely speaking, every night. He has been the NHL's best player in the stretch. Will it last?
That's open to debate and subject to realism, but my point
here is that I've found myself wondering the same thing
about Jokic, who on some nights has been dominant, stunningly
impressive as an all-around, skilled center with an uncanny
passing ability for a big man.
Why can't he do that every night?
That question is raised, for both Jokic and MacKinnon,
with the concession that it's a standard, a lofty goal that
never will be attained. Not in basketball and not in
hockey. But it is the expectation of greatness, and now the
issue is when it more ruthlessly will be a challenge thrown at
Jokic, and when he won't be babied because, among other things, he's
only a second-round draft choice and already a "find"
in this league.
Jokic had one of those eye-popping nights Tuesday, when he had 29 points, 18 rebounds and 7 assists in the Nuggets' 105-102 win over Dallas. One of his assists was a blind behind-the-back setup pass to Wilson Chandler. The Nuggets relinquished most of a 23-point lead before hanging on.
Why can't he do that every night?
"Nikola's a good
player," said Denver coach Michael Malone. "Obviously, he's
not going to be great every night. I know everybody expects
that from him, but I think we have to get off his back a little bit
and give him a break. At San Antonio, he was terrific and
tonight, I thought we featured him early, played through
him extensively. We knew that their starting five, with Dirk Nowitzki,
and our starting five, that we could look to go at him a little
bit and make Dirk have to defend and make him play both
ends of the floor. Our guys kept finding him all night long,
so Nikola took it upon himself just to be aggressive, and
be very confident and efficient."
At that point, I asked Malone about those expectations he had just mentioned, whether there would be a point we could expect Jokic to meet those standards night in, night out.
"It's a process," Malone said.
"This is his third year in the NBA and he was a second-round
pick. Now all of a sudden people want him to be Superman.
Very, very few players in NBA history come in, first, second or
third year and put a franchise on their back. But what you love
about Nikola, he doesn't shy from it. It's not easy at
times for him. But right now we're just focusing on one game at
a time, forgetting about all the other stuff."
One step in Jokic's maturation would be getting away from his
aggravating and seemingly incessant whining about the officiating,
which distracts him.
A little later, I mentioned to
Jokic that his coach had just talked about avoiding placing
unrealistic expectations on Jokic at this point of his career and
then asked him what expectations he was putting on himself
now.
"To
win as much games as possible," he said. "I just want to win the games.
Today was kind of my night, whatever, I had to score a lot and I
was aggressive, not just scoring, but as a rebounder. So just to
win as much as possible."
Jokic has shown the flashes. In 37 games this season, he is averaging 16.2 points, 10.3 rebounds and 5.1 assists. As was the case with Nathan MacKinnon until the
switch went on, it's a compliment to Jokic to expect more,
to make the standard sustained stardom. Mile High Sports, January 14 Jonathan Bernier on holding down the Avalanche crease
Mile High Sports, January 12 Nathan MacKinnon on celebrity
Mile High Sports, January 7 Milan Hejduk and Glory Days
Mile High Sports, January 1 Carl Soderberg: From albatross to asset
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