This Mark Knight/Left Coast Recruiting article on 7-foot La Jolla prep post grad Mike Van Kirk mentions interest coming from San Jose State.

Adding to Tony Jones' piece on USU Assistant Coach Chris Clark in the running for the Idaho State position, comes more from TheDirtKing/Hoop Dirt. It mentions no other WAC assistants.

There is also the opening at Northern Arizona.

More on Brady Jardine

Shawn Harris has a column up on Brady Jardine, who certainly will be honored at the end of the season along with the other Aggie seniors but seemingly deserves more than that because of the circumstances surrounding the premature ending of his college basketball playing days..

The Wednesday WAC basketball digest

Coming off a four point road victory against Nevada, Idaho was down by 12 at halftime against visiting Seattle. But a 37-24 second 20 minutes points differential led the Vandals to a 70-69 victory. Kyle Barone posted a 17/12 double-double with Deremy Geiger and Stephen Madison each scoring 16 points. The Chieftains shot 12-23 on treys but totaled just four free throw attempts. Don Verlin's squad went 12-24 at the charity stripe.

Josh Wright tweeted the game as did Vandal Nation.

Josh serves up a game report.

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Chris Murray has his weekly WAC team rankings up. Chris also has a 'notes' column posted as well as an article on attempting containment of UH big Vander Joaquim as the Rainbow Warriors come to town Thursday.

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Tony Jones has a note on USU Assistant Coach Chris Jones and the coaching opening at Idaho State.

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Sam Wasson/Bleed Crimson writes (mostly) about Tyrone Watson's contributions to the Aggies.

A note from George Dohrmann

From George Dohrmann:

"Paperback version of Play Their Hearts Out includes new epilogue and Q&A about the book"

This is the book to read in order to get a sense of summer and spring club team basketball. Nothing else compares.

Idaho in action tonight

In the only WAC-connected game on the slate, Idaho hosts Seattle tonight.  The Vandals won the first meeting between these two teams (December 11) 73-62. The tallest Chieftain, at least in the starting lineup, is 6-foot-7.

Two recruiting items

In Brad Winton's latest, he again associates Hawaii in the recruitment of Citrus College's Brandon Parga and also notes the San Jose State recruiting interest of former Utah State backcourter James Walker, also at Citrus.

Tuesday's trip around the WAC

The biggest news remains Brady Jardine's injury-forced retirement from college basketball.

Matt Sonnenberg checks in as does Shawn Harrison.

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Just when it seems everyone is pulling in the same direction, a blowup takes place as UH's Trevor Wiseman has been suspended. Dayton Morinaga and Brian McInnis have the details. Wiseman had a rep as edgy during his prep days but had embraced a willing to do the unglamorous dirtywork role while at Hawaii.

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Robert Kuwada is out with his week WAC column, and it's another must-read.

Terrible news out of Logan

Tony Jones reports that Brady Jardine's college basketball tenure has concluded due to injury.

Joston Thomas named WAC POW

Hawai‘i’s Joston Thomas has been named the Verizon Western Athletic Conference Men’s Basketball Player of the Week for the week of January 30 - February 5. The honor marks the first career WAC Player of the Week for Thomas.

Thomas, a junior forward from Washington, D.C. (College of Southern Idaho), led Hawai‘i to an 83-81 overtime road victory at San Jose State last week. Thomas scored a career-high 29 points with 12 rebounds to notch his fourth double-double of the season. Thomas connected on 12-of 16 shots (75.0 percent) from the field and went 5-of-9 from the free throw line. He also added four assists and two blocks. Thomas helped erase a 14-point second half deficit by scoring 11 of UH’s points during a key 16-0 run. He helped UH pick up its third WAC road win of the season and second in overtime this year.

Other nominees:

* Fresno State sophomore forward Jerry Brown III
* Idaho junior center Kyle Barone
* Louisiana Tech freshman guard Raheem Appleby
* Nevada sophomore guard Deonte Burton
* New Mexico State senior forward Wendell McKines

Ye olde 'fire David Carter' contingent

Ah, timing is everything. Maybe it's the PTW curse striking once again as we've been working on this piece for about a week and alas, PTW has updated the Wolf Pack W-L record.

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Fire David Carter, he doesn't have what it takes! 13-19, 8-8 is the evidence, case closed.

Such was the sentiment of some Nevada basketball fans after last season.

So either Coach Carter obtained a get-smart-quickly post-season booster shot since he's currently helming a 19-4, 8-1 squad or certain Wolf Pack aficionados were incorrect in their assessment.

The best coaches make the effort to annually add to their skills sets but even Carter would say such isn't the primary reason for the W-L improvement.

The real reason: experience.

Not necessarily his.

Last season was the initial college playing time for Deonte Burton and also Jerry Evans, Jordan Burris, Kevin Panzer, Jordan Finn and Devonte Elliott.

Plus, Olek Czyz became eligible in January, this after playing very little in two seasons with Duke and then sitting out a year

Malik Story was just a sophomore and coming off a year of inactivity due to his transfer.

Yes, Dario Hunt was a veteran and his demonstrated improvement was certainly a plus.

Let's call 2010-11 a year of growing, growing green.

It's a fact of basketball life that you can't teach experience -- it travels at its own pace, it's arrival unique to each individual.

John Wooden, Dean Smith, Coach K -- you fill in the name -- there is no coach who consistently wins with a freshman or even underclassmen dominated roster.

That's reality.

One barometer actually useful for checking coaching acumen is player improvement. Not to take anything away from the hard work of the individuals involved but Burton, Story and Czyz have each demonstrated marked improvement since last season and some degree of acknowledgment has to go to the Nevada coaching staff for these upgrades.

It actually would have been a tragedy of sorts had Nevada changed coaches (which wasn't on the agenda of any of the critical administrative people in Reno) because any new coach would have inherited the harvest of Carter and Company.

A certain segment of fans live in the moment and that oftentimes warps judgment. Such was the case here.

So which new Carter acolytes have been posting mea culpas on the Wolf Pack message boards? (or will Nevada's Saturday home loss to Idaho feed their inner demons?)

More for WAC Monday

Dayton Morinaga offers a brief UH update.

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Courtesy of Sam Wasson/Bleed Crimson, Bill Harty writes about Saturday's New Mexico State - Louisiana Tech matchup as part of the 800 games project.

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Love the headline of Jason Groves' latest.

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OKAggie lends his perspective to the USU season at the Stew Spectrum MB @ the USUFans site. The best line: "... We lost in the first round of the conference tourney 12 times, the second round 3 more. We were the prison girlfriend of the likes of Pacific, Long Beach and Santa Barbara (and for a while UNLV) ..."

WAC Monday

No games tonight -- Idaho hosts Seattle on Tuesday night, so ...

Here are the current standings:

* Nevada 8-1
* New Mexico State 6-2
* Hawaii 5-3
* Idaho 5-4
* Utah State 4-5
* Louisiana Tech 3-5
* Fresno State 3-6
* San Jose State 0-8

Nevada's 8-1 record isn't really surprising, neither is New Mexico State at 6-2 and even Hawaii's 5-3. Pre-season arguments for those current records wouldn't be hard to make. Idaho at 5-4 could possibly be argued earlier on as 6-3.

However, nobody saw 4-5 attached to Utah State as well as for the rest of the breakdown. But it's a positive in Ruston and the San Joaquin -- so is it between Mike White and Rodney Terry for WAC Coach of the Year? Really, at this point it should be. Don't think anyone saw SJSU as winless.

By the way, here's the pre-season poll of the WAC coaches:

1. Nevada                   
2. New Mexico State            
3. Utah State               
4. Hawai‘i                     
5. Idaho                       
6. Fresno State                
7. San Jose State              
8. Louisiana Tech

Plus, the media pre-season poll:

1. Utah State            
2. Nevada                
3. New Mexico State        
4. Hawai‘i                
5. Idaho                       
6. San Jose State              
7. Fresno State                
8. Louisiana Tech

Jeez, what were we thinking? (look at the top, but mind you Brady Jardine was healthy then plus little known Antonio Bumpus was probably headed to a starting spot)

Credit goes to seldomseensmith

It was seldomseensmith who provided PTW with the information that Eastern Arizona College point Robert Harris has given a verbal to Idaho. He appears to be more of a scoring point than Casper College's Denzel Douglas, who signed earlier with the Vandals.

Harris is out of Washington state and averaging 14.6 points, 3.5 assists and 2.1 steals a game while shooting 41% overall, 29% on treys and 78% from the foul line thus far this season.

This possibly means Tim Johson, attending LA Trade Tech (Los Angeles) this year in order to straighten out his academics, is no longer in the picture for Idaho. Or possibly not. He's another scoring point.

Yet another point connected to Idaho as a verbal, Darrington Banks who is at Collin County (TX) JC this season, seems out of the picture. An email query to his head coach from PTW received no response. Banks is averaging 10.5 points a game this season, shooting 37% overall.

The WAC standings after Saturday

Below are the current WAC standings:

* Nevada 8-1
* New Mexico State 6-2
* Hawaii 5-3
* Idaho 5-4
* Utah State 4-5
* Louisiana Tech 3-5
* Fresno State 3-6
* San Jose State 0-8