Is Jon Brockman's sliced thumb the key to a Cougar victory?

Those of you who are familiar with the Cougar blogosphere know that WSU Football Blog does a post recapping Paul Wulff's weekly radio show. It's useful info - especially for Cougar fans that either can't get the radio show in their area, or are reformed Amish who shun the radio but still use the internet.

I'm happy to announce that we're going to do the same here for basketball at CougCenter, starting next week. Tony does the show Tuesday nights with Bud Nameck, from the highly-recommended Hilltop restaurant here in Pullman. It airs on Border 104 here in the Lentil City, or elsewhere on the Cougar Sports Network affiliates, if you're interested in catching it live. I'll get a writeup together based on the show and have it for you late Tuesday or early Wednesday.

Hopefully the recap of the radio show will help keep you more in tune with Cougar basketball. Also, I wanted to do it before anyone else got the idea.

Some interesting, brief points from the limited amount of the show I heard tonight:

• Jon Brockman, while using a knife to open Christmas presents, sliced his thumb. It required a trip to the hospital and a couple of stitches, although it was unclear whether or not it was on his shooting hand. Tony suggested bringing a big present for Jon this weekend, with perhaps one of Caleb Forest's hunting knives to help him open it. That got some laughs out of Bud and the audience. Before you get irate, Husky fans, you should be able to figure out he was joking.
• Tony, like us here at the blog, believe that it's ultimately the conference slate that determines the Cougars' postseason fate. Nothing surprising about that - especially after a not much gained, but not much lost, out-of-conference schedule. Tony expects the players to be excited and knows there's an added element of anticipation about starting the Pac-10 schedule with Washington.
• Tony, like others, has been impressed with Stanford. He believes the Cardinal are more of a perimeter team this year, but still very talented and very athletic. He likes Lawrence HIll and Anthony Goods in particular, and gave the impression that losing the Lopez sisters twins won't hurt too much. Tony and Bud were impressed with Stanford's thrashing of Texas Tech.
  
• The Huskies were brought up, with compliments from Tony regarding Isiah Thomas (thought he was a great scorer) and Matthew Bryan-Amaning. Tony thought Amaning gave the Huskies a more mobile presence underneath, and found it interesting that they were favoring him in playing time over Artem Wallace, who they used against WSU last year.

So will Brockman's thumb be a factor this Saturday? Sadly, I doubt it. He had 18 points tonight in the Huskies' 14 point win over Morgan State, going 5 for 10 from the floor and 8 for 9 from the charity stripe. Isiah Thomas led the Dawgs with a career-high 27.

The Huskies are riding a seven-game win streak into Saturday's matchup with the Cougs, who, of course, have a seven-game streak of their own against UW.