THE MORNING PAPER: Witherill lands with Pennell

by Jeff Nusser on Jun 4, 2009 8:54 AM PDT

Well, it didn't take long for Nick Witherill to land on his feet. As predicted by Vince Grippi yesterday, the Arizona Republic is reporting that Witherill will, in fact, join his former AAU coach Russ Pennell in his hometown at Grand Canyon University.

"His favorite basketball experience was playing for Russ," said Mike Witherill, Nick’s dad. "He’s a Christian coach. He’ll be with some of his AAU teammates. It was an easy decision for him to come back. He’s excited. … What is happening at Grand Canyon, it’s an exciting thing for Phoenix."

Want to know why everyone's so excited? Because Witherill is one of five Division I players transferring to the Division II school. Wow. (Hat tip to Grippi for the link this morning.)

The news from baseball hasn't stopped yet. Continuing the Cougars' recent string of high-profile successful student athletes, senior catcher Greg Lagreid has been named the Pac-10 Baseball Scholar-Athlete by the conference. He's a finance major with a 3.48 GPA and, oh by the way, batted .332 while leading the team in doubles (13) and RBIs (42).

Lagreid wasn't the only player to pick up an honor yesterday -- outfielder Derek Jones was named to the Louisville Slugger Freshmen All-American Team presented by Collegiate Baseball. Jones is one of the reasons to remain unbelievably optimistic about Cougar baseball -- the 6-foot-1, 205-pound lefty led the team in home runs with 12, the only player to reach double digits this year.

While some people might point to his .232 average and the fact that he strikes out in nearly one out of every four at bats as reasons to knock him, I'll summarily point to his .363 OBP (thanks to his team leading BB%) and .226 ISO (second on the team behind Alex burg) as reasons why he's going to be an all-Pac-10 player next year. He's only going to get better, and I'm going to go ahead and say right now that he'll become the all-time home run leader at WSU -- the record is 40, held by Jeff Hooper -- before he leaves. (He'll be hard pressed to break Casey Kelley's single season mark of 25, though. I watched many of those home runs while I was in school back in 1998, and that is a lot for a college season.)

Last thing. If you still can't get enough of the uniforms, here's some video of the uniforms in action as someone snuck a recording of the new game at a recent conference. (Hat tip to Sedihawk at the WSU Football Blog.)

NCAA Football 10: UW vs WSU (via pastapadre)

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Comments

A few things

1) Good for Nick, that should be a very solid team if they have five DI transfers coming in. We might see Russ Pennell coaching at a mid-major before long (if he even wants to.)

2) For not being one of the “public ivies” we sure do have a lot of smart men and women on our athletic teams.

3) Derek Jones is awesome. Especially since the most sure-fire way to get on base is a walk and the quickest way to score is to put one over the fence. Billy Beane must love this guy. He could teach a few things to the Mariners’ middle infield about plate discipline.

4) I love the gray stripe down the side of the pants. I would also love to be able to move the ball on offense like that this season. Was that three first downs on one drive? Did that even happen last year? Video games are so unrealistic.

I never really liked the old tagline.

CougCenter

by Craig Powers on Jun 4, 2009 9:59 AM PDT reply actions

Let's hope James Montgomery is really that fast

CougCenter

by Jeff Nusser on Jun 4, 2009 10:32 AM PDT up reply actions

Booo crimson helmet/crimson pants

Remember, last year was the first time ever that we’ve won an Apple Cup with that combo.

And I hope that NCAA ’10 comes with the same degree of difficulty that allowed me to consistently beat the Huskies 70-3 in NCAA ’06.

by Grady Clapp on Jun 4, 2009 11:09 AM PDT reply actions

Also

It’s going to be so much fun passing with a team where they rank both QBs in the low 80s.

by Grady Clapp on Jun 4, 2009 11:16 AM PDT up reply actions

Low 80s is very generous for Lopina

I noticed he also had a star under him when he had the ball (I guess you can’t put it under the center). Usually I would pick a FCS team to turn around on that game, but it seems that all I have to do is pick my alma mater for a challenge this year.

I never really liked the old tagline.

CougCenter

by Craig Powers on Jun 4, 2009 1:27 PM PDT up reply actions