Courtesy of BustaBucket.com

There is a ton of coverage from today’s media outing with the Blazers players.  I am both proud and jealous of the guys who get to cover the team for a living.  For now I will just continue to crunch numbers and bite the bullet.  Here’s some linkage from all over the place:

Mike Barrett reflects on previous media days and what today means to this organization.

Casey Holdahl with the official media day video live chat, this is good, check it.

OregonLive.com’s Geoffrey Arnold has video of Brandon Roy talking about focus as well as Greg Oden and being an All-Star.

Joe Freeman also talks extensively about Oden and his confidence.

Ben from Blazer’s Edge sits down with Dante Cunningham and talks about what Brandon means to the young guys. Ben also speaks with Pendergraph and shares some photos from the day.

OregonSportsLive.com transcribes interviews with the big three.

Coup from Rip City Project previews training camp and pretty much hits everything on the nose as far as realistic expectations for playing time.

This doesn’t relate directly to media day but Ball Don’t Lie thinks Brandon Roy is the 8th best shooting guard of the past decade.

Also, John Hollinger previews every team in the NBA including our Portland Trail Blazers. It’s on ESPN Insider but here’s a nice tidbit:

In one respect, however, they were horribly unlucky. Portland opponents shot 80.3 percent from the line last season, far exceeding the league average of 77.1 percent — no other team’s opponents shot this well. It seems unrealistic to blame this on bad free throw defense. Relative to the league average, Portland lost 58 points because of this, which is worth about two games in the standings.

Combining this result with the Blazers’ superior point differential yields a very interesting conclusion — the Blazers had the offensive and defensive results of a 61-win team and were very unfortunate to win only 54 games. What that means going forward is that the Blazers are in much better shape than most people realize.

The Portland Winterhawks got a hat trick from Luke Walker as they fought back from a 3-1 third period deficit to tie the game, before taking a 4-3 loss Friday night in Tri-Cities.

The Winterhawks opened the scoring just 1:53 into the game on their first shot of the contest when Walker beat Tri-Cities goalie Drew Owsley for his first goal of the season, with assists to linemate Chris Francis and defenseman Daniel Johnston.

But Tri-Cities turned up their offense in the second period. After seven first period shots the Americans fired 22 shots at Portland goaltender Ian Curtis in the second, with three finding the back of the net. Johnny Lazo accounted for two of the goals, one of which was on the power play, while Adam Hughesman had the other. Center Brendan Shinniman had assists on all three second period goals for Tri-Cities.

Down 3-1 heading into the third, Portland cut the deficit to one when Walker beat Owsley for his second of the game at the 11:34 mark of the third with assists from Francis and Spencer Bennett. Just over two minutes later Walker earned the hat trick and tied the game at 3-3, with defensemen Johnston and Joe Morrow getting the assists.

Despite a great effort from Portland to tie the game in the third, Tri-Cities got the game-winning goal at the 15:41 mark of the third from Hughesman to earn the win.

The Americans outshot Portland 43-31 on the night. Curtis was outstanding in net, stopping 39 of 43 Tri-Cities shots, while Owsley turned away 28 of 31 Portland shots. Tri-Cities went 2-6 on the power play, while the Winterhawks were 0-4. With his hat trick, Walker has five points in two games for the Winterhawks.

The Portland Winterhawks return to action Saturday night at the Memorial Coliseum in their home opener against the Seattle Thunderbirds, with the game set for 7 p.m. Portland opened the season in Seattle last Saturday with a 5-0 victory. Portland also skates Sunday at 5 p.m. at the Coliseum against the Prince George Cougars.

SEATTLE - Defenseman Troy Rutkowski scored twice and added an assist while goaltender Ian Curtis stopped all 24 shots he faced to record a shutout as the visiting Portland Winterhawks blanked the Seattle Thunderbirds 5-0 in Western Hockey League play Saturday night.

More …

By Mike Tokito, The Oregonian

September 21, 2009, 2:18PM

When the Oregon Sports Authority spearheaded an effort to get the state to eliminate the Sports Action lottery games in 2005, the aim was to get the NCAA Basketball Tournament to become a regular event in the state. 

Thomas Boyd, The OregonianGonzaga and Western Kentucky battled at the Rose Garden in March.The plan will take another big step in 2012, when March Madness returns to Portland’s Rose Garden for a subregional. Four first-round games will be played on Thursday, March 15, and two second-round games will be held on Saturday, March 17.

This past March, the tournament was played in Oregon for the first time since 1983, and the event quickly sold out, with Pacific Northwest teams Washington and Gonzaga drawing large partisan crowds for their games.

Soon after the subregional, the Oregon Sports Authority and its partners — the University of Oregon (which served as host school), the Rose Quarter and Travel Portland — began assembling a bid for the next block of available dates. The NCAA bids out three years of the tournament at a time, and in June the Oregon group submitted bids for subregionals and regionals in the 2011-13 block.

“It was highly competitive,” said Drew Mahalic, the Oregon Sports Authority’s chief executive officer. “We heard that there were 70 bids from all over the country. To be able to be chosen among that kind of competition is something that we all need to be really proud of in Oregon.”

Mahalic said the success of this year’s event made Portland an easier sell. He said it was difficult to determine overall economic impact but he has heard plenty of positive anecdotal evidence, such as that the East Bank Saloon had a 40 percent boost in sales during the tournament.

“That’s pretty typical of the kind of business that the basketball tournament brings to the hotels, the restaurants, the retail stores,” he said.

Before this year, the NCAA Tournament had not been played in Oregon since 1983, when a regional was held at Gill Coliseum in Corvallis, and was last played in Portland in 1975, when the quarterfinals were played at Memorial Coliseum. The NCAA had been reluctant to return because of state-run sports gambling, but Portland was awarded the berth in 2006 after the state agreed to eliminate Sports Action in 2005.

The next step for Portland would be to get a regional, which would feature third- and fourth-round games. Mahalic points out that a subregional has some advantages over a regional, such as having eight teams and their fans come in, as opposed to four for a regional. But certainly, the higher prestige of a regional is something the group wants.

“I still think we need to prove ourselves in terms of experience in conducting the tournament, and certainly we’ll have that after 2012,” he said.

– Mike Tokito

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