Presented by BLAZ’N DIAGNOSTICS.
Thursday, October 9, 2014.
Boise State offensive coordinator Mike Sanford predicted even before the opener against Ole Miss that the Broncos and quarterback Grant Hedrick would be leaning heavily on Jay Ajayi, Matt Miller and Shane Williams-Rhodes early on this season. Nobody needs to tell you that it shook out that way, but there’s an evolution underway in October. In the Georgia Dome, Hedrick completed 36 passes, and 32 of them were caught by Williams-Rhodes, Ajayi or Miller. Jake Roh was the only other player with a reception. At Nevada, nine different Broncos had catches, and the injured Miller, of course, was not one of them. Williams-Rhodes and Ajayi combined for nine grabs, and the rest of the team had 17. With Miller out and Ajayi and Williams-Rhodes wearing bullseyes, the Boise State offense has been forced to diversify. And that’s not such a bad thing.
More diversity—on both sides of the ball. Two more Broncos logged their first career touchdowns at Nevada. Roh, the next-best thing the offense had in September, finally notched his first TD on the three-yard shovel pass from Hedrick in the first quarter. Tyler Gray also scored his first career touchdown on his 32-yard pick-six. Gray almost hit paydirt two years ago when he made his first career interception at Southern Miss, returning it 34 yards to the USM 11-yard line.
Props to Boise State defensive tackle Antoine Turner, the one-time homeless recruit, for giving something back to the community. Turner volunteered to appear in a TV public service announcement for the seventh annual Hunger Bowl, and it was shot yesterday on the blue turf. Turner recited the script in a minimum of takes and thanked the crew for the opportunity. This year’s Hunger Bowl game is the Boise State-Fresno State contest a week from tomorrow night, when fans are asked to bring cans of food to Albertsons Stadium to be donated to the Idaho Foodbank, Boise Rescue Mission and Salvation Army. “I feel blessed to be on the other side now,” Turner says in the PSA.
Since this is a Boise State bye week, it’s not too early to start the Fresno State watch. The Bulldogs seem likely to keep the momentum rolling this week as they visit woeful UNLV tomorrow night. After a miserable 0-3 start that saw them allow more than 50 points each time out, the ‘Dogs are poised to win their fourth straight and go over .500. The opposition has been timely the past three games: Southern Utah, New Mexico and quarterback-challenged San Diego State. And UNLV QB Blake Decker appears to be doubtful this week. Brian Burrell has settled in as the Bulldogs’ starting quarterback but is still completing only 56 percent of his passes.
Idaho State is on a quest to win more than three games in a season for the first time since going 5-6 under Larry Lewis in 2005, and they should pick off No. 3 on Saturday. The Bengals host Simon Fraser, the Division II school from British Columbia that comes in at 1-4. ISU is coming off an eye-opening 56-53 loss at Eastern Washington, the same school that fell to the Washington Huskies by just a touchdown last month. Quarterback Justin Arias makes the Bengal offense go, throwing for 421 yards and six TDs last week in leading ISU to a 600-yard game for the second consecutive week. But what Idaho State is doing now that it hasn’t done for years is run the ball successfully. The Bengals rushed for 193 yards at Eastern, with Xavier Finney notching his fourth 100-yard game of the season.
Former Boise State star Ryan Clady is in the middle of the swirling controversy surrounding a chop block in last Sunday’s Denver win over Arizona. Clady is accused of setting up Cardinals defensive end Calais Campbell while Broncos teammate Julius Thomas chop-blocked him and injured his knee, a play Cards coach Bruce Arians called the dirtiest he’s ever seen. Actually, Campbell’s knee buckled before he even made contact with Clady, but the NFL says the Denver pair was flagged for a chop block “with lure,” in which an offensive player “confronts the defensive player in a pass-blocking posture but is not physically engaged with the defensive player.” Clady and Thomas denied any intent to injure and said the play resulted from a miscommunication in blocking assignments.
Pickins are a bit slimmer this season among former Idaho Steelheads officially on NHL Opening Night rosters. There are three. Jay Beagle and BJ Crombeen from the Steelheads’ 2007 Kelly Cup championship team are with Washington and Arizona, respectively, while Richard Clune is playing for Nashville. Meanwhile, there are two more Dallas Stars assignees in the Steelies’ training camp, as defenseman Troy Vance and goaltender Maxime Lagace have joined the club. Both Vance and Lagace have turned pro after playing four years in the prestigious Quebec Major Junior Hockey League.
The Idaho Stampede will repay a school that’s been pretty good to them with an exhibition game Saturday, November 8. The Stampede will play the Reno Bighorns at the College of Southern Idaho, which produced last season’s record-setting Stamps star Pierre Jackson, now a Philadelphia 76er. Other notable CSI alums that also played for the Stampede include Smush Parker, Tony Bobbitt and one-time Boise State standout Reggie Larry. The Stamps open the regular season November 14 in CenturyLink Arena.
The affiliation may have changed, but the opponents will be the same for the Boise Hawks. The club has released its schedule for 2015, its first season as a farm club of the Colorado Rockies. The campaign opens the same way this year’s did—at Memorial Stadium against the Tri-City Dust Devils. The home stretch weeks are quirky, and the annual Western Idaho Fair road trip is only part of the story. Following the Northwest League-Pioneer League All-Star Game in Spokane August 4, the Hawks play only six home games the rest of the month.
Still getting used to this—the new PGA Tour season is already here. The Frys.com Open in Napa, CA, serves as the opener again, and former Boise State stars Graham DeLaet and Troy Merritt tee off this morning on the North course at Silverado Country Club. DeLaet finished the recently-completed season 37th in FedExCup points and made $2,616,518. That’s about $200,000 less than in 2013 when he made an impressive run through the FedExCup Playoffs. This will be DeLaet’s fifth full season on the PGA Tour. Merritt returned to the tour last year and finished 101st in FedExCup standings with a strong finish and made a career-high $882,864.
It was a Boise State women’s school record—by a lot. Junior Samantha Martin fired nine-under 63 in the final round of the Price’s “Give ‘Em Five” Invitational yesterday in Las Cruces, NM, capturing a share of her third career tournament victory. Martin lowered the Broncos’ previous single-round record by a whopping eight strokes. She went without a bogey, recording nine birdies and nine pars. Boise State also snapped the school single-round team record for the second straight day, coming in 10-under. Furthermore, the Broncos topped the school tournament record by 22 strokes, finishing four-under. They were second in the 14-team event, 10 shots behind Idaho.
This Day In Sports…brought to you by GROUND FX…the Treasure Valley mulch experts!
October 9, 1989, 25 years ago today: The San Francisco Giants win their first pennant in 27 years, ending Chicago’s latest World Series dream. The Giants beat the Cubs 3-2 at Candlestick Park to take the National League Championship Series, four games to one. Will Clark hit .650 in the NLCS to win MVP honors, leading the Giants into a Bay Bridge Series against the Oakland A’s—one that would be interrupted for 10 days by the Loma Prieta earthquake.
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment Sunday nights at 10:30PM on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra and anchors five sports segments each weekday on 93.1 The Ticket. He also served as color commentator on KTVB’s telecasts of Boise State football for 14 seasons.)
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