Northwest Notes: Friday, February 6
5A Region 1 girls basketball
tournament begins tonight
The road to the state girls basketball tournament begins tonight, with the opening round of the 5A Region 1 tournament scheduled to begin tonight at the higher seeds.
Top seed Lewiston (19-1) hosts fourth seed Coeur d'Alene (10-11) and second seed Post Falls (16-5) hosts third seed Lake City (14-7). Both games are scheduled for 7 p.m.
Tonight's winners advance to the championship game on Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the highest seed, with the losers playing a loser-out game that night. The tournament's second-place game is next Thursday at 7 p.m., with that winner advancing to a state play-in game at Grangeville on Feb. 14.
Ex-NIC star Bay named to
WCC Hall of Honor class
SAN BRUNO, Calif. - Former North Idaho College outfielder Jason Bay, who went on to play two years at Gonzaga University, is one of 10 individuals to be inducted into the West Coast Conference's seventh annual Hall of Honor class on Saturday, March 7 at the Orleans Hotel in Las Vegas.
One individual from each member institution will be honored as part of the 2015 WCC men's and women's basketball championships.
The class also includes: BYU's Aleisha (Cramer) Rose (soccer), Loyola Marymount's Rick Adelman (basketball), Pacific's Elaina Oden (volleyball), Pepperdine's Dane Suttle (basketball), Portland's Jim Sollars (basketball), Saint Mary's Odell Johnson (basketball), San Diego's Scott Thompson (basketball), San Francisco's Jim Brovelli (basketball) and Santa Clara's Bud Ogden (basketball).
Bay was a first-team all-Scenic West Athletic Conference selection at NIC. In his sophomore season, he set school records with a .447 average and 21 home runs.
In his two seasons at Gonzaga, Bay provided much-needed pop to the Bulldogs lineup, tallying a .374 career batting average and 35 home runs in 1999 and 2000. Both marks are among the Zags' top-10 career totals, and many of Bay's other numbers still hold up 15 years later. He still owns two of the highest season home run totals in program history, ranking third and fifth in the category.
During his first year in school, he tallied 74 RBIs - second-most in GU history - and as a senior, he led the entire West Coast Conference with a .388 batting average and became the first Zag to earn consecutive first-team All-WCC honors, and in 2007, he was one of three Zags named to the conference's 40th anniversary baseball team.
Bay made his major league debut in 2003 and earned National League Rookie of the Year honors a year later. Throughout his 11-year big league career, he was named to the All-Star Game three times: twice with the Pittsburgh Pirates and once with the Boston Red Sox. Bay played in 1,278 major league games, amassing 1,200 hits and 222 homers, more than any Gonzaga alum. He also represented Canada in the 2006 and 2009 editions of the World Baseball Classic.
Tickets to the ceremony are available for $40 and may be purchased online using the Hall of Honor ticket form on WCCsports.com. Tickets must be purchased by Thursday, Feb. 27.
Information: www.wccsports.com.