Here's your quack fix for Tuesday of Hate Week. Enjoy.
- In Moseley's feature piece today, he looks at the recent history of the UW rivalry in which Oregon has won the last five meetings. Moseley also notes that Jeremiah Masoli is preparing as the starter as he took the reps with the first-team offense on Monday. In his blog post from yesterday, Moseley notes that Masoli is awaiting the latest results from another round of medical tests. And Ted Miller also chimes in that Masoli is questionable for Saturday.
- John Hunt has a large blog entry on Chip Kelly preparing for his first game as head coach against UW. It sounds like Kelly has been preparing his team for this game like he has every week: "Every game is a rivalry game.'' It will be interesting to see how Kelly gets the team to respond coming off of the bye. Under Bellotti, who led the Ducks to a 15-2 record in games following a bye week, Duck fans have come to expect wins in these games. I suspect that the Ducks will not lack for intensity and focus this week and Kelly will have them ready to play the Huskies in Seattle.
- Nick Daschel takes a look at the Oregon - UW rivalry. I think he hits it spot on with this characterization: "In the traditional rivalries (UCLA-USC, Cal-Stanford, etc.), you have to hate the rival. In Oregon-Washington, you want to hate the rival."
- Hunt also has a T.J. Ward update: he's questionable for Saturday, despite practicing on Monday. Ward appears to have a good attitude towards the play of John Boyett, who has filled in admirably in his absence, saying: "I'll just add some more depth and playmaking ability when I get back." You hate to see a guy lose his starting spot due to injury, but Boyett and the defense have been playing awfully well.
- The Statesman Journal takes a look at recruiting, primarily from the head coach's perspective. The piece is timely considering that many of the Duck coaches took advantage of the bye week to hit the recruiting the trail. The piece contains insight from Bellotti, Kelly, Don Pellum and Mike Riley.
- After the bye week, Bob Clark has his conference rankings up and Oregon remains #1. Bob Condotta, meanwhile, is keeping USC on top.
- Cougfan.com's Daven Harmeling has a conference basketball preview up. And, for what it's worth, he thinks the Ducks have a lot of talent but, for whatever reason, have just not been able to put it together. I could give you a list of reasons, if you wanted Daven. How about: inexperience, lack of fundamentals, questionable in-game coaching, too much reliance on the jump shot and poor point guard play. Oh yeah, Harmeling also call Joevan Catron the craftiest, wiliest and smoothest power forward in the league.
- After a great weekend for the women's volleyball team, they have moved up to #12 in the AVCA national poll. The media release also notes that the Ducks have been ranked in the top 15 for 30 straight weeks. Sonjia Newcombe was named Pac-10 player of the week, which is her second such honor this season. Takimoto's right: It may be time to jump aboard.
- In Pac-10 news, Ted Miller has a post up about the development of the young conference QBs. During the summer, the general consensus was that the position would be much weaker than usual. However, there appears to be a lot of young talent at the position at the position and only ASU and OSU are starting seniors.