Sports Column

Leunen scored from start to finish

Fair Game

By kerry eggers

The Portland Tribune, Mar 4, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (1 Reader comment)

MILES

When Maarty Leunen was at Redmond High, then-Oregon State assistant coach Jeff Reinert identified him as a program-changer and recruited him hard. When Leunen declared for the University of Oregon, Reinert was disappointed but understood that Leunen was going for the more successful program at the time.

Fitting, then, that Leunen was the difference in his final Civil War game, going for 32 points in Oregon’s victory Sunday. Without him, the Ducks wouldn’t have won.

• Hard to understand how Ernie Kent is evidently under such scrutiny at Oregon. Didn’t the Ducks make it to the Elite Eight last season?

Hardly seems as if he should be coaching for his job this year.

• Three examples of untruth in advertising:

— CSN billing last Saturday’s Oregon-Oregon State women’s basketball game as a “Civil War matchup for the ages.” The Ducks were 6-11 in Pac-10 play, the Beavers 4-13 going into the game.

— ESPN promoting the second part of its Sunday doubleheader as “the seemingly unstoppable Lakers against Dallas.” This after Portland’s 119-111 victory over the Lakers two days earlier.

— Sean Salisbury, saying he had “grown as much as I can at ESPN” after being let go by the network as a football analyst, adding that he intends to expand into new opportunities in TV, radio, the Internet, publishing, movies and public speaking. “My résumé speaks for itself as a football analyst, and I believe I can talk all sports with the best of them,” the supremely confident, not-so-talented Salisbury concludes.

• Latest from Darius Miles, this from a short conversation before Friday’s Trail Blazers-Lakers game:

How is your (surgically repaired) knee coming along? “I’m fine.”

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