Adrian Oliver Leading Spartans Back To Glory
When you think of prime-time men’s college basketball, you obviously think of San Jose State. Or maybe not. But for hoops aficionados interested in seeing one of the nation’s top scorers not named Jimmer, Friday night’s 7pm game between the Spartans and visiting Weber State is worth checking out. SJSU is led by senior guard Adrian Oliver, who has quietly become the nation’s fourth highest scorer at 24 points per game. While the Spartans have struggled to consistently string wins together this season—mainly because they have no legitimate big men to speak of—they are hovering around a .500 record. With five games remaining—four at home and an away contest at Boise State to close out the schedule—this might be the first winning season for the Spartans since 1994. To put that year in perspective, none of the team’s current players had finished kindergarten yet.

Sharks Come Home For Supper
Just when it looks like the Sharks have put it all together, they follow up a five-game win streak by dropping two in a row. Tuesday’s contest with the Nashville Predators aside, the boys in teal have to be pleased with the results of their longest road trip of the season. Gaining some piece of mind from moving up a couple spots in the Western Conference standings—as well as being allowed to sleep in their own beds for the first time in February—could set the club up nicely for a brief two-game homestand before going back to being Kerouacs. Alexander Ovechkin and the Washington Capitols present a toss-up at 7:30pm Thursday before the bottom-feeding Colorado Avalanche play the part of sacrificial lambs on Saturday at the same time.

Cardinal Likely Playing for Coach’s Job
UCLA men’s basketball coach Ben Howland knows how to, well, coach. He put together great teams at Pittsburgh, and he’s been doing it for eight years now at UCLA. The Bruins (18-7) are coming to Maples Pavilion for a 7:30pm showdown Thursday with Stanford (13-11), and this doesn’t bode well for Cardinal coach Johnny Dawkins who, well, can’t coach. But that might not be an issue much longer if Stanford doesn’t end the season strong; Dawkins will likely be out of a job. In his third year leading a program that was coming off a Sweet 16 season under Trent Johnson, who was unceremoniously let go, Dawkins has gotten progressively worse each season. Year three is generally considered make-it-or-break-it time, and something’s got to give soon. The usual talk will come up about how tough it is to recruit at Stanford because of academics, but Jim Harbaugh never made excuses. And he had to take over a losing program while recruiting athletes who spend three hours day running head first into each other.