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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, JUNE 23, 2017
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Gary Henley | Sports Reporter
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Blazers trade up to get Gonzaga’s Zach Collins
By ANNE M. PETERSON
Associated Press
AP Photo/Frank Franklin II
Zach Collins answers questions
during an interview after be-
ing selected by the Sacramento
Kings as the 10th pick overall
during the NBA basketball draft
Thursday in New York.
SPORTS
IN BRIEF
PORTLAND — The Portland
Trail Blazers traded up to get another
big man.
Portland, which had three first-
round picks going into Thursday
night’s NBA draft, dealt the No. 15
and No. 20 picks to the Sacramento
Kings for the No. 10 pick, center
Zach Collins out of Gonzaga.
The 7-footer, who played off the
bench in his lone season with the
Bulldogs, averaged 10 points, 5.9
rebounds and 1.8 blocks per game.
Gonzaga went 37-2 last season,
advancing all the way to the NCAA
Tournament championship game
against North Carolina.
Collins, 19, was Gonzaga’s first
one-and-done player. For the draft at
the Barclays Center in New York, he
paid homage to his hometown with
a blazer lining and shoes decorated
with “Las Vegas” prints.
He found out about the trade
“about 30 seconds” before he took
the stage and donned a Kings hat, he
said.
In return for Collins, Sacramento
got the draft rights to small forward
Justin Jackson out of North Carolina,
the 15th overall pick, and Duke for-
ward Harry Giles, the 20th.
Portland also took 6-foot-9 for-
ward Caleb Swanigan out of Pur-
due with the 26th pick. The Big Ten
Player of the Year averaged 18.5
points and 12.5 rebounds last season
as a sophomore.
Collins said he can play at either
the four or the five. He could be
used in tandem with Jusuf Nurkic, a
6-foot-11 center who joined Portland
in a February trade with Denver. Port-
land also has 7-footer Meyers Leon-
ard, a four-year veteran of the team.
Collins didn’t mince words when
it comes to what he thinks he can
accomplish in his first year: “I don’t
see why I can’t be Rookie of the
Year.”
Blazers President of Basketball
Operations Neil Olshey said Collins
caught his eye when Gonzaga played
at Portland earlier this year.
“He’s everything you want to look
for in a big man in our league today,
because he can play inside and out,
he can defend the rim, he can defend
one-on-one, he can defend pick and
roll, Olshey said. “We think, whether
he plays behind Nurk, then he can
play with him too against some big-
ger lineups.”
Portland went 41-41 this season
before getting ousted by the Golden
State Warriors in the first round of
the playoffs. It was the fourth straight
year that the Blazers advanced to the
postseason.
COLLEGE WORLD SERIES
Cano HRs twice,
Moore wins
debut as M’s
top Tigers
Associated Press
SEATTLE — Andrew Moore
justified his surprising call-up
with a solid performance —
although Robinson Cano made his
job a whole lot easier.
Cano hit a grand slam and a
two-run homer, Moore pitched
seven effective innings to win in
his big league debut, and the Seat-
tle Mariners held off the Detroit
Tigers 9-6 on Thursday night for
their fifth straight victory.
“That was unbelievable,” said
Moore, called up Wednesday from
Triple-A Tacoma to replace strug-
gling Yovani Gallardo in the rota-
tion. “It felt like I blinked and it
was over. It absolutely flew by.
That was pretty special, just the
way we kind of took that last
punch where they started coming
back.”
Cano’s seventh-inning grand
slam off Francisco Rodriguez,
his 13th homer, put the Mariners
up 9-3. His two-run shot off Dan-
iel Norris (4-5) in the third staked
Moore to a 5-1 lead.
“The home runs hurt us,”
Tigers manager Brad Ausmus
said. “I thought we’d fought our
way back into the game a little
bit, and Cano’s grand slam kind of
puts it out of reach.”
‘Small gesture’
for Big Papi:
Boston names
street for Ortiz
Associated Press
BOSTON — Ted Williams
waited 24 years after his last at-bat
before the Boston Red Sox hung
his No. 9 from the Fenway Park
facade. Bobby Doerr and Joe Cro-
nin waited 37 years, and Carlton
Fisk and Jim Rice 20.
David Ortiz’s No. 34 will join
the others tonight — 265 days
after he walked off the Fenway
field for the last time as a player.
“That short amount of time is
a symbol,” team president Sam
Kennedy said Thursday, “of
how everyone ... feels about the
player who was the most import-
ant player in the history of the Red
Sox.”
The Red Sox will retire Ortiz’s
number Friday night before their
game against the Los Angeles
Angels. It will be the 11th num-
ber on the facade, and the third in
three seasons.
And, yes, it will be less than
a year after the player beloved as
“Big Papi” walked off the field for
the final time.
AP Photo/Nati Harnik
Oregon State’s Steven Kwan (4) reacts after reaching first base on a bunt in the first inning of an NCAA College World Series base-
ball game against LSU in Omaha, Neb., Monday. The Beavers play the Louisiana State Tigers today at noon.
Kwan, Madrigal set the
pace for Beavers’ offense
By BOB LUNDEBERG
Albany Democrat-Herald
PAPILLION, Neb. — A frightening inci-
dent during the Civil War Pac-12 series indi-
rectly led to the ascension of Oregon State’s
offense.
In the ninth inning of last month’s finale at
Oregon, Nick Madrigal took a Kenyon Yovan
fastball off his left hand that resulted in a deep
bone bruise. Madrigal, the team’s regular
leadoff batter, started just four of the Beavers’
final eight regular-season games and went 1
for 5 in the Corvallis Regional opener against
Holy Cross.
With Madrigal experiencing hand sore-
ness, coach Pat Casey decided to have regular
two-hole hitter Steven Kwan flip spots with
the Pac-12 player of the year. Batting second,
Madrigal could swing less and bunt more until
the pain subsided.
The new-look lineup, which was meant to
be temporary, has terrorized opposing pitch-
ers from the start.
Kwan went 4 for 5 in Game 2 against Yale
and 3 for 4 in the finale, winning the region-
al’s Most Outstanding Player award. Madri-
gal finished 4 for 4 with four bunt singles in
Game 3.
SPORTS SCHEDULE
TODAY
Junior Baseball — Kennedy at War-
renton, 4 p.m.
SATURDAY
Junior Baseball — Kennedy at War-
renton, 11 a.m.
SUNDAY
Junior Baseball — Knappa at Astoria
Ford, 3 p.m.; Lower Columbia Baseball
vs. Astoria Ford, 7 p.m.; Kennedy at
Warrenton, 11 a.m.
• Oregon State Beavers (2-0)
vs Louisiana State Tigers (2-1)
• Today, noon TV: ESPN
“Coach Casey does a great job with the
lineup,” Madrigal said after Wednesday’s
practice at Werner Park, home of the Omaha
Storm Chasers. The top-seeded Beavers (56-
4) will take a 23-game winning streak into
today’s 12:05 p.m. College World Series
game.
“He knows all of us players, knows what
our strengths are. Kwan usually gets deep into
counts and it’s been working well for us.”
In six games since the switch, both players
are 12 for 23 at the plate.
Kwan has scored 11 runs and collected five
RBIs while Madrigal has eight RBIs and five
runs.
“We just kind of stumbled into it,” Casey
said. “(Kwan) certainly made himself an
unbelievable leadoff guy. Nick’s kind of more
of an aggressive hitter and (Kwan) doesn’t
mind getting deep in counts, so it’s a really
good situation for us.”
Kwan, a sophomore outfielder, has tried
to borrow some of Madrigal’s tricks. Other
than the first-at bat of a game, Kwan said his
approach at the plate hasn’t changed.
“I want to take some pitches, really let the
team see what the pitcher’s got,” Kwan said
of the first inning. “And after that, I kind of
do things the same way as if I was in the sec-
ond hole. I kind of watched how Nick does it.
Nick’s pretty aggressive early in the counts, so
I try to go like that and get a good pitch to hit.”
Kwan opened the CWS with a four-pitch
at-bat against Cal State Fullerton, reaching
on a catcher’s interference. In Monday’s 13-1
thrashing of LSU, Kwan drag bunted the first
pitch he saw for a hit and scored on a Trevor
Larnach single.
He has walked three times in two games at
TD Ameritrade Park.
“Kwan does a great job of taking and
kind of working the pitcher,” Madrigal
said. “It makes it a lot easier hitting behind
him because he usually puts pressure on the
pitcher and makes my job a lot easier.”
The effects can be felt up and down the
OSU lineup.
In seven NCAA tournament games, the
Beavers are averaging nine runs and 12.1 hits
per contest. OSU has outscored the opposition
63-15.
Debate stirs over female lacrosse players not wearing helmets
By LARRY LAGE
Associated Press
SCOREBOARD
UP NEXT: BEAVERS
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Erin Fos-
ter was running toward a groundball
at an indoor lacrosse game when she
was pushed, sending her unprotected
head into a wall.
“It basically cracked my skull,” the
20-year-old Ann Arbor Pioneer High
School graduate recalled. “They said
it was a traumatic head injury, a level
up from a concussion. I had to have
surgery that night and I still have a
scar on my head.”
Would a helmet, like the ones
worn by male lacrosse players, have
helped?
“Yeah, probably,” said Foster, who
was unable to play for more than a
year because of her injury and now
attends Calvin College.
Helmets are not a required piece
of equipment worn by women who
play high school or college lacrosse.
Just this year, the National Federation
of State High School Associations
allowed the optional use of two mod-
els of headgear beyond the padded
headbands familiar to fans and play-
ers of the game.
According to Consumer Prod-
uct Safety Commission data, lacrosse
(both genders) was ranked No. 13 in
terms of sports injuries that required
trips to the emergency room for ath-
letes between the ages of 13-17.
Between 2002 and 2014, there were
an average of 5,830 such injuries each
year, and the most common injury
was to the head ; female athletes were
just 26.4 percent of the total.
In 2018, Florida will become the
first state to mandate high school
female lacrosse players wear protec-
tive equipment over their entire head.
At least one coach there, in Fort Lau-
derdale, Florida, isn’t in favor of the
move.
“I do think eventually it is going
to make things worse,” St. Thomas
Aquinas coach Samantha MacCurdy
said. “I think it’s going to make us
more aggressive. I think a few more
things the refs are going to let slide
because we have the helmets on.”
Kathy Westdorp acknowledged
headgear has been a topic of discus-
sion in lacrosse circles for the last few
years.