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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, JANuARY 2, 2019
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Gary Henley | Sports Reporter
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SCOREBOARD
TODAY
Girls basketball — Warrenton at Clatskanie,
6 p.m.
Boys basketball — Warrenton at Clatskanie,
7:30 p.m.; Ilwaco at Ocosta, 7 p.m.
THURSDAY
Girls Basketball — Ocosta at Ilwaco, 7 p.m.
Swimming — Seaside at Taft, 4 p.m.
Lillard rallies
Trail Blazers
in OT to beat
Kings 113-108
By MICHAEL WAGAMAN
Associated Press
SACRAMENTO, Calif. —
Damian Lillard woke up Tues-
day morning feeling out of
sorts and didn’t get much bet-
ter through the first three quar-
ters against Sacramento. When
Portland needed him the most,
however, their All-Star guard
came through in a big way.
It wasn’t necessarily Michael
Jordan dropping 38 on Utah
in Game 5 of the 1997 NBA
Finals, but it was more than
enough to help the Trail Blazers
kick off the new year the right
way.
Lillard shook off a slug-
gish night to score five of his
25 points in overtime, and the
Portland rallied after blowing
a 14-point halftime lead to beat
the Sacramento Kings 113-108
on Tuesday night.
“They outplayed us for most
of the second half,” a weary
Lillard said. “At that point you
have to come together as a
group and kind of forget about
everything that’s happened. You
have to make plays happen from
that point on to pull out a game
and I thought we did a great job
of that.”
Jusuf Nurkic had 24 points
and a career-high 23 rebounds
to help Portland to its fourth
straight win over Sacramento.
CJ McCollum added 16 points,
and Maurice Harkless had 11
points and nine rebounds.
“The effort it took to come
back and win in overtime, I was
really impressed with our guys,”
Blazers coach Terry Stotts said.
“To make a comeback like that
you have to be good at both
ends, and we were.”
Lillard wasn’t much of a fac-
tor until late in the fourth quarter
when he scored seven of Port-
land’s final nine points, includ-
ing a layup with 15.5 seconds
remaining to force overtime.
The Blazers dominated after
that while outscoring the Kings
10-5 in the overtime. Lillard
made three free throws and a
20-foot jumper to spark Port-
land’s finish and erase an other-
wise rough night shooting from
its backcourt tandem of Lillard
and McCollum.
Lillard went 8 of 21 from the
floor. McCollum shot 8 of 19.
“I woke up this morning
feeling a little beat up, a little
bit tired,” Lillard said. “But I’ve
been a lot more sick.”
AP Photo/Ted S. Warren
Seattle Seahawks’ Chris Carson carries against the Arizona Cardinals.
For Seahawks, playoff
run started in Week 3
By TIM BOOTH
Associated Press
R
ENTON, Wash. — Pete Car-
roll and Brian Schottenheimer
sat together and decided with
their team winless after two games there
needed to be a change.
What the Seattle Seahawks were try-
ing to do on offense wasn’t working.
“He and I sat down and kind of had
a little heart-to-heart,” said Schotten-
heimer, Seattle’s first-year offensive
coordinator.
“There were things that he and I just
wanted to make sure we were on the
same page about. It wasn’t just the run-
ning game, it was he and I continuing to
build our relationship and it was an awe-
some meeting. It probably lasted about an
hour and we talked about a ton of differ-
ent stuff. I know I came out of that meet-
ing feeling really good just about the
direction where we wanted to go.”
The direction has been clear for more
UP NEXT: NFC WILD CARD
• Seattle Seahawks (10-6)
at Dallas Cowboys (10-6)
• Saturday, 5:15 p.m. TV: FOX
than three months as the Seahawks went
from a team searching for answers to a
team back in the postseason after a one-
year absence from the playoffs.
And it was the decisions made before
playing Dallas in Week 3 where the
switch was made and Seattle started on
its path that has the Seahawks headed to
face the Cowboys on Saturday night in an
NFC wild-card game.
The conversation between Carroll and
Schottenheimer made clear Seattle was
going back to the fundamentals of how
it wanted to be offensively. They were
going to make running the ball the prior-
ity and let Russell Wilson be a playmaker
around the running success.
The result: Seattle ended the season as
the best run team in the NFL, and with
Wilson having one of the best seasons of
his career making big plays in the pass-
ing game.
“I don’t think you’d always sit there
and say we’re going to make this philos-
ophy and go do this, and then you think
you’re going to be the best in the league
at it,” Schottenheimer said.
Throughout last offseason, Seattle
preached it was returning to the basic
offensive fundamentals that led them to
consecutive NFC titles. They were going
to be bullies running the football behind
the trio of Chris Carson, Mike Davis and
Rashaad Penny.
But for the first two weeks of the sea-
son, Schottenheimer and Carroll got too
far ahead of themselves. They tried to
see how much the Seahawks could rely
on Wilson, rather than relying on the run
game. The result was a pair of ugly losses
to Denver and Chicago, and Wilson run-
ning for his life getting sacked 12 times in
those first two games.
Washington Huskies’ slow start in
Rose Bowl is familiar, unwelcome
By DAN GREENSPAN
Associated Press
UP NEXT: BLAZERS
• Oklahoma Thunder (23-13)
at Portland Trail Blazers
(22-16)
• Friday, 7:30 p.m. TV: ESPN
AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli
Sacramento Kings guard Bogdan
Bogdanovic,
left,
defends
against Portland Trail Blazers
guard Damian Lillard.
PASADENA, Calif. — The sec-
ond half of the Rose Bowl showed
No. 9 Washington is more than
capable of competing with the top
programs in college football.
Unfortunately for the Huskies,
another slow start against a mar-
quee nonconference opponent
proved to be the difference in their
28-23 loss to No. 5 Ohio State on
Tuesday.
“If we had five more minutes
we would have won that game,”
Washington center Nick Har-
ris said. “Just kind of ran out of
time, and we got to start faster. We
can’t have those hiccups in the first
half.”
Washington’s third consecutive
appearance in a New Year’s Six
bowl game played out much like
losses to Alabama in the College
Football Playoff semifinal at the
Peach Bowl in 2016 and to Penn
State in the Fiesta Bowl last sea-
son. The Huskies fell behind the
Buckeyes 28-3 in the third quarter
before rallying with three touch-
downs in the fourth.
Led by 204 yards passing from
senior quarterback Jake Brown-
ing and 97 yards rushing with two
AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill
Washington running back Myles Gaskin scores over Ohio State cornerback
Kendall Sheffield.
short touchdown runs from senior
running back Myles Gaskin, Wash-
ington outgained Ohio State 293-
92 in the second half. In the fourth
quarter, the yardage edge was 170-
15 in favor of the Pac-12 champi-
ons, forcing Ohio State to have to
recover an onside kick with 42 sec-
onds remaining to stave off what
could have been the biggest come-
back in the 105-year history of the
Rose Bowl.
The sense of regret was all
too familiar for Washington (10-
4), which trailed by 21 points in
the first half of that 35-28 loss to
the Nittany Lions last season. A
year earlier, the Crimson Tide put
Washington in a 17-7 halftime
hole en route to a smothering 24-7
loss, and even this season’s opener
against Auburn saw the Huskies
trailing by nine points twice in
the second quarter before falling
21-16 in the neutral site game in
Atlanta.
Pulisic to join Chelsea
as most expensive
American player
Associated Press
DORTMUND, Germany —
Christian Pulisic became the
most expensive American soc-
cer player in history after com-
pleting a transfer to English
club Chelsea from Borussia
Dortmund today.
Chelsea paid $73 million for
the 20-year-old United States
winger, who will be loaned back
to Dortmund for the rest of this
season. The German club won’t
have to pay Chelsea for the loan.
The fee is easily the biggest
paid for an American player,
surpassing the reported $22.5
million spent by German team
Wolfsburg for John Brooks in
2017.
“It was always Christian’s
big dream to play in the Pre-
mier League,” Dortmund sport-
ing director Michael Zorc said.
“That certainly has to do with
his American origins, and so it
wasn’t possible for us to extend
his contract.”
Pulisic’s contract with Dort-
mund was due to expire at the
end of next season.
“It is a privilege to have
signed for such a legendary
club,” Pulisic said of the Lon-
don team that has won five Pre-
mier League titles since 2005.