Huskies trip Cardinal, face Cal for Pac-10 title

McClatchy news services

LOS ANGELES – Before the season, Pacific-10 coaches tabbed California and Washington as the teams most likely to win the conference. When the Pac-10 tournament final tips off at 3 p.m. today at the Staples Center it will be the Golden Bears and the Huskies vying for the championship and an automatic NCAA tournament bid.

The Huskies cemented the matchup with a 79-64 win over Stanford late Friday.

Quincy Pondexter had a big game with 19 points, 7 rebounds, 3 assists and 1 blocked shot as UW raised its NCAA profile and hiked its season record to 23-9.

Isiah Thomas added 17 points and Justin Holiday had 11 for the Huskies.

Landry Fields led Stanford (14-18) with 20 points.

COLLEGES

Men’s basketball

NCAA DIVISION II WEST REGIONAL

At Bellingham

Friday

#1: No. 3 seed Seattle Pacific vs. #6 BYU-Hawaii, 12:30 p.m.

#2: #2 Cal State San Bernardino vs. #7 Humboldt State, 2:30 p.m.

#3: #4 Cal Poly Pomona vs. #5 Dixie State, 5:30 p.m.

#4: #1 Western Washington vs. #8 Central Washington, 7:30 p.m.

Saturday

#5: Winner 1 vs. winner 2, 5 p.m.

#6: Winner 3 vs. winner 4, 7 p.m.

Monday

#7: Winner 5 vs. winner 6, 7 p.m.

Women’s basketball

NCAA DIVISION II WEST REGIONAL

At Seattle Pacific Univ.

Friday

#1: No. 3 seed Western Washington vs. #6 Chico State, 12:30 p.m.

#2: #2 UC San Diego vs. #7 Humboldt State, 2:30 p.m.

#3: #4 Alaska Anchorage vs. # 5 Cal Poly Pomona, 5:30 p.m.

#4: #1 Seattle Pacific vs. #8 Hawaii Pacific, 7:30 p.m.

Saturday

#5: Winner #1 vs. winner #2, 5 p.m.

#6: Winner #3 vs. winner #4, 7 p.m.

Monday

#7: Winner #5 vs. winner #6, 7 p.m.

Team Washington

The following athletes with Washington roots have qualified for next monthís Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

AthleteSportHometown

Will BrandenburgAlpine skiingSpokane

Holly BrooksNordic skiingSeattle

J.R. CelskiST-speedskatingFederal Way

Patrick DeneenMogulsCle Elum

Nicole JoraanstadCurlingKent

Torin KoosNordic skiingLeavenworth

Apolo OhnoST-speedskatingFederal Way

Christian NiccumLugeWoodinville

Bree SchaafBobsledBremerton

Jeremy TeelaBiathlonTonasket

Karen ThatcherHockeyBlaine

TO CHANGE PASSWORD (bookmarked on Firefox)

1) Use Firefox browser, and in address bar type in https://10.200.10.122 (note “s” on http)

2) options ñ Outlook web access ñ enter domain name: tacoma\bschey, and password: expiring password

3) options ñ scroll down to “change password” ñ enter all info (click it and should be done)

TO SHOWARE CENTER, KENT

From Tacoma, I-5 traveling north: Take exit 149A S. Kent/Des Moines Rd. Follow Kent/Des Moines Rd. as it becomes W. Willis St. Turn left onto 4th Ave. From 4th Ave., turn left on W. James St. and ShoWare Center will be on your right.

From Puyallup and Auburn, northbound on 167: Take the Willis St. exit. Turn right onto Willis St. and then turn left onto 4th Ave. From 4th Ave., turn left on W. James St. and ShoWare Center will be on your right.

HELPFUL TIP FOR MAJOR EVENTS:

From 4th Ave. turn left PRIOR to W. James St. on W. Smith St. to access south entrance to James Street Park & Ride.

From Bellevue/Renton, southbound on 167: Take the Willis St. exit. Turn left onto Willis St. and then turn left onto 4th Ave. From 4th Ave., turn left on W. James St. and ShoWare Center will be on your right.

From North Bend, westbound I-90 to Hwy 18: Follow HWY 18 to the Covington Exit. Turn right onto Kent-Kangley Rd. Follow Kent-Kangley Rd. and turn left onto SE 256th St. Continue down the hill which changes into W. Smith. Turn right onto 4th Ave. From 4th Ave., turn left on W. James Street and ShoWare Center will be on your right.

Food

Safeco Field offers a wide variety of food sure to satisfy any taste. Please pick up an A-to-Z Guest Guide from any Guest Services Center. Food brought into the ballpark must be wrapped, bagged or inside a container. Items such as apples and oranges must be quartered. Personal food items cannot be carried into any of the restaurants, lounges or suites.

Senior Sundays

Fans 60 years of age or better can get up to four View Reserved seats for just $10 each ($11 day of game) for most games. These seats are normally $20 each.

SONICS MEMOIRS

Sitting at Sea-Tac in 1979, still unsure if the Sonics would be flying to San Antonio to face Spurs or to Washington to play the Bullets in NBA Finals. Spurs had led series 3-2, but Bullets rallied to win Game 6, but then had to go to San Antonio for Game 7. But Dick Motta’s Bullets pulled out another Game 7 victory - as they had done against Seattle at the Seattle Coliseum to win a title a year earlier - and what looked like a sure trip to San Antonio to see the Alamo turned into another trip to D.C. and another Sonics-Bullets showdown.

Seeing Wilt Chamberlain destroy Sonics in December 1967, and watching as Henry Akin picked up six fouls in three-four minutes as the Sonics tried their Hack-a-Shaq drill with Wilt.

Seeing Wilt, then with the Lakers, standing next to Mel Counts, listed as 7-footer, and seeing how “The Stilt” towered over the skinny Counts.

Warriors announcer Bill King: “I’m being restrained by you know who.”

Winner of Nov. 30, 2008 Seattle Marathon:

For Annie Thiessen, a veterinarian from Tacoma who first competed in the Seattle Marathon in 1995 and was runner-up last year, Sunday’s victory capped a brilliant year in which she won eight races. It was the 30th marathon victory of her career.

“Eight in 2008, that’s great,” she said, laughing. “I’m pretty tired now.”

Theissen gained control with about six miles to go and never looked back. Nell Stephenson of Preston finished second in 3:03:29.

“I really liked the way I took over when I did as opposed to being in the lead for the last 20 miles,” Thiessen said. “When you pass someone at mile 20 you know you have a pretty good chance.”

End-of-life care

“We have positioned end-of-life care as a heroic rescue mission rather than a dignified exit from the stage of life. Other societies do not subject their loved ones to ineffective and expensive treatment in their final days. Neither should we.”

ñ Mark Kelley, executive vice president for Henry Ford Health System and chief executive officer of the Henry Ford Medical Group

Todd,

Sorry for taking so long to get back to you, but after looking over your 401(k) statement I don’t think you would do badly to stay invested the way you have been. But I’ll offer you a few thoughts and you might want to consider a couple of changes.

I’ve done quite a bit of reading lately in Kiplinger’s and a couple of other publications, and as you might guess there’s been quite a shift in what a good portfolio looks like after such a major meltdown. Most advisors now feel that the new normal for aggressive investing means being 60% to 70% invested in stocks; before the meltdown, the percentage of stocks was much higher. Ideally, the other 30-40% would be in bonds and other “wealth preserving” investments, such as gold, foreign currencies, real estate, and ñ a new one ñ funds that have a greater degree of inflation protection. Obviously, some of those things aren’t available in our 401(k) plan, but just about everyone believes inflation, or even hyper-inflation, will hammer us in next 12-18 months, so inflation protection could become important. The target-date retirement funds (there are several of them) in our new Vanguard lineup replace the old “balanced fund,” and I think some of them can provide pretty good anti-inflation protection.

The first rule of investing is diversify, diversify, diversify. Last quarter, your money was nicely spread out among the funds ñ stable value (11.25%), bonds (12.85%), balanced (9.65%), large cap (30.82%), EuroPacific (23.83%) and small cap (11.60%). Of course, those have since been converted over to the Vanguard lineup, and that changes things just a bit.

Last quarter, you had 66.25% in stocks plus 9.65% in a balanced fund, or 75.9% total. You earned a nice return (over $6,000 in a 3-month period), but there’s a lot of risk involved and if there’s another downturn you could get burned. A general rule is to have a percentage of bonds about equal to your age ñ if you’re 45, you want about 45% in bonds, and if you’re 65, you want 65% in bonds ñ so you might want to consider simply putting more in bonds, or trying one of the target-retirement funds that has a good percentage invested in bonds.

One idea: You could take the 11.65% from the small cap fund ñ your most volatile and riskiest fund ñ and the 9.65% that was in the balanced fund and combine them or split them between bonds and/or a target retirement fund. One way or the other, make sure your balanced fund percentage is in the right target-retirement fund. I kind of like the first two for playing “defense,” but here’s a breakdown:

InflationEuropeanPacificEmerging

YearStock %Bonds %protection %stock %stock %markets %

200530.84315.64.02.11.8

201041.540.07.85.42.92.4

201549.138.3--6.33.42.9

202055.030.9--7.13.83.2

202561.323.2--7.94.13.5

As a side note, the federal government also now offers TIPS, or Treasury Inflation Protected Securities, as a guard against inflation because regular Treasury bills have lost a lot of their value with all the stimulus bailouts. They go up in value if there’s high inflation, but down if there is deflation. If you’re interested, you can buy them direct online by going to www.treasurydirect.gov/indiv/products/prod_tips_glance.htm

If the 401(k) is your only or main retirement investment, I’d keep shoveling all the money you can spare in there, and maybe consider the tweaks mentioned. But keep an eye on things, because quite a few people think another dip may be coming around the end of the year. Don’t be afraid to make adjustments once or twice a year.

Hope this helps.

// bill s.

MICHAEL’S PORTABLE AIR CONDITIONER

(General Electric)

BASICS: Use 3-prong grounded plug-in. ... Use on 15-amp fuse/breaker. ... Recommend not using plug-in adapter or extension cord (if using extension cord, make it 14-gauge with 3-wire grounding).

1. Water automatically vaporizes (in VERY humid conditions, unit may need to be drained, see Page 4. Drain it by wheeling AC unit into Mike’s shower stall, taking drain cap off the back bottom edge and draining some of water out.

2. Clean air filter every 30 days. Wash it in warm, soapy water, and let it dry before putting it back in unit.

3. If “Water Full” indicator comes on and starts blinking, the AC unit will automatically shut off in 40 minutes unless the water is drained out. Again, wheel the unit into Mike’s shower stall, taking drain cap off the back bottom edge and drain.

4. If power goes out, unit automatically restarts in the settings last used.

5. When not using AC, and in offseason, drain all water from the unit.

The bad economy is certainly hurting lots of people in our state, including many small businesses that we are counting on to provide jobs so as to reduce our extraordinarily high unemployment numbers. The real unemployment rate is about 20 percent of people among those age 20 to 54. We must not worsen this situation by piling more taxes and fees on the back of businesses, or by raising individual tax rates. No one wants to see their retirement savings evaporate and more and more people relying on state funded services to help them make ends meet.

It will be painful (any choice will be painful), but the best way out of this situation is to streamline all the services the state or federal gov’t provides, make them as efficient as any business in the private sector, and let market forces return to play. They have been artificially restrained for too long, and we see the sad results.

To address the budget shortfall, I ask you to work to close any unfair tax loopholes, and then do what any responsible private citizen would do to balance his/her budget. That will require the unpleasant work of eliminating many services and programs, and that will mean cutting jobs, but the legislature must stop trying to avoid the painful truth. These cuts should have been a higher priority for the state a year ago. After the downsizing, cutbacks, wage cut, unpaid furloughs and pension freezes of 2009, what cash-strapped citizens of Washington cannot bear right now is a tax increase. To do so might seem to be a way to temporarily relieve the state’s funding issues, but the ripple effect will break the back of what little consumer spending we now have. It well could send us reeling into an even worse recession/depression.

Thank you for considering these points, and for your work in Olympia.