It Makes You Yearn for Double Salchows

By Pete Thomas

March 23, 2005 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

What do you get when you combine an air-to-fakie with a cab 1080, a frontside 1080, a cab tail-grab, an alley-oop-to-fakie and a switch alley-oop rodeo?

If you’re Danny Kass, you get a score that holds for first place in the U.S. Open Snowboarding Championships at Stratton Mountain, Vt.

Kass won the halfpipe competition Saturday for a record fourth time.

Trivia time: On this date in 2003, Tiger Woods closed with a four-under-par 68 to win the Bay Hill Invitational. What was significant about that accomplishment?

Citizen’s arrest! Patrick Knight told the Seattle Times that the move from big-time Bloomington to small-time Lubbock was the best thing that could have happened to his father, Texas Tech Coach Bob Knight.

“It’s kind of like, well, not Mayberry, but the people are kind of like that,” said Patrick, the assistant coach. “No one bothers you. They’ll come up and talk to you about the game, but they don’t want to know why you didn’t go into the post. Or why this and why that.”

And if they do get unruly, Knight can just make like Barney Fife and tell them to “Nip it!”

Just plain mad: Greg Cote of the Miami Herald is among the “disdained minority” that believes March Madness is not worthy of the fuss.

“We don’t get that it has become a religion whose worshipers pray to the god Dick Vitale, meticulously fill out brackets, eagerly jump lemming-like into office pools and treat every Cinderella’s victory as if it were orgasmic delight,” he wrote.

Translation: His picks aren’t doing so well.

Nice assist: It won’t make a highlight film, but Laker forward Brian Grant recently dished out one of the most impressive assists of his career: He donated $42,000 to A Place Called Home, a South Los Angeles facility for at-risk youths, where he has become a mentor.

“I’ve been blessed,” Grant, a former Trail Blazer, told the Portland Oregonian. “If I’m wrong for saying I enjoy doing it, then I’m wrong. I enjoy it, and my wife enjoys it. And more than doing it, I like the results that I see as far as those kids [are concerned].”

Straight shooter: The New York Mets got pitcher Kazuhisa Ishii in a trade with the Dodgers, who apparently weren’t too upset to see him go. Asked by a New York Post reporter which pitch Ishii had the most trouble with, Dodger pitching coach Jim Colborn deadpanned, “Strikes.”

Over the last three seasons, Ishii walked 305 batters, second only to Arizona’s Russ Ortiz (308), but he was often effective in clutch situations, Colborn noted.

Trivia answer: Woods became the first player since Gene Sarazen in the Miami Open (1926-30) to win the same event four consecutive times.

And finally: Monday’s Morning Briefing referred to the vessel Cone of Silence, named in honor of the 1960s sitcom “Get Smart,” being entered in this summer’s Trans-Pacific Yacht Race from Los Angeles to Honolulu.

Reader Mike Kilgore wondered: “You don’t suppose they have a satellite shoe phone on board, do you?”