Kitsap Sun from Bremerton, Washington • 11

NBA C3 -SCOREBOARD C4 -YOUR PORTFOLIO C5 -COMICS C6 Bremerton CK girls in action tonight WEST SOUND PREPS C4 Ms prospect Snelling goes under the knife HIE MARINERS C2 IHElSUNffSERVlNGlWESTlSOUNDlTrUESDAYflMARCHfiraOOSflSECTIONlC PREP BASKETBALL The Seahawks Free agency provides lots of options Is re-signing Lucas a priority How about Okeajbr and Tobeck By Scott Johnson For The Sun Staff photo by Carolyn Yaschur West coach Rick Walker enjoys his role coach and teacher they have the greatest Influence on youth today besides a said the Bremerton native going back to state As a player Rick Walker twice took East High to state championships As a coach this is the first year taking Kings West to the state tournament By Howie Statwkk For The Sun The Walker file King's West coach Rick Walker Prep titles: Walker led the former East Bremerton High School to state AA championshipe in 1972-73 and 1973-74 Scoring: Walker averaged 25 points and IS rebounds during his senior year '73-74 College title: Walker's University of Puget Sound team won an NCAA Division II national championship in 1976 Accolades: The Sun named Walker its basketball Player of the Century in 1999 nament for the first time in school history The Tri-District champs of West are 22-3 with 17 straight wins heading into first-round game with 17-7 Toutle Lake at the Spokane Arena to state is a lot of fun but the kids their Walker stressed had my heyday with basketball" And what a heyday it was Walker starred on two state championship teams at East Bremerton High and one national championship team at Puget Sound still the career scoring leader at UPS an NCAA Division school during his playing days Pairings for this Class state tournament appear on Page C4 guys are calling him Local we joke around with him We ask him about things he did We ask him you throw it off the backboard (and dunk)? He says I did it all the Yeah right Anyone ever spoken to the soft-spoken mild-mannered devoutly religious Walker would instantly recognize that he is the last person who would ever brag about himself Somebody better start bragging up Walker because guided the West boys to the State Tour The last 10 days of activity may have felt like a free-agent signing period but that phase is still hours away from even beginning After already signing Matt Hasselbeck and Walter Jones to long-term contracts and placing the franchise tag on running back Shaun Alexander not to mention adding team president Tim Ruskell to the fold the Seattle Seahawks can officially dive into the free-agent waters tonight At 9 pm midnight on the East Coast the free-agent signing period begins That means the Seahawks can start negotiating with unrestricted free agents from other teams Just as important it also means that other teams can start negotiating with 14 unrestricted free agents The Seahawks have expressed a desire to re-sign most of their own free agents from a group that indudes starters like cornerback Ken Lucas defensive end Chike Okeafor and center Robbie Tobeck But after the money they spent on Hasselbeck Jones and Alexander more than $100 million in salary induding a cap hit of about $174 million for the 2005 season Seattle will have fo spend its remaining money wisely a position-byposition look at what the Seahawks may address over the next few weeks in order of priority: Coaches often struggle to command respect from bull-headed and air-headed teen-agers hut Rick Walker certainly seems to have gained the respect of his West boys basketball team After all not many high school players nickname their coach Local like the greatest said West star Adam Shildmy-er well aware of sensational basketball career at East Bremerton High School and the University of Puget Sound been a great coach for four years See WALKER on C2 COLLEGE BASKETBALL Just a couple weeks left to fill out your brackets By Randy Holtz Scripps Howard News Service Seed report where the University of Washington and Gonzaga could be sent in the NCAA tournament according to three Web sites making In less than two weeks the proverbial puffs of white smoke will emanate from a hotel suite in downtown Indianapolis and the world will be blessed with a 65-team NCAA Tournament bracket Minutes later folks across this vast land will proclaim themselves instant experts on the subtleties of the Holy Cross high-post offense and the Vermont half-court trap Yes that time of year again a time when people who know Bobby Knight from Gladys Knight weigh in with their office pools But before the NCAA Division I Basketball Committee makes its choices there are two weeks of hoops to be played The two-week conference-tournament run which begins Tuesday has become something of a season in itself a preview of coming attractions So has the conjecture over who will make it into the NCAA field and who In this Internet-surfing age of ours anyone with a serviceable laptop can look up the Ratings Percentage Index rankings of the 330 major-college teams Also available with the click of a mouse is a season-long See SEAHAWKS on C2 Editors note Because of a computer glitch NBA box scores and much of the Scoreboard page were garbled in edition The garbling occurred after the pages were proofread so the problem was not discovered until after the newspaper was printed We apologize for the inconvenience We have identified the problem and have taken steps to prevent It from happening again To read the pages as they should have appeared you can go to wwwkitsapsuncom In addition on Page C4 today we are republishing Monday's local sports results plus the state high school pairings for the Class and 3A basketball tournaments Sunday's Sonics box score appears on Page C3 needed to be slapped have had plenty of chances to impress the committee And even those who have languished through lousy seasons still have a shot to advance to the Big Dance by winning conference tournaments Get hot at the right time and golden Of the 31 Division I conferences only one play a tournament to determine its NCAA automatic qualifier the Ivy League whose NCAA representative Penn already has been decided The Quakers clinched the Ivy title Saturday night The point is the NCAA Tournament is an equal-opportunity hoopfest If your school doesn't get results its record against the top 100 teams in the RPI Its nonconference triumphs and tribulations and the color of its head socks Bob Bowlsby knows this and it intimidate him Bowlsby whose day job is running the athletic department at the University of Iowa is the chairman of the committee charged with the task of choosing and seeding the NCAA field He is a pleasant follow which is good because his task is thankless Someone has to be left out and someone will gripe But know this: All but one of the 330 teams Ohio State is Ineligible because the Buckeyes were bad boys whose hands AP photo by Jeff Green Gonzaga's Erroll Knight slammed during the win 87-60 win over Northern Colorado on Monday in Spokane: The win came on the same day the Zags swept West Coast Conference awards See Page C3 The University of Washington moved back into the Top 10 in the two major college basketball polls Sea Page C3 See NCAA on C3 ft sect in tsiroaj case stank a I.