Enter at Your Own Risk: Fires and Phantoms is the second installment in editor Dr. Alex Scully’s horror anthology series to be published by local indy press Firbolg Publishing. The stories assembled here are far from perfect (what anthology is?), but if you’re a fan of gothic horror, Fire and Phantoms does enough things right to justify picking up a copy on your next visit to the bookstore.
Verland: The Transformation, the debut novel by Eugene author B.E. Scully, is a welcome return to a time when vampire stories were actually about vampires. And when I say vampires, I don’t mean brooding sex symbols, I mean the vampires of old: superhuman, disquieting predators with an overpowering thirst for human blood.
When the two teams squared off at Jeld-Wen Field in Portland yesterday with the 6A Division Championship on the line, it soon became clear that the outcome of the game would be decided in a bruising defensive grudge match rather than the wild, high-scoring shootout most fans in attendance would have expected to see.
When a team wins 80.6% of its sets, leads the country in offense, throttles its opponents to such a degree that sportswriters wear out thesauruses in a fruitless search for new ways to say “dominating,” and plays at such a high level that extraordinary performances are the rule and not the exception, “yay” is as good a way to put it as any.
The University of Northern Colorado’s volleyball team was recently crowned champion of the Big Sky Conference, but last night at Matthew Knight Arena they were little more than a speed bump as the 5th-seed Ducks cruised to a 3-0 victory in the first round of the 2012 NCAA Tournament. Aside from being their 19th sweep of the season, the game also marked the first time that Oregon has enjoyed home court advantage in the postseason in nearly three decades.
Only two local teams remain in this year’s OSAA playoff brackets, and on Friday both notched convincing victories to advance to the next round.
On paper, the No. 6 Oregon volleyball squad’s 3-0 defeat of 7th-ranked UCLA at Matthew Knight Arena was not their finest hour. The neck-and-neck set scores from the game – 26-24, 25-23, and 25-21 – look rather lackluster when compared to the double-digit margins of victory the Ducks posted in several of their other wins this season, and their performance in the game was marred by multiple errors.
The Irish are on a roll, having outscored their last four opponents by an average of 44.5 points. Behind a solid I-formation set by Sheldon, Roseburg’s defense couldn’t slow them down.
The unranked Cal Golden Bears entered Matt Knight Arena upset-minded and stunned the No. 2 Ducks with a 3-0 sweep at home.
Sheldon finished its regular season with a blowout win over Grants Pass heading into the postseason undefeated.
The Irish continued their dominant play in 2012 with a beat down on local Thurston.
The top-5 Oregon Ducks volleyball team took down No. 1 Washington to beat the only remaining undefeated team.
The Oregon Ducks continued its strong season, and earned its No. 5 ranking with a 3-0 route of Washington State
Normally, it would be enough to say that the Oregon Ducks’ volleyball team swept the Colorado Buffaloes. However, when you follow a team that has racked up as many sweeps as Oregon has this season – 11 and counting – you begin to realize that not all sweeps are created equal. Sometimes, like in the Ducks’ victory against St. Mary’s, a sweep is the result of three closely-fought sets in which the margin of victory could hardly be said to exist at all.
Oregon’s head coach Jim Moore received win No. 500 in Oregon’s 3-0 sweep over Pac-12 foe Utah at home Friday night.
In a sweep of back-to-back nationally ranked teams, the University of Oregon’s 8th-ranked volleyball team followed up their decisive victory last Wednesday over the 26th-ranked Oregon State Beavers by traveling to Los Angeles two days later to beat the 2nd-ranked USC Trojans on their home turf.
Last week after the Ducks’ beat the UC Santa Barbara Gauchos, middle blocker Ariana Williams was asked if she had played St. Mary’s before. “No, but I hear they don’t like us,” she said. “They don’t want to play us or something.”
On Wednesday night, the Ducks’ extended their undefeated streak to 7-0 by defeating the UC Santa Barbara Gauchos (5-3) at Matthew Knight Arena in four sets.
After going 13-1 last year and falling just short of a state championship (the one loss being a 47-14 defeat in the championship game at the hands of the Lake Oswego Lakers), the Sheldon High Irish said goodbye to several key starters, including quarterback Dillon Miller, the son of former Oregon quarterback and NFL first round pick Chris Miller. But if the Irish varsity squad was hurt in any way by the loss of those players, it sure didn’t show in their scrimmage last Saturday versus the varsity scout team.
The No. 20 Oregon Ducks volleyball team may not be making headlines, but they’ve silently become one of the best volleyball teams in the nation.