Devon Allen's getting faster, Oregon State stays alive, a hot seat at Hayward: The I-5 traffic report
The weekend that was and the week to come along the I-5 Corridor.
The footnote to the Devon Allen football story is becoming the main bar.
We all remember back at Oregon’s pro day in March, when the Olympian threw on the football cleats for the first time since leaving the sport in 2016 and ran fast enough to earn a three-year deal with the Philadelphia Eagles. Just about every story announcing the signing buried a paragraph about Allen’s return having to wait until after competing in a series of track events this summer, culminating in July’s World Championships.
Football is “on the back burner for now,” Allen said months ago.
Sunday he proved it.
Allen’s 12.84 in the 110-meter hurdles at the USATF NYC Grand Prix in New York clocked in as the third-fastest time in history. The run smashed Allen’s personal best by 0.15 seconds and was just four-hundredths of a second off Aries Merritt’s 2012 world record of 12.80.
Grant Holloway, who Allen beat in New York on Sunday, has the second-fastest time in history at 12.81. The two will likely face again next week at Hayward Field at the USA Track & Field national championships, an event Allen won in 2018.
And he’s coming to Eugene with some swagger.
“I thought I could break the record today,” Allen told reporters on Sunday. “Clean up a few things, and four-hundredths of a second is fourth-thousandths of a second per hurdle, which is so small. Going to have to wait for another race.”
Here’s what else you need to know from the weekend:
The Beavers survive
Saturday wasn’t great for Oregon State. No. 1 starter Cooper Hjerpe couldn’t take the mound due to illness, Auburn masher Sonny DiChiara belted a two-run home run in the first inning and the Beavers spent nine inning playing catch up in an eventual 7-5 loss to the 14th-seeded Tigers in the opener of the Corvallis Super Regional.
Facing elimination on Sunday, Hjerpe took the mound and pitched a game to keep third-seeded Oregon State’s College World Series dream alive.
“He emptied his tank today,” Oregon State coach Mitch Canham said. “He gave everything.”
Hjerpe allowed three runs and struck out six over 5 2/3 innings of Oregon State’s 4-3 bounce-back win. The left-hander, who went 10-3 with a 2.40 ERA and led the nation with 155 strike outs, allowed only three hits to a lineup that had scored 58 runs in its previous four games. He left the game in the sixth to a standing ovation and a new single-season record for strikeouts with 161.
Ben Ferrer pitched the final 3 1/3 innings for his third save of the year.
Oregon State’s offense? A variety pack.
Travis Bazzana and Jacob Melton hit solo shots in the fourth, a Justin Boyd bunt single led to a run-scoring throwing error in the fifth, then a Bazzana walk and stolen base in the sixth led to a Jake Dukart RBI single for the a 4-2 lead.
The Beavers are trying to advance to the CWS for the first time since 2018. First pitch in the winner-take-all Game 3 is scheduled for 4:30 p.m. today on ESPN2.
A disappointing weekend at Hayward
Oregon’s new home venue couldn’t muster up much magic for the hometown Ducks at the NCAA Track & Field Championships at Hayward Field. The Oregon men tied for 25th overall, the women finished 11th and afterwards, Oregon coach Robert Johnson was a tough man to find.
From Ken Goe’s report in The Oregonian:
There has been speculation about the job status of UO coach Robert Johnson. A reporter for Runner’s World asked him to respond to a thread on an internet message board about his future as coach on Tuesday during the pre-meet news conference.
Johnson deflected, saying he hadn’t seen the speculation. When she followed up to ask if there was any truth to the speculation, he again said he hadn’t seen it.
Johnson did not come through the interview area Saturday following the meet. He did a phone interview with a reporter from the Register-Guard. He agreed to do a phone interview with The Oregonian, but did not.
LIV tees off.
The LIV Golf tour dominated weekend news, with the Saudi-backed new challenger to the PGA Tour hosting its first tournament in London. The event began with the PGA Tour suspending all players participating and ended with Charl Schwartzel taking home a $4 million check for winning the inaugural event.
Yes, there was plenty of chaos in-between, as excellently chronicled by ESPN’s Kevin Van Valkenburg in this piece.
Next stop for Liv? Pumpkin Ridge.
Coming up this week:
The NBA Finals return to San Francisco tonight with the series between Boston and Golden State tied at 2-2. Watching the first four games, I’ve been reminded of what a decent stretch of players the Pac-12 put out the last decade. Klay Thompson (Washington State), Payton Pritchard (Oregon), Gary Payton II (Oregon State), Jaylen Brown (Cal), Derrick White (Colorado) and Kevin Looney (UCLA) all played on this side of the country during the 2010s — and it will be nice for some of them to finally get some hardware to show for it.
Game 5 tips at 6 p.m. on ESPN.
The Worlds of Sport convention is happening Saturday and Sunday at the Oregon Convention Center. There’s a lineup of former Oregon sports stars set to appear, though I’m interested in the panel Jaydon Grant (Oregon State defensive back) and Keith Brown (Oregon linebacker) are headlining on the benefits of NIL. In one year we’ve gone from no players being paid to players being paid to lead a talk about players being paid. That escalated quickly.
I’m back from a week in Montana. Rained nearly the entire time, but got to see two really good friends have a much-delayed wedding celebration in the mountains outside of Missoula. Thanks for the party, AJ and Darah — and the excuse to get back to campus.
We’ll have a mailbag and podcast coming out here in the next couple of days. As always, thanks for reading.
— Tyson Alger
@tysonalger