Today Seattlest welcomes our new sports correspondent to the fold. Drew Milam is a longtime Seattle resident who recently returned to the Emerald City after some time in the Bay Area, and claims to be super tight with fellow Santa Clara alum Steve Nash, Brandi Chastain and NFL referee Mike Carey. No word on if he got the gig because he is a Hillary supporter (pleasing Editor Kim) and a Garfield alum (pleasing Seattlest David).

This is kind of where we expected the Huskies to be at the end of season – toward the bottom of the conference and needing a couple wins to enter tournament play. A tough stretch at the end, losing three of their last four, the Huskies finished the regular season at 16-15 overall, and 7-11 in Pac-10 (8th place).

Despite the bumps to close conference play, the Huskies looked promising, giving the top 10 ranked Stanford Cardinal a close game on the Farm, beating Cal on the road and taking Wazzu to double overtime. The good came with the bad though, as Jon Brockman rolled his ankle in the final minutes of the WSU game and is probably out for tonight's game (some might think this is a blessing in disguise ).

Now the Huskies play Cal again, in the 8/9 match-up to kick-off the Pac-10 tournament in Los Angeles, tip-off is at 6 p.m. on FSN, but the game will be pre-empted by the Sonics game which starts at 4:30 p.m. To see the game in its entirety, your best bet is Fox Sports Pacific (channel 415 on Comcast) or your neighborhood sports bar.

The neutral court should help the Huskies, instead of playing a true road game. They did lose two prior neutral court games in the preseason NIT in New York, although the warm weather of Southern California will keep them loose.

The Dawgs will need to shut down the Bears' Ryan Anderson, who averaged 21 points and 12.5 boards in the two previous games against UW, and hope the team is still feeling sick about letting UCLA pull-off an improbable comeback on Saturday.

A loss will most likely end the Huskies season. A win and the Huskies will face UCLA on Thursday afternoon and hopefully put them on speed-dial for the NIT committee. The Dawgs have shown hints of greatness this season, but so did the Seahawks, and we all know how that ended.

For more background and a scouting report of the Golden Bears is Kevin, Seattlest's Berkeley Bureau Chief, reporting between his double shift at Intermezzo:

The only team with a more heartbreaking finish to the regular season than Washington may be Cal. An overtime loss to USC on Thursday, and a questionably officiated last second loss at UCLA on Saturday should leave the Golden Bears confident, and motivated to earn a rematch with the Bruins in the second round. The Bear's fortune in the Pac-10 tournament likely depends on getting another solid effort from senior forward Devon Harden, who has been MIA for much of the regular season, but emerged against Washington last week in Berkeley, going for 18 points and 13 boards.