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Trail Blazers fans let out a collective sigh of relief on Monday night, as Portland blew a 19-point lead over the Minnesota Timberwolves at the Target Center but held on to win in overtime.

The Portland State tennis team has just begun a new campaign. The Vikings gained a good deal of experience in a tune-up match against the University of Oregon Ducks to open the season, even though they left without a win. Antoine Bechmann played number one singles versus Oregon native and Cleveland High School product Alex Rovello in what turned out to be a competitive contest. Bechmann was able to break Rovello’s serve a few times and give the former No. 1 Pacific Northwest USTA junior tennis player a tougher-than-expected match.

“You know, I used to hate Parkman when he was with the A’s. It’s amazing how a new uniform can change your attitude about a guy.” When legendary movie play-by-play announcer Harry Doyle (played by real-life announcing legend Bob Uecker) uttered these words in Major League II, he put a voice to the feelings espoused by many sports fans. Our greatest rivals become fan favorites as soon as they don our home team’s colors, and our sports heroes become persona, non grata, as soon as they take their talents to another city.

THURSDAY FEB. 7 Women’s Basketball Vikings vs. Northern Arizona Peter Stott Center, 7:30 p.m. Men’s Basketball Vikings @ Northern Arizona J. Lawrence Walkup Skydome, 5:35 p.m. Softball Kajikawa Classic Tempe,…

If you picked up Sports Illustrated or skimmed through the sports section of a major newspaper in the two weeks leading up to Super Bowl Sunday, chances are good you came across an article fawning over San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick. It wasn’t a surprise to read accolades like “savior,” “wunderkind” and “phenom” thrown around by reporters in anticipation of the biggest game of the year. What did surprise me was how readily these writers awarded such highfalutin praise to a second-year (and, during the first half of the season, second-string) quarterback.

The Portland State women’s softball season begins tonight in the team’s first year of competition as part of the Big Sky conference. After dominating the Pacific Coast Softball Conference division in years past, Viking softball is favored in preseason polls to win the conference title. This season’s schedule has the team away for nearly a month and a half of nonconference play, including competition against nationally ranked teams. The Vikings head to the Kajikawa Classic first for a six-game stretch.

For years and years, the Super Bowl marked the end of a season and the beginning of a long, depressing slog through months of no football. The NFL juggernaut would consume us for 22 breathless weeks, gloriously crown a champion and then retire quietly to a summer of peaceful slumber, leaving in its wake the bloated portion of the NBA’s regular season and the terrible promise of baseball. Except for the exhilaration of March Madness (and, for the sleepy village of Indianapolis, the Indy 500), sports fans of old were thrust from football bliss into the sports deep freeze.

Without a doubt, the 2012–13 Portland Winterhawks are something special. The 4,322 fans that attended Wednesday night’s comeback win at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum would attest to this statement. Playing host to the Kamloops Blazers, a conference rival with championship aspirations of their own, the Hawks found nothing easy in the first period.

The men’s basketball team returned to the Stott Center this week to face both Montana schools in the Big Sky conference, hoping that the familiarity of home might spark a Viking revival. Considering the Vikings are 0-10 on the road this season and haven’t won away from Portland in 12 months, this was the best chance for head coach Tyler Geving’s squad to turn their 2012–13 season around. After losing to the University of Montana Grizzlies 81-68 on Thursday, Portland State let a close game against the Montana State University Bobcats slip away on Saturday to extend their losing streak to six games.