Bill Blair, the former Providence College basketball star, died recently in San Antonio at age 65.

Blair was a member of the Friars’ great 1965 team that went to the Final Eight before getting beat by Bill Bradley’s Princeton team. Blair also has a special place in PC basketball history in that his mother, as the story goes, told Friars coach Joe Mullaney that, yeah, my son’s good, but my nephew’s better. The nephew was the great Jimmy Walker, who followed Blair to PC a year later.

Blair had been living in San Antonio for years, where he worked as a photographer and a director of community-service projects, and also served as a mentor.

“He was known as ‘Pops’ throughout the community,” his wife told the Express News in San Antonio, “because he was like everyone’s father.” R.I.P.

•The PC-Baylor game on Thanksgiving night was almost unwatchable.

•And the Friars’ lack of an inside game will be their undoing.

•And this state’s undoing will be its staggering lack of vision.

•What do you think Pete Carroll thinks of Matt Cassel now?

•In a perfect baseball world, the Sox would sign Rocco Baldelli to be their fourth outfielder.

•Quiz of the Week: Who are the top three all-time scorers in URI basketball history? (Answer near the bottom of the column.)

•Line of the Week comes from Randy Moss, after last Sunday’s win over the Dolphins: “I think they disrespected me by playing single coverage.”

Say what?

•Line of the Week II comes from Steve Bodow in the New York Daily News: “Congratulations; you no longer have to kick yourself for not going into investment banking.”

•Were there foreclosures in the Renaissance, or just here in the Renaissance City?

Whipple

•Mark Whipple, the former Brown football coach, was mentioned the other day in the local paper for the Syracuse job.

•Just when you thought he was settling down, Allen Iverson skips practice to stay home with his family for Thanksgiving. Practice? Practice? We talking about practice?

•Then again, maybe he was just home giving thanks to a culture that pays him something like $20 million a year to play ball in the midst of this economic tsunami.

•You’ve got to love Kanye West, who recently said he wants to be the next Elvis.

•Memo to Kanye: Yeah, and I want to be the next Shakespeare, but so what?

•Whatever happened to Matt Walsh?

•More people might have a little more empathy for beleaguered Notre Dame football coach Charlie Weis if one of his calling cards all these years hadn’t been his unbridled arrogance.

•There’s no truth to the rumor that one of the growth industries in the future will be tattoo removal.

•Or that the Detroit Lions are run worse than even the automobile companies.

•I liked Cox Cable’s documentary on the old Narragansett Race Track the other night.

•And if you don’t know where it was, you should get someone to give you a Rhode Island history lesson.

Winger

•You know the years are fast-breaking by you, Bunky, when Debra Winger plays the mother of a married child, like she does in Rachel Getting Married, a powerful look at the affects addiction has on families.

•And you know things are changing out there when General Motors jettisons Tiger as one of its pitchmen.

•Or if Tiger can’t keep a gig, what’s the rest of us to do?

•There are few things more ridiculous in sports than seeing NHL players stand around and watch two guys fight.

• Rajon Rondo keeps getting better and better.

•In a better sports world, every high school football game around here would be like the ones on Thanksgiving morning, a day of big crowds and big interest, the kind that pulls communities together.

•The new kid cult movie is the vampire love story Twilight, just in case you’ve been too preoccupied with the descent of your 401(k) to notice.

Westmoreland

•Baseball America has Portsmouth’s Ryan Westmoreland as the seventh-best prospect in the Red Sox’ organization.

•If you didn’t know better, you would have thought Matt Light went rogue on us last Sunday in Miami.

•Kind of like Al Davis about 20 years ago.

•And the General Assembly, too, which went rogue a long time ago and never came back.

•If Claude Lemieux can make a comeback at 43 after having been out of the league for five years, maybe they should think about closing the league down.

•Quiz answer: Carlton Owens. Tyson Wheeler. Ernie Calverley.

•The Secret Life of Bees has some endearing moments, but is ultimately preposterous.

•Mike Marra, the Smithfield kid at Northfield-Mt. Hermon who is ticketed for Louisville next year, is a big-time shooter.

•The Dolphins averaged 33 points a game against the Pats in two games, and only 19 against the other teams.

•Stop the season now, and the two best teams in the NFL are the Giants and Jets.

•I’ll stand in line waiting for a store to open the day I re-up to go back to basic training.

breynold@projo.com