Wednesday morning’s tales from the S-R

• Locally: OK, that’s not exactly true. We do have some Washington State basketball video at the bottom of this section. By the way, did you notice the new name? I’m using a different reader suggestion each day until I settle on the official moniker for this feature. Maybe that would make a good survey, no? … There is a lot of local content in the S-R today, ranging from Greg Lee’s coverage of Tuesday night’s Greater Spokane League boy’s basketball matchup between Gonzaga Prep and U-Hi, won by the Bullpups, 54-48, to John Blanchette’s column on Eastern Washington basketball coach Jim Hayford and his first games on the job. Lee also has a blog post from yesterday talking preps while Jim Meehan, who has this feature on Gonzaga’s backcourt freshmen, adds more in this post from last night. Jim will have the lead piece for the S-R's Thursday college basketball coverage, a feature on GU’s Sam Dower. … On the Washington State front, coach Mike Leach held a live chat with the Seattle Times yesterday and was on something called the “110 Sports Podcast with Victor and Matt,” seemingly broadcast from a basement in Tucson somewhere. You can find the link here. Spokane TV station SWX has some video and a short story on Brock Motum’s weekend. … WSU women’s basketball guard Jazmine Perkins was mentioned yesterday in an ESPN notebook. … If you keep track of the Cougars’ football schedules down the road, you can pencil in Nevada on the road in 2014 and in Pullman in 2017. But these things aren’t etched in stone. … We hope to start increasing the video content, but for today you are going to have to settle for interviews with WSU’s Ken Bone and June Daugherty from their news conferences yesterday, courtesy of Washington State athletics.

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• Bone’s conference call …

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• WSU women’s coach Daugherty from her call …

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• Around the Northwest and beyond: Not a lot here today, but the Huskies will start their road trip to Colorado and Utah atop the Pac-12 standings after sweeping at home last week. Sophomore point guard Abdul Gaddy is contributing despite tearing his ACL a year ago. … Former UCLA basketball coach Gene Bartow, the poor fellow who had the unenviable task of succeeding John Wooden on the Bruin bench, has died. … The Mariners are still in the Prince Fielder sweepstakes, but they are one of five teams reportedly pursuing the big first baseman. Spring training is about five weeks away.

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• That's all we have for now. We’re heading down to Pullman today on some business, then back to Spokane in the afternoon. Our first radio gig is tomorrow, and we’ll have details then. Until later …