Hironaka, Peters and some links

COUGARS

FROM PULLMAN — For a regular ol’ Thursday in mid-May, yesterday was pretty heavy on WSU news of the basketball variety. Oh, and Mike Leach apparently shot a bear. Read on.

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First, the news. As we reported on the blog and in the newspaper this morning, Jeff Hironaka has accepted a new role as WSU’s director of player development/special assistant to the head coach. This means he’ll no longer have the title of assistant coach, meaning he can’t recruit off-campus or give instruction on the court during games. CougCenter has some thoughts on the matter. … In other basketball news, 2012 signee Richard Peters failed to qualify academically and is pursuing a junior college to play for this season. It’s still possible he could wind up at WSU in the future, but he won’t be there for the 2012-13 campaign. … Mike Leach went bear hunting this week, and apparently bagged himself quite the prize . Some of the responses to his tweet are pretty entertaining, too. With this topic, also, CougCenter continues to have thoughts . … More on the Leach/Craig James saga. … Thanks to reader Dave Ranta for pointing out this USA Today photo gallery, which features a familiar face if you click through to the fourth photo. …  Bob Condotta relays Phil Steele’s preseason all-conference team, which features Marquess Wilson and Travis Long on the first team.

All for now.

Christian Caple can be reached at christianc@spokesman.com . Twitter: @ChristianCaple