After mulling a transfer from Washington State, Jeff Pollard will return to the Cougars for his senior season, the forward announced on Twitter Tuesday afternoon.

Eight years later, it’s still the most popular jersey at Washington State home basketball games and before long, Klay Thompson’s No. 1 will be hanging in the rafters at Beasley Coliseum.

SWX's Taylor Brooks talks with new WSU head men's basketball coach Kyle Smith, as he looks to take the Cougars to new heights. Smith becomes the 19th head coach in school history.

Washington State formally introduced new basketball coach Kyle Smith in front of almost 100 school officials, fans and media members Monday afternoon in the Rankich Club Room at Martin Stadium.

With no less than five television cameras pointed at Marvin Cannon, and a few more voice recorders sprinkled in, the beads of sweat started forming on the Washington State sophomore’s hairline, rolling onto his forehead and all the way down to his cheeks.

If you look at the history – the raw numbers of history, at least – the easy conclusion to lunge at is that Washington State mixed some unconventional thinking in its search for a new basketball coach with a dash of desperation.

One day after initial reports surfaced linking Kyle Smith to Washington State’s vacant men’s basketball job, the two sides have agreed to a long-term contract to make Smith the Cougars’ 19th coach.

Washington State and San Francisco’s Kyle Smith are finalizing a deal that would make Smith the Cougars’ next basketball coach, Jon Rothstein of CBS Sports reported Tuesday.

By virtually every metric, from rudimentary win-loss records to the NCAA’s newfangled NET rankings, the WCC is experiencing a major upswing.

A few of Mark Few’s pet peeves: Inquiries about the starting lineup, sweeping generalizations, and awards, all-conference, coach of the year, etc. So his input will be absent from this article, and it’s pretty much a given he won’t read it either.

You’ve been warned. “Great shooters, and the point guard (Frankie Ferrari) is playing great. Another game just like this,” said Gonzaga coach Mark Few, previewing Monday’s WCC Tournament semifinal date with fourth-seeded San Francisco at 6 p.m. at Orleans Arena.

The game before the big game should be more competitive than Gonzaga’s first five WCC games. It almost has to be, considering the Zags have vanquished four of their five conference foes by at least 30 points.

Nigel Williams-Goss took over against the Dons again, pouring in 30 points in the Zags’ 96-61 victory Thursday. A month and a half ago, the junior guard had a career-high 36 points in a 95-80 win in San Francisco.

Nearly two months into the season, San Francisco is 11-4 – its best 15-game start since 2000 – and Kyle Smith is an early candidate for WCC Coach of the Year as No. 5 Gonzaga (14-0) makes its annual visit to the Hilltop on Thursday.

When Capt. Kyle Smith of the Salvation Army of Spokane arrived here five years ago, he didn’t know much about Spokane. His Salvation Army career had already taken him from his native New Zealand, through relief work in Rwanda, a five-year stay in Hawaii and inner-city Salvation Army work in Los Angeles. “I honestly didn’t know what to expect about Spokane. I felt like I was being sent away to this little place,” Kyle Smith said. “And then it turned out that Spokane was a great town. I could easily have stayed here longer.”

The Salvation Army created quite a log jam on North Division Street and Nora Avenue on May 23. That’s when Trans-System delivered two Idaho-grown white spruce trunks for the Salvation Army’s Marshallese Ministry Program’s outrigger canoe building project. The bigger trunk was 20 feet long and nearly 6 feet in diameter.

Santana McCullough was quiet but deliberate as he pushed aside the red and blue backpacks for one in olive green during the Salvation Army’s Backpacks for Kids event. The bashful 6-year-old unleashed a smile when he looked inside his new pack: “Oh! Scissors, markers, crayons and a box.” Still smiling, the 3-foot-tall Spokane boy headed for the door and slung the pack over his shoulder. “This is big,” he said.

The Salvation Army Spokane on Wednesday opened a newly renovated facility on its campus to provide counseling, family visitation and education under one roof. The facility, called the Nurturing Center for Children and Families, will centralize counseling and therapy program services that previously were spread out around the campus.