Eugene Tanner - AP

Spokesman-Review writer Jim Meehan says Matt Bouldin has evolved into one heck of a leader for the Zags.

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It's Gonzaga day! Remember when we used to get this excited about football games?

Anyway, it's time to ramp it up for tonight's contest with the Zags. We'll be back later this afternoon with our own edition of the podcast to extensively preview the game, but to kick off our coverage, we present to you our interview with Jim Meehan, Gonzaga beat writer for The Spokesman-Review. We talk about the changing nature of Gonzaga's basketball team (they're tough? what?!?!?), Matt Bouldin's evolution as a leader, and whether the Zags want to run with the Cougs (you'll have to listen to find out).

Two items of note before you listen:

1. The audio quality on Jim's end is less than superb. He was on the road and talking on an apparently cheap Bluetooth headset (either that, or he should get his money back), so it's not great. I tried to clean it up in the audio file and amplify it, but it's still dicey in spots. Sorry.
2. Pay no attention to my apparent confusion over when the game actually is. Yes, I know the game is tonight. It was recorded yesterday, and I kept getting caught up in which way to say it because I wasn't sure when the audio was going to hit the site. So I just more or less sounded stupid. Forgive me -- I'm just not a podcast pro yet.

As usual you can listen to the audio via the player below, or visit our podcast page for myriad subscription options. You can also find us in the iTunes directory under keyword "CougCenter." The advantage of subscribing? Besides having the audio directly delivered to your player of choice, I often upload the audio to the podcast site before posting it here -- this podcast was uploaded last night, so those of you with subscriptions have had access to this for the better part of 12 hours.

If you liked what Meehan had to say -- or if you just can't have audio at work or just prefer to read stuff -- here's his preview from the Gonzaga side. You can also read Grippi's preview from the WSU side here.