The BIAH Quotables

This a new feature we are trying out here at BIAH this season. Throughout the week, we are going to post some notable quotes or excerpts that show up in our google reader. Stupid people say stupid things 24 hours a day, and being somehow associated with the college hoops landscape does not preclude that fact. That said, we will not limit our quotables to the simple and idiotic, as the insightful and intelligent will also be highlighted. Feel free to pass along any quotables you stumble across to contactbiah@gmail.com or @ballinisahabit.

In his Big East preview, Gary Parrish wrote this about Seton Hall:

Bobby Gonzalez has his most talented team to date, and if all goes right the Pirates could make a run at the NCAA tournament. But is it really possible that all goes right? Gonzalez has brought in gifted but questionable-character guys in Keon Lawrence (transfer from Missouri) and Herb Pope (transfer from New Mexico State), and most believe things will blow up, sooner or later. If so, Gonzalez could pay with his job.

Bobby Gonzalez didn't take too kindly to that, saying in an SNY.tv interview:

Gary Parrish [of CBS Sports] says I took a risk, which is fine. He can say I took a risk with transfers who don't have perfect backgrounds. But to say that Herb Pope and Keon Lawrence could cost me my job? Everywhere I look somebody is bashing these kids in the press. It's sad. They don't know these kids.

When I read Gary Parrish's piece I got pissed. They're not criminals and they're not thugs. It's like they're waiting for a plane crash so they can count the survivors. We haven't even played a game yet. I'm not saying my guys won't do anything foolish and that they're perfect angels, but the way Parrish writes about Herb and Keon you'd think they'd robbed a bank before we got them. You'd think they were transferring here from Attica.

Gary Parrish questioning UNC's point guard play:

Meantime, Dexter Strickland, the other obvious candidate to play some point, had five turnovers in 11 minutes. Hopefully it was just first-game jitters. Or something. Because North Carolina needs Strickland to at least push Drew, and nothing that happened against Florida International indicated he's ready to push anybody ... except opposing players (Strickland also had four fouls).

Albany head coach Will Brown relayed a conversation he had with his point guard Mike Black during the Great Danes games against Syracuse:

Brown relayed one exchange he had with freshman point guard Mike Black, who got thrown into the fire as he made his first college start against Syracuse’s tough 2-3 zone.

"I said to Mike Black, 'Mike, you've got to get the ball to the high post,'" Brown recalled. "He said, 'Coach, I can't see the high post.'"

Dana O'Neil wrote a nice piece about Avery Bradley a while back, saying the following:

Bradley comes to Texas as perhaps the quietest top prospect in recent memory. While many of his 2009 classmates turned recruiting into a soap opera -- waffling in their commitments or flat-out reneging, staggering through the multistep process of the NCAA clearinghouse or letting their proud papas make noise in the papers -- Bradley gave his verbal to the Longhorns in September 2008. Then he just played basketball. No drama, no hijinks, just hoops.