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.

Due to the massive snowfall that has entrenched the Northeast, we here at BIAH have been cooped up indoors and figured it would be best to be as productive as possible. So we are providing you with a snow'd-in version of The BIAH Quotables.


We will get started with Rush The Court. They were live blogging through the whole day of televised hoops action. They dropped a great line about the "green game" between Kansas and Michigan:

Evidently, this is the “Green Game.” So ESPN is going to give us day-to-day green-living tips every so often during the broadcast. That’s fine, I guess. The only thing will be to see if they give actual new information people can use, or if it’s a lot of info most people already know. Not sure about these green-tinged graphics, though. Seems more appropriate for St. Patrick’s Day.

Speaking of the "green game", Kansas was able to fend off Michigan, defeating them 75-64. Despite the 11-point victory, Bill Self was not overly thrilled with his team's play:

I would be very disappointed if they left here ecstatic. You play to win and obviously that's important, but to go along with that you play to get better. We wasted an opportunity in the second half to get better. I'm not overly thrilled. I'm glad we won. We did some things well, but we did some things really poorly as well.

The Syracuse Orange spent their snowy weekend playing St. Bonaventure. Mike Waters of the Post-Standard had a great preview for this one:

St. Bonaventure beat Le Moyne and Le Moyne beat Syracuse so maybe the Bonnies have a chance. There’s also a chance that it’s going to be 70 degrees and sunny today.

The Hilltoppers of Western Kentucky were going for back-to-back wins at Freedom Hall. WKU head coach Ken McDonald knew his opponents would come out swinging:

Guys in that locker room aren’t going to let their teammates forget that we got them last year and we’ve got to be ready for that. We’ve got to be ready for that environment. They’re going to come out swinging and we have to handle that.

I've been watching Mic Cronin since he started his job as head coach at Cincinnati, and he's turning in to one of my favorite coaches in the entire country. Here he is talking about how his team has been handling the two consecutive losses:

A little bit, no question about that.All coaches would like to take their team to a deserted island with no cell phone coverage. It would be easier to coach.

That’s part of it. The other part of it is the schedule. We were demoralized. Our guys took the Xavier loss too hard. Bad scheduling to go to UAB the way we did. We learned a tough lesson from it.

The West Virginia Mountaineers escaped by the closest of margins in their game against Cleveland State, 80-78. WVU head coach Bob Huggins was disgusted with his team's play:

I've never had a team give up that many layups in 28 years of coaching. I have never coached a team that has that poor of help (defense). We are awful, just God awful.

Georgetown got upset by Old Dominion on campus for the third straight time. As a true Hoya fan, I can tell you that it both sucks and blows. I am not the only Hoya fan that feels this way. The Casual Hoya expresses their displeasure:

Georgetown continued its streak of sucking against Old Dominion in McDonough. They are now 0-3 all time against the Monarchs in their on-campus gym.

We all knew this was a trap game, and I never expected Georgetown to enter Big East play with an untarnished record, but to lose in our actual home arena and play like poppycock for 35 minutes is embarrassing and disappointing. We had no answer to the Monarchs on defense, looked like Old Dominion was playing in their own practice gym.

And oh yeah, we had 18 turnovers. We made it exciting in the end. We made MASN glad they trucked over to McDonough in the worst snow storm in two decades to broadcast this game but we had 18 turnovers. No excuse for that.

Harvard is next, hopefully JT3 makes the team shovel some snow in the meanwhile.

Georgetown was not the only undefeated team to lose this weekend. Seton Hall was upset by the same Temple squad that knocked off Villanova last weekend. Seton Hall's Herb Pope was notably upset in the loss:

It definitely shows that we’re a fraud right now. We didn’t come back and show defense.

Florida was another one of the ranked teams that was upset on Saturday. The spiders of Richmond beat the no. 13 Gators 56-53. Florida head coach Billy Donovan sounded lost when searching for answers to the questions regarding his team:

You see the energy, the passion, the enthusiasm kind of coming out of them.I can get them physically ready to play, but they've got to understand every game is 40 minutes.

THe second half featured a 20-5 run by the spiders, and Billy Donovan forced his team to play through the drought:

I wasn't going to bail them out/I almost wanted them to stop the bleeding themselves. They needed to play through that.

I take responsibility from the standpoint that obviously what I'm saying to them is not getting through.

Ohio State is still trying to figure out what to do without their star Evan Turner. Turner and crew think he's coming back sooner rather than later:

Ohio State star Evan Turner privately told coach Thad Matta he'd beat the two-month projection for his recovery—and the date he expected to be ready.

Now, he's gone public: Jan. 9 at Minnesota.

That's what Turner told The Columbus Dispatch. "My teammates and I have never won at Minnesota and never won at Purdue. We definitely want to do that," Turner said. "That's a hostile environment and would be the ideal game they might need me for."

Marcus Ginyard and the Tar Heels lost at Texas Stadium to a very good Longhorns team. Ginyard was quick to praise the play of Texas:

There's no doubt in my mind this is the best team we've played so far this year. There's no question they'll be playing well into March ... I can't really think of anything they don't have.