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.

Dana O'Neil once again makes The BIAH Quotables for her excellent writing. In an piece regarding Louisville's UTEP's Derrick Caracter, O'Neil ended the article in fitting fashion:

It's early. Caracter has shown flashes before, but the good nights often were freight trained by his hot-and-cold relationship with commitment. Once the most highly regarded recruit in the country, he has been his own worst enemy.

If he has truly changed his ways, Caracter might finally live up to that surname and his abilities.

I always thought Twitter was a useless, unnecessary communication device, but I was wrong. I can now see what all the best coaches and players in the country are thinking. Take Indiana's Tom Crean for example:

The toughest of deficits but its not natural or ingrained yet. We still believe we can do it by ourselves and that's not possible.

Getting a group of young men to play for each other rather than with each other is a great challenge.

I wonder if this has anything to do with his team's home loss to Loyola (Md.)?

Ohio State is doing it's best to stay afloat in the top 25 without the services of Evan Turner. The big question is whether or not Turner will return for his senior year. In a NYT article, Turner had an interesting line about next year's possibilities:

“I think it’s an all-star team,” he said of the Buckeyes’ prospects next season. “It would be a definite national championship.”

Mike DeCourcy made a good point about "one-and-dones" in his 3-Pointers column. He believes that not all freshman destined for a lottery pick should enter the draft:

Agents and media members who recite that all young players should file for the NBA draft at the earliest opportunity should be sentenced to watch an endless loop of highlights from Al-Farouq Aminu's sophomore season at Wake Forest.

Wait, no. That would be a good thing. They deserve punishment, not entertainment.

Aminu was pushed hard by outsiders to enter the 2009 draft but chose to return, and that decision has become a smashing success.

On Tuesday night, Texas A&M senior Derrick Roland broken his leg in a grizzly incident during the game against Washington. Here is a little blurb from ESPN.com's recanting of the scene:

Washington's Quincy Pondexter, one of the defenders challenging Roland's shot, said the fracture -- in which a bone actually had broken through the skin -- was "one of the nastiest things I've ever seen." The sound of the leg breaking was so loud Pondexter thought it was Roland's back hitting the court.

"We heard it," Texas A&M assistant coach Scott Spinelli said, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer blog account. "I didn't see it. It was a loud snap. I know we all heard the snap and it's something you're never going to forget."

Many fans on that side of the stands gasped and turned away.

Missouri looked impressive in their "Bragging Rights" game against Illinois. Mizzou's Kim English led all players with 24 points on 8-15 shooting, including 5-10 from 3-point range. He gave the Tiger's big men most of the credit for his open looks:

Coach (Mike) Anderson really emphasized the post presence tonight.He said we couldn't just pass it around the horn and jack up shots. When they suck down in on us, we've got to get it into the bigs, and we have great passing big guys. They got it to us and we just knocked down shots.

The Tigers also played top-notch defense, causing 21 Illini turnovers. English stated that turnovers were the difference between this year and last year:

We didn't want to try and gamble as much this year; they handled that last year. We just played honest defense but still wanted to be assertive, then let them make mistakes on offense.