B.I.A.H. Quotables

Everybody's favorite weekly B.I.A.H column is back for round-number-two.

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 hit us up on twitter.


Miami (OH) has had a chance to play the big-3 this season (Duke, Ohio State, and Kansas) this season. Senior Antonio Ballard had some opinions on the order of dominance:

"I was out for that game (Duke). But I did play against Ohio State. I think KU is better than them. Just from watching Duke, in my opinion, I feel that KU is on top right now."

Much has been made of DeAndre Liggins transformation into a scoring threat this season. Coach Calipari gave some glowing compliments of DeAndre as well as the situation he went through:

“They asked me to get rid of him. It wasn’t that he would leave, it was ‘get rid of him.’”

“...Because I knew him from high school, I knew some of his issues and I thought I could get through to him. See look, I’m not worried – and I knew there’d be ups and downs – I don’t do things publicly. So when I punish a kid, usually you don’t even know about it. I’m not trying to make myself look better by punishing a young kid. I’m not doing that. And I also am not afraid to take chances and have people say things about me, because it’s not about me. It’s about this young man. And I thought we could get him to play the way we wanted him to play, that we could win him over, that he had the things that I like to see in a player, but he had to change."

"...He wouldn’t go in a game...I’ve had many players argue with me. I’ve had players not want to go in the game. You ready for this? If there’s a minute to go, and the young man hasn’t been in and we’re up 25 and I go to stick him in, I’ll say, ‘Do you want to go in?’ If the young man says, ‘No, I don’t want to go in,’ I’m alright with that. You know why? Because I was that guy. I know how that one feels. ‘No, please don’t put me in with a minute.’ Other guys, they could care less if it’s 12 seconds, I got that Kentucky uniform on girls are watching, I’m in. I am in. So, I don’t worry about all that, I don’t worry about give and take. This is an emotional game; we play with a lot of passion. And it’s not over yet with DeAndre. It’s never over. When guys totally start changing habits and learn to trust – sometimes one thing can shoot you in the wrong way, ‘Oh well I knew it.’ We don’t know. The guys last year, same deal. We all thought it was over the hump, we come in to practice, oh my gosh he’s back to where he was day one. So, it’s a daily grind in this, but you know what? It’s worth it. It’s worth it for me.”

Illinois' Demetri McCamey led a late charge to defeat Wisconsin on Sunday night 69-61. McCamey had 12 points in the game's final seven minutes. Coach Bruce Weber had tried time and time again to get McCamey to be more assertive and drive to the basket. Apparently, all it took was some familial advice over Christmas dinner. Go figure:

"He came back from Christmas and he announced to the team that he has to get to the basket more because somebody at Christmas dinner told him that. Well, I've been telling him that for three-and-a-half years, [the media] has been telling him, the fans have been telling him -- somebody at Christmas dinner finally got to him."

The WAC has been in shambles since Expansionocalypse hit a couple months ago. The Utah State Aggies were projected to be the favorites coming into the season, and despite having only two losses (at BYU and at Georgetown) they have struggled. In the Aggies win over WAC contender San Jose State, coach Stew Morrill ripped into his team at halftime, hoping to ignite a spark. It did, and his team pulled away with a 9-point victory:

"We were atrocious in the first half. We played with no energy, no heart. Thank God we came out in the second half and guarded them a little bit."

Senior leader Tai Wesley noted that his coach let them have it at halftime and they responded:

"Coach was on us at half. He came out fiery and really chewed us out. He really got on us seniors, saying we weren't playing with enough emotion. We wanted to come out and play with emotion and play better defense."
"Coach really lit a fire under our butts. He was yelling and kicking things and we had to respond. Especially the seniors, it's our last year and it's flying by...We are fortunate to be 2-0."

Even though they won, Morrill has his doubts about his team:

"It would be a crying shame if I acted like a complete idiot in here and they didn't respond. I shouldn't have to do that."
"Someone is going to believe me when I say we are not a good team. We are a very average WAC team right now. We better get better or else we will finish in the middle of the WAC or lower."

Memphis and Tennessee played in what I believe is one of the best rivalry games in all of college basketball. Despite both teams playing sub-par basketball, there was still alot of hype surrounding this game:

"Everything between us and Memphis is personal. Everything,” said Melvin Goins, a senior point guard. “I know we don’t like them, and our fans don’t like their fans, and they don’t like us too much, either.”

"Everyone who’s played in the game knows what the rivalry entails, but a lot of the new guys on both teams probably don’t understand what kind of fight it’s going to be,” Steven Pearl said. “It’s a heated, in-state deal. A lot of those guys picked to go to Memphis over here, and we took that personally.”

Vols Sr C Brian Williams: "I remember beating Memphis and going to No. 1. I mean, we were No. 1 for like 24 hours, but it was still great."

Speaking of Tennessee, before they faced Memphis, they lost another tough game to an inferior opponent. This time it was College of Charleston that defeated the Volunteers, beating them 91-78. Coach Bruce Pearl was ejected from the contest in the second half, which would leave him with just 40 more minutes (the Memphis game) before his suspension begins. He tried to explain why he got ejected:

"I was just trying to get (assistant coach) Tony Jones some reps."

UConn got a bounce-back win against South Florida this week, but they needed to use extra preventive messures to ensure the victory. Jim Calhoun details the situation:

“I can’t think of the last time that we went 10 straight minutes in a zone. I really can’t. It could be a decade. I can’t even remember, and I don’t forget many basketball games. That saved us.”

During UNC coach Roy William's weekly radio show, he was asked if he had one player on his team who he would consider his go-to-player to take the last shot. Williams has an interesting response. Here's part of it:

“Against Texas, we’re down three and we run a set play for Harrison [Barnes] off the ball and he made it. There was another time against Texas where we tried to go inside to ‘Z’ (Tyler Zeller) as we were going down the stretch. But if you’ve got one guy who is head and shoulders above everyone else, he’s the guy you want to go to."

The L.A. Times had an interesting article on the upcomming NBA draft. In it, two NBA executives explain that they think UCLA's Tyler Honeycutt should go pro. Very interesting stuff:

Honeycutt should declare for what the executive called "probably the worst draft in 10 years" because he envisioned the sophomore as a lottery pick who would be selected between Nos. 10 and 17. The source spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is not allowed to discuss college players publicly. "Should Tyler Honeycutt be mid-to-late lottery?" the executive asked. "In a normal year, absolutely not. But in this draft, it's awful. You start wondering, what wing players go ahead of him?"

In case you missed it yesterday, Washington's Isaiah Thomas threw down his first dunk of the season and raised the roof. Here's an excerpt of what he had to say about the dunk:

"One of these times I was going to have enough guts to do it," Thomas said after the game. "I've been so scared to miss. I was like, 'Man, we got a little margin, and I'm going to try it,' and it happened."

He added that he wasn't done dunking.

"Now I got confidence, so I'm going to try to take off on everybody."