A month ago I don't think we win this game. |
After the meeting, I fell in love with him. Smart, intelligent, asked a lot of questions, asked the right questions. I was very impressed with him as a person. |
At the start of the year, I thought they were the best team in the MAC. They still may be. |
Besides his scoring and everything, he's constantly shifting the praise to others. He was close to breaking the school scoring record and we'd mention it and he's like: 'Yeah, whatever.' He talks about how well everybody else is playing. You put all that together and he's a dream come true. |
Brian really emerged as a point guard and gave us a dimension that was different than Rickey. |
Defensively, we've got a little more depth, ... We lost quite a few good players Š but we're deeper this year. We're still pretty young. The guys who are playing got a lot of playing time last year. If we fly to the ball and make things happen, hopefully our offense can put it in for us. |
He makes great decisions and plays at a fantastic pace. He has the game under control and is a very calming influence on us, which we need because we're a very young team. So it's a very different season for Brian. |
He showed his competitive greatness tonight. At a point when things were getting shaky, Brian was our steadying force. |
He'll get 25, 26 or 27 points and you'd walk out swearing he got 12. He's not flashy, but he gets three or four threes and he gets eight to 10 free throws. |
He's a beast. He's one of the few big guys you're going to see all year long that has more assists than turnovers. |
I don't want to make it sound like coach talk, but we know as quickly as the success comes it can go. It has to be protected. The formula involved is one thing and one thing only -- good players who are good kids. When you combine the two it makes it a lot easier to go into battle. |
I guess you have to die before they name the place after you. |
I thought that was the difference. We couldn't keep them off the offensive boards. They moved us around. They really hurt us on the glass, and it had an accumulative effect. |
I thought we made great progress in Hawaii, but the neutral site games are over and what we didn't respond to tonight was a pretty hostile road atmosphere. We just didn't have good energy tonight. There are going to be better nights for the Broncos. |
I was concerned when I found out his parents had both gone to Central Michigan and his high school coach had graduated from Central. I knew Central was recruiting him and became very concerned. Brian let me know early on that he was very interested in Western, and he was true to his word. That put my mind at ease that he was going to look at things openly. |