Help wanted: Who will be OSU's new go-to talker?
Published: 3/28/2011 2:01 PM
Last Modified: 3/28/2011 2:01 PM
Marshall Moses’ college basketball career ended last week and I miss him already.
Oklahoma State fans will miss Moses because he was a go-to scorer in the post. I miss Moses because he was a go-to player for quotes.
One of my favorite things to do before every season starts is pick out a player who is talkative and then have him talk about every other player on the roster.
Maybe 75 percent of what is said won’t ever make it into a story because it falls under the category of same old stuff.
But the other 25 percent -- the print-worthy 25 percent -- can be strip-mined for story ideas or quotes.
The percentage fluctuates based on how candid the interview subject is. If you archived all feature stories written about OSU players last season, I bet Moses was quoted in almost all of them.
I was reminded how fun it was to talk to Moses when I cleaned out my OSU basketball notebook. Keep in mind that most of his best stuff has already been harvested. But here are a few selected Moses-isms from a preseason interview:
On Matt Pilgrim: “I like Matt because he is the most honest person I have ever met and he is honest with everybody all the time. If you interview Matt, you might be careful what you ask him because he’s going to answer it truthfully, like the most honest way.”
On Nick Sidorakis: “He’s just cool. He’s like a guy in the movies, like John Travolta in “Grease.” He’s just a cool guy. He’s got swag is what they call it now today. Everybody likes Nick and everybody wants to be around him.”
On Jean-Paul Olukemi: “He was my roommate when he first got here. You’ve got to get used to J.P. and he told me that when I first met him. ‘I’m like ‘man this dude is a jerk. I don’t like him.’ I think the first couple of days we almost got into a fight, just me and him there in our room. But he told me (I had to get used to him and his humor).... Once you get to know J.P., he’s cool and he’s a different kind of guy. He’s on his own. He is not going to leave the house.... He is a homebody. I like that about him because I know what he is about. He is all about basketball. He thinks he’s a pro. I think he can be a pro.”
On Fred Gulley: “Mr. Kanye West. Gulley is a class act, man. On the basketball court he is going to work harder than everybody else or just as hard. Off the court, man, he speaks very intelligently and carries himself well.... Me and Fred have debates like every day, whether it is about music or something else. The other day it was about racism. We just find topics to debate and it’s so fun. It’s like listening to two lawyers. A defense lawyer could know he is wrong, but his job is to (plead his case). We keep going and I love it because it shows his intelligence. He is smart. Sometimes he helps me see things in ways I have never looked at it and I feel like I do the same for him.”
On Jarred Shaw’s “Slim” nickname: “We gave it to him, but I don’t think it’s his first time being called Slim. I think it’s a name you give to a guy who is about 7-foot tall and skinny.”
--Jimmie Tramel.
Written by
Jimmie Tramel
Sports Writer
