Steve Alford's Pierre Pierce Statement: The Ultimate Spin Move

New UCLA coach Steve Alford and his athletic director, Dan Guerrero, released a statement today designed to finally stop people nagging him about former Iowa star Pierre Pierce, whose repeated legal issues and multiple cases of sexual assault were a major black eye to the Hawkeye program during his abbreviated career.

Unfortunately for Alford, all the statement has done is fan the flames higher, serving as a spin move more flamboyant than anything the former Indiana Hoosier legend ever uncorked on the court.

UCLA's Tyler Lamb to Transfer: Thanks, Shabazz

Baxter Holmes of the Los Angeles Times reported earlier today that UCLA junior guard Tyler Lamb will transfer to parts unknown.

Lamb's exit statement said all the right things, thanking his teammates and coaches for what he called an "unparalleled" opportunity. In the next sentence, though, Lamb sounds the alarm that should clearly explain his true motivation.

More parsing after the jump.

TBI vs. AP vs. ESPN: Poll Dancing Week 2

We all have our various perspectives on how useful the polls are in college basketball since, unlike the sport that decides how everything in college athletics plays out, hoop actually makes teams play for a championship instead of awarding it to whichever SEC team is most popular that year.

Those who take some interest in the polls may also take some delight in savaging others for their opinions. Gary Parrish at CBS loves to take aim at people with his Poll Attacks, which is a not-even-thinly-veiled game of "I'm A Million Times Smarter Than You And I Can Prove It." (Usually, he can't.)

Poll Dancing is so much less violent than Poll Attacks, and it's merely an assessment of TBI's Top 25 side-by-side with the AP and ESPN, examining the three for differences.

There may be some pointing at outliers, thanks to the good folks at Pollspeak.com, but I don't really need the ego stroke that Parrish appears to.

We'll dig into the ballots post-jump.