Arizona Basketball media targeting continues after Book Richardson sentencing

Remorseful former Arizona Basketball assistant coach Emmanuel Book Richardson can finally move forward after his sentencing today. But the media won’t let it go.

Former Arizona Basketball assistant coach Emmanuel Book Richardson can finally move forward in life as U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos sentenced him to three months in prison and two years of probation for pleading guilty to bribery for $20,000.

Neither Book or Sean Miller paid any players in question according to Book.

Former Arizona Basketball players that have wrongly been drug through the mud through this whole ordeal because there has been no proof presented or reported that Sean Miller made any payments or spoke about any payment on any audio or video media. No indictments have been filed against Miller, and any suggestion of wrongdoing by players was cleared by the FBI. Yet Arizona newspapers continue to mention the player’s names. Maybe that is what they think they have to do as “journalists” but we believe they can just say “players” and move on.

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The media has and still is targeting the Arizona Basketball program AD, President, players, and coaches by continuing to report the same things over and over regarding the FBI investigation and court case. They could just link back to a former article and not regurgitate the entire controversy.

Richardson has apologized over and over again and apologized again today on Twitter as well:

"THANK YOU AND ALL WHO HAVE SUPPORTED ME POSITIVELY AND NEGATIVELY! I love you so very much and I apologize for hurting and or embarrassing you and anyone else thru this ordeal. God please know this!"

As well as this quote obtained from ADS:

"“And I think my former players, I think my family will attest to that. And again, any student-athlete that I hurt, any student-athlete I put in a bad way, I apologize sincerely. And I’m always going to be their coach, I’m always going to be their uncle and to some of them I’ll be their dad. And unfortunately this happened and hopefully we can build something positive from it.”"

Can you forgive him as a fan? It’s not easy to do with the media in your face constantly, but he has admitted guilt, apologized, and will now do time. Book has spoken frequently about extreme remorse he has for his actions. But he has been dragged through the mud more than any other coach of the four coaches who were indicted. Do you even hear about the other three? We have heard about USC assistant coach Tony Bland, he got probation for two years from a different judge.

There are many Arizona Basketball mudslingers in the media including Mark Schlabach, Dick Vitale, Gary Parrish, Adam Zagoria, Jay Bilas, Evan Schreiber and more. Vitale is the absolute worst continually begging President Robert Robbins and Arizona Athletic Director Dave Heeke to fire Miller based on Richardson’s actions.  At the same time, he has asked UCLA to hire Rick Pitino and never speaks about Duke, Kansas or Michigan State even though hearsay came out about those coaches and schools as well.

Book is not standing quietly. He was questioned after his sentencing and Gary Parrish (CBS) didn’t accept his answer. CBS Sports reporters Matt Norlander had the chance to talk to Book and to Tony Bland’s attorney who was in court on another matter, “He told me, due to Book getting three months, that Lamont Evans should be nervous, as he’ll likely receive a harsher sentence.”

Why haven’t we heard anything about Lamont Evans until today? One could draw the conclusion that Miller, Richardson and Arizona Basketball has been targeted. The more news, the more the attention, the more pressure to act by anyone involved or covering sports.

Then Parrish read the tweet and quote from Zagoria’s Tweet and asked for clarification without reading the post with the above clarification.

What was astonishing to us was that Parrish pushed the narrative that Book danced around answering the question [paraphrasing], ‘Do you believe Sean Miller knew players were getting paid at Arizona?’ Norlander Tweeted Book’s answer: “You’ll have to ask him that. He wasn’t on trial. I was on trial.” But there was more in Zag’s post that Parrish didn’t read. Book had sent a direct message clarifying his answer and apologizing once again through the Arizona Daily Star correspondent Adam Zagoria and then replied his definitive answer in a Tweet:

"“I have no knowledge of Sean Miller paying players or attempting to pay them … I was on trial no one else. Again I apologize to the University of Arizona, President Robbins and the kind and great people of Tucson for this. Thank you Tucson and all the Wildcats across the world!”"

Parrish said it was a non-answer then later agreed he hadn’t read all Book’s answers.

Mind you Book was asked this right after sentencing so you can imagine what he was feeling and thinking at the time. Parish has not let go, he is now asking a new question, “I guess the obvious question is now this: Why did you reportedly say otherwise on a wiretap?”

Before sentencing, Vitale pushed for punishment, and then again after sentencing, he is now pushing the NCAA and the University of Arizona to do some more punishing.

In related news, Jahvon Quinerly finally feels validated and is looking for the media to apologize:

https://twitter.com/RealJahvonQ/status/1136774855725080576?s=20

There should be a way to get mainstream media to not be extremely biased against one program when plenty others have been reported to have been involved in worse or similar NCAA infractions. What’s the answer here? There seem to be no watchdogs out there except for fans, especially Arizona Wildcats fans. This proves once again that Arizona Wildcats fans are the best fans in the NCAA. Now can we have a way to monitor media and the targeting of certain schools?