Belated but high-octane congratulations to Bobby Gonzalez, the high-energy basketball coach from Binghamton  who recently took the reins at Seton Hall after a successful seven-season stay at Manhattan College, where he took over a program coming off a five-victory season and produced a program that won 20 games four times and competed in postseason tournaments four times in the last five years and twice earned him Metro Atlantic Conference Coach of the Year ...

Whew! That's a long sentence, but if you read it aloud fast enough you'll get a sense of "Gonzo's" up-tempo presence. He was a perpetual-motion athlete at Binghamton North and still fairly vibrates even when sitting still. He radiates energy and enthusiasm for the game and its challenges.

Now he's moving up to the storied Big East, where coaching giants have roamed and where the spotlight is more intense -- and we have no doubt that Gonzalez will thrive in that environment. It may take him a while to assemble the right players, but he'll make the most of whatever he's got. As Joe Quinlan, Seton Hall's athletic director, noted: "His excitement is quite contagious."

Indeed. But all the enthusiasm in the world wouldn't help if he wasn't also an outstanding coach. We wish him a long and successful run on the Big East stage.