Quotations

«It's going to get tougher by the moment, ... I hate to see Bob Huggins go, but having Rick [Pitino] come in, and Freedom Hall, I see the future of the Big East being great.»

«As we start our season this year, ... there is no better basketball league in the country, top to bottom. I can make that statement pretty definitively, and the fact that we have a couple of Hall of Fame coaches, and I don't think anyone's going to argue that Rick's going in, and at Marquette, Tom Crean's a terrific young coach, and you go right through the league, Jay Wright's got it going at Villanova now, John Thompson [III] is very good. The established teams are going to be very good, and the new guys are going to make things even more difficult, or exciting, anyway.»

«This is making me, for once in my life, sit down and look at the past,»

«If you ask me how I got here and why I coach, ... there's your answer.»

«The national championship in 1999 took me back to my career at UConn. This has taken me back to my life, to where it began, my brother and four sisters and how meaningful they have been, to my family, my parents, my friends, my players, my assistant coaches. It's pretty deep.»

«The problem is trying to encapsulate 38 years of your life, of everything that has happened, the ups, the downs, the people involved,»

«When you look out there and see Ray (Allen), Mec (Emeka Okafor), Johnny Gwynn ... any of those people. You don?t win the number of games we?ve been able to win or the championships we?ve won without those players,»

«If I haven?t changed, then I know I wouldn?t be sitting here today, ... You don?t coach college basketball in the 70s, 80s, 90s, and now the 2000s, unless you make changes. The outside wrapper is probably a little different, but the values are the same.»

«My dad never coached me, but he was always there, ... He liked to sit out behind the center field fence.»

«Every Saturday, my dad took me to a football game,»