Have character, don't be one.
When I go in for heart surgery, I want a full-time surgeon. I don't want some guy who just does it part-time between rounds of golf. You want a guy who is doing it all the time and is always reading and learning about the most recent techniques.
To those who much has been given, much is expected.
Our goal as a team is to keep playing as a group for as long as we can because you will never have that team again. It is like a dying limb, you have to prune it off and let another one grow in its place. That is the way you have to do it, but it still hurts losing these guys and that team because they and you have put so much effort into building a team. Even if you win that last game (and a national championship), it hurts badly because the players know they will never have that same special group of guys together on the same team again. Somebody always goes and somebody new always comes in.
If a farmer and his family can get up at 5:30 every morning to milk cows, surly we can get up at that time to practice basketball.
In practice, don't just run basketball drills, teach the players how to play basketball.
Every day you teach attitude.
In the end, what your own troops do is more important than who they are marching against.
The worst day coaching is better than the best day doing anything else
What you accept in victory, you must accept in defeat.
Shared suffering: one guy messes up and everyone runs. One guy does well and everyone benefits.
When the legs go, the heart and the head follow quickly behind.
Sometimes the best recruits are the ones you don't get.
Good shooters take the shots; best shooters take most of the shots.
Discipline and demand without being demeaning.
If you want to thank me, go do something for somebody else
Winning a postseason game is like winning five regular season games. There is just no feeling like it. Everything is magnified. Every free throw, turnover, shot and play.
Players must do what you want them to do in pressure situations.
The team is an extension of the coach.
When you get to be my age, you don't buy green bananas because you may not be around to eat them.
Only run special plays for special players; find plays that fit your players.
Anytime you get an award as a coach, you've got to be the ultimate fool to think it wasn't your assistant coaches and all the players responsible for the award.
We always need to be prepared and work hard in practice so we can be just like the farmer who has put that fourth cutting of hay in the barn. After he does that, he can feel good about what is going to happen the rest of the winter.
You have to clean out the pig barn every week because you know your pigs are in there doing their jobs every day.
We had 10 turnovers tonight. Each one gets worse as you go. It is like prior arrests: the 10th one may not have been that bad, but when you have had nine prior ones, it looks pretty bad.
