As long he's square, no matter how the shot looks — funny, to us or if someone's right in his face — it doesn't matter. All he sees is orange. That round thing. |
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. |
Back in 1990, the (league) championship was a mad, mad celebration. It never affected that team because it was a magical year. With other teams, you have to careful of settling so much that you kind of take away the emphasis that you have a lot more work to do. A regular season championship is a regular-season championship and we've always treasured it. It's important to us. Is it the most important thing? No. |
Because of all their traps and because they were allowed to be aggressive, they kept us on the outside with a lot of double-teams, stripping the ball. The way this game was called and played, they kept the ball from getting into the paint. |
Being No. 1 isn't a goal of ours like the Big East championship or the national championship, but we feel we're one of the better programs in the country for the last 15 years and being No. 1 is another notch for us as a total program. |
Between Hubie (Brown) and Jim (Boeheim), they told me I had 12 seconds, |
Big East basketball. A rock fight. |
Bobby Jones looks to me like a guy who can make a living in the NBA just playing defense. He's an absolutely magical player defensively. |
Both against Albany and tonight, although in different ways, these teams forced Marcus Williams to make plays to beat them. And Marcus took advantage of the opportunity both times. He was magnificent. |
Both of our NCAA Championships (1999, 2004) came in years where we won the Big East Tournament. Time will tell if that's an automatic correlation. There are no good losses. No moral victories. But I do know this team is one to be reckoned with at the NCAA tourney. |
Both offensively and defensively, Craig is a big reason we're 11-0. So Craig will start Tuesday (in the Big East opener) at Marquette. He deserves that right. His defense up top on the ball sets up the rest of our defense. He's been a godsend. |
Brandon Roy, in my opinion, is one of the top two or three players in the country. |
But he was very forthright. He knew he had made a dumb, stupid mistake. |
But I think Gerry, who has struggled to score against us, has increased his game. He?s a much better ball handler and a much better point guard. He seems to be very comfortable. |
Certainly Hilton will come in with a lot more attention than he had before. A full 40 minutes of focus is what we?re going to need. |