Rick Pitino Quotes
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Self-esteem is directly linked to deserving success. You must deserve victory to feel good about yourself.
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Nothing meaningful or lasting comes without working hard at it.
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With seven new players, we're never going to have an experienced lineup. This is who we are. We're a very young and inexperienced basketball team. But they're willing to play hard.
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I deserved a 'T'. I was trying to get our guys (motivated). It was a good call.
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We've never been a Top 20 team, at least not yet. Don't get carried away with beating Louisville. Any win in the Big East is great, but I wouldn't use it as a barometer.
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He's not 100 percent. First it's the ankle, now it's leg cramps. He's been a little unlucky this year.
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It's my wedding night, and we're in a posh New York City hotel ready to ... you know ... when I get a call. It's Jim, and he's down in the lobby and he wants to meet with me. He tells me there's this kid named Louie Orr in Cincinnati that we just have to land, and he says he needs me to get there and seal the deal. I tell him, 'Jim, it's my wedding night.' He was single at the time and totally consumed with basketball, so I guess he didn't understand.
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I've tried to talk to him about it. He's not playing with Francisco, Larry (O'Bannon) and Ellis. And they know every little move that each other makes. He's playing with all new people. They don't know each other. He's got to let the game come to him and trust his teammates. And the more he goes inside to (center) David (Padgett) the more open shots he's going to get.
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I loved going to the Knicks because we won the Atlantic Division championship. We went from winning 21 games or 19 games to winning 52 games in a short period of time. I loved coaching Patrick Ewing and Charles Oakley and all those guys.
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This group is inexperienced, but once they start practicing together more, I think the sky is the limit to how good they can become. We've won all our games not because of who we played but because we've played them all at home. It will be interesting to see how they handle going into this environment.
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He tried to go in the second half but could not go. I don't think it's anything serious. I'm not sure what it is.
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I think they'll come back because they should. One more year and they'll be ready for the next level.
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I've never beaten a team that played that well. This is the gutsiest, most phenomenally tough group that I've ever been around.
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Doubt is one of the main paths on the highway to failure.
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I don't think anyone in Louisville knew how tough the Big East and Villanova was before tonight; now they all know. Villanova was just a better basketball team.
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True motivation is not getting people to play to their potential. It's getting people to play beyond their potential.
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I'm at the stage of my career when it's not only about winning and developing players, it's about having fun. That's a void in your life right now, but it's something you're going to have here.
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The only way to get people to like working hard is to motivate them. Today, people must understand why they're working hard. Every individual in an organization is motivated by something different.
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We've got to stop Gray inside. Padgett really played well against him and Brian and Terrance aren't the offensive threat David is, so we're going to have to get a good game out of Palacios and our two centers just to contain Gray.
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I never thought that shoes would be the reason that you recruit players, but it's a factor. I think we need to get the shoe companies out of the lives of the athletes. I think we need to get it back to where parents and coaches have more of a say than peripheral people, but that's easier said than done.
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What I've found in my life with our children is that often you can give them advice and tell them to eat the right things, stay in shape and wear sunscreen, and they don't really want to listen. But then they hear it from someone else, and they do listen.
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You have to come away with the victory. You can't play this well and come away with a loss.
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Avoid cynical and negative people like the plague. They are killers of potential.
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I care what people think, but it doesn't change my opinion of how to do things.