Kelvin Sampson Quotes (71 Quotes)

There's a reason why we won the league last year - these two guys here and the way they played. This is the first time all year that these guys played the same way.

The strength of the team is up front now. But we don't have a guy who you know can give you points when the going gets tough.

I really didn't know Jimmy when he applied for the job. I knew he was a worker, a good recruiter and a good people person just from watching him recruit over the summer. The head coaches know who all the workers are.

There was no way we were leaving the country without P.J. Tucker.

Give that kid credit for making tough shots. He kept MSU in the game.

I just believe in our program. I told our guys today that these are the games we've always won.

I thought he played like a veteran. His play is so important for us. He makes all these guys better.

I hope he's back next year. I mean this sincerely. I've never coached against a better coach than Eddie Sutton.

I am really thrilled to have Rob, Jerry and Jeff as part of our staff. When you combine them with Coach McCallum and Coach Meyer, our staff is as good as any team in the country.

If you told me before the game we would have a 29-20 rebound advantage and shoot 54 percent (28-for-52), I thought we would have won. It felt like they shot 105 percent.

That was an important game for a lot of reasons. I kept telling (Everett) that he was one good game away from breaking out.

I want a staff that could relate to young people, understand our values that our program will have and that will not only serve as a source of motivation but also guide young men to become better players, better students and better people. These two guys will be tremendous representatives of our program and our university.

I just think he's a good player that fills a need for us. Every time he and I have talked, I left with a good feeling.

Oklahoma was the difference today from the first game. We just didn't have it today. I thought Texas played good against us the first time. But we didn't show up today. It was simple as that.

It is a little bit embarrassing to stand up here and be asked about NCAA violations, but you also have to realize we're human and we make mistakes. I made a mistake but we've corrected it and moved forward.

You've got to give Mike credit. Just because they called the foul doesn't mean he's going to hit all three free throws. He was tough enough to make those.

It takes time. It's like stock. You go up and down with it, but if it's solid and it's a good stock, it will pay off. This is a good investment. For this community and this county, I think it is absolutely the right thing to do.

I have no desire to go anywhere. I have a desire to make my team better. . . . It ain't time for me to go yet.

I don't know if it could work out any better, but we had 17 offensive rebounds tonight. We're the No. 1 rebounding team in the nation and tonight it helped us.

UNCP is a very special place to me, and I'm honored to be involved in a campaign that is as important to Pembroke's future as this is. Athletics is a huge part of the total college experience ... it plays a huge role in molding character and creating tradition.

It was a crazy game, that's why they call it Bedlam. We missed a lot of free throws and had opportunities. Both teams deserved to win this game. We had adversity at every turn and played to win.

Guys like me don't get jobs like this. I was a guy that coached NAIA basketball and was a grad assistant at Michigan State under Jud Heathcote and then coached at Washington State before Oklahoma and now Indiana. I've had kind of a nondescript college career.

In order to say you got lucky, well you've got to be good enough to get lucky first of all. We won the game, so give Oklahoma some credit. They could have won it, but we won it. That's why you give our kids a lot of credit.

You would think we'd never, ever, ever scouted an opponent or worked on defense or any of those things. We tried to man them. We tried to zone them. We couldn't get them to miss.

The first thing I want to do is congratulate Jim Wooldridge and his players. They won at Kansas, they were good enough to beat Texas and they were good enough to beat Oklahoma.

Indiana is one of those special places where you say 'basketball', and Indiana is an automatic word association. Every coach sees it as a great basketball state with tremendous high school coaches and players, and we will do our best to keep those players in the state.

I think Texas is good, but I don't think there's a lot of difference between the two teams. I thought Gibson was a lot more active today. Texas was good today, but I was more disappointed in our team than I was impressed with Texas.

You look up and we're up 10, we miss a 1-and-1, we miss three free throws and it's like 'How do you lose a lead

He was in a group that could have made it or not made it. But I said there's no way we're going out of this country playing on a team without P.J. Tucker. That's one of the things the USA teams have missed in the past. We've taken cookie-cutter kids instead of kids with big hearts who know how to win.

Duke is the premier basketball program in the nation. For us, this is a great opportunity, and to me, it is an honor to go to Duke and play. Playing Duke will be a great experience for our kids and will certainly prepare us for the wars we are going to have to play in the Big Ten.

Sometimes recruiting is either through convenience or necessity. We can't go into next season with the team we have right now up front. We have to have some help. And if you need immediate help, the best source for that is junior college right now and that's where we'll go. We need some size.

This has been a frustrating season in a lot of ways. This is the first of my 12 teams that practiced harder than they played. Come game time, we didn't always play as hard as we should have.

He's learned how to play under control. Early in the year, I didn't know what he was going to do. But now he's just playing at a nice pace. He doesn't get too ahead of himself.

Every workout we've had D. J. has been there. He hasn't missed one thing. And he's been great. I love his attitude and his work ethic. He's working hard in the weight room, and he's working hard on the court.

I don't want to make excuses, but he just couldn't move.

It seems this topic comes up every year on the conference call since Syracuse won the national championship. We see a lot of zone for obvious reasons -- because we have a hard time making 3s.

It makes everyone better. It's like in football -- if all you can do is run, they just stick nine guys in the box. This year we have a perimeter and a post attack. It's a lot easier to watch.

We felt like if there was an area we could dominate, it would be the boards. It's comforting to know we don't have to shoot well and we have a chance to make second and third shots.

From a common-sense standpoint, you're probably on the right road. The problem is, you're opening a can of worms you might not be able to shut. That might cause more problems than it solves.

That was a mistake that we made. There really is no excuse. . . . I don't know that as a staff we took that rule seriously enough. I think if you look back at the compliance of our programs over the last 19 years as a major college head coach, we've never had an issue with NCAA rules, nor will we again.

They were auditing us, and if something was wrong I figured somebody would say something to me.

I'm going to be really patient, and I want to help them. But I want them to make a decision that is best for them. And I just want to facilitate it. It's not a hard sell. It's these kids' lives. And that's more important than anything else we're dealing with. The most important entity here is these kids and their decision, and I'm dealing with it on both sides.

I truly love Oklahoma, but Indiana is a program that all coaches hope to coach at one day. Once they offered, it was just one of those programs that I couldn't turn down.

I came to Indiana for one reason, I think you can win championships at Indiana. You think of Indiana basketball and you not only think of tradition but championship tradition.

We played tough, we played with great determination. This was a very important game for us. Not just because we avoided going 0-3 (in the Big 12), but it is good to win and then have a week off to practice.

I would like to have seen Colorado get in because of their body of work, 9-7 in the league. But I'm a Big 12 guy. There are so many deserving teams you can make a case for. I'd hate to have the committee's job. It's tough.

We couldn't have played any better for 34 minutes. We had the crowd out of the game. It's disappointing. This one is hard to handle because I thought we outplayed them for a long time and they outplayed us the last 6 minutes.

This team desperately needs leadership. Coaches can fuel practice, but come game time, you've got to have kids that are more vocal, with more fire.

I'm a huge proponent of weight training. We lift at 6 because of the work ethic required, the discipline and doing the right thing. It makes them accountable. It makes them be on time.

A kid that you don't hear a lot about, he gets it done on the court. He's a tough kid, understands how to play. When he goes for a rebound, he's a man.