FINAL FOUR QUOTEBOOK
UCONN COACH KEVIN OLLIE: I’m not chasing championships. I want championships to chase me.
A few notable comments from Kevin Ollie and the Huskies at Friday’s Final Four press conference:
Kevin Ollie: “Having this ability to coach this program has been great. I don’t look at it like a lot of people look at it, that I’m replacing Coach Calhoun. Coach Calhoun is still beside me. He’s in front of me. He’s behind me. I’ve locked arms with coach because what he’s put inside of me and his belief system in me is something I’m going to always have great gratitude about.
Of course this is my program now, and I have to do certain things that’s according to my core values, of course. But just going forward, just marching and believing in the program. I think that’s what gets us through. But Coach Calhoun has done a great job. My story and filling his shoes, I can never fill Coach Calhoun’s shoes. I can never build a program to a perineal Top-10 program each and every year. This program has already been built. But I want us to sustain it. I want to get it to another level. That another level is not about winning championships, it’s about creating great young men so they can go out there in their community after they leave the Storrs campus and be ambassadors of their family, of their name and also this great university.
So that’s what I believe in. It’s a special feeling being up here and being in the Final Four. But like I said, I’m not chasing championships. I want championships to chase me. I want to do it the right way, and that’s providing my student-athletes with a great platform for them to succeed each and every day.
Q. What did you learn from guys like George Karl, Larry Brown, even Coach Calhoun, about trying to get guys to buy into a certain way of going about their business?
COACH OLLIE: Just every day having the consistency. We look at it as you can be a pro or you can be a professional. A pro just does it in convenient times. A professional does it in inconvenient times and convenient times. You do it over and over again, and it becomes habit.
That’s what I try to put on my team each and every day, to get better at something. If we can do that, we’ll get better and we’ll win games and we’ll win together. I learned that from George Karl. I learned that from Larry Brown, of course Larry Brown, because he’s a perfectionist. He wants you to do certain things the right way, and especially the things you can control, which is your attitude and the way you show up each and every day. I learned that from him because without him I wouldn’t be here.
Q. Transfers have changed college basketball. Billy Donovan has four. I think you have two. Wisconsin has one. They’re more predominant today. How does that affect you guys from a recruiting standpoint? It’s almost like a little bit of a free agency situation.
COACH OLLIE: Yeah, you definitely got to look at the transferring, transfer market, the five-year graduate students also. We have been doing a real good job with that having assigned Lasan Kromah here this year from GW, and last we had R.J. Evans from Holy Cross. They played a great role a leadership role on our team.
We have Rodney Purvis that’s sitting out right now, he’s like a Ferrari sitting in the garage that I can’t drive. But he’s practicing and getting better. He’s just a wonderful person. It’s tough for guys to sit out like that. They think that they can be better changing venues and I want to just make sure they understand that they’re a part of this team, too, while they sit out.
Q. Coach and Ryan, just to follow-up on the question about Ryan and his defense, when a guy comes into the school offering 31 points a game, what’s the process like to get a guy to become a defensive player and a stopper? For Ryan, coach was talking about you having an evolution as a player and becoming more coachable. Just wondering how you develop that, how you have become more coachable and how you have evolved since being at UConn.
COACH OLLIE: I just think when you come from high school, you are All-American, but you’re not always surrounded by All-Americans also in your high school team. So you’re going to have to understand it’s a part of a team and you’re going to have to find your way.
When I came in the school I had Ray Allen and Donyell Marshall and I scored a lot. But I found out that them guys can score more. I had to I understand a way to get in the rotation. For me it was playing defense.
Ryan is an explosive scorer. He does some great things. But I think for him to get to that next level, he has to make his teammates better. That’s what he’s starting to do. That’s what he’s starting to embrace, and it’s great to see.
That’s how he’s going to get to the next level and continue to play, is to embrace his teammates and make everyone better. That might be scoring, some nights that he scores 20 points. Some nights he scores 10. But you can always be a great teammate.
I think all of our student-athletes are understanding that it’s not all about being great players, but every day, every time we step out on the court, every time you put that UConn jersey on, you can be a great teammate. I think that’s what we’re starting to get on a more consistent basis. I think that’s allowing us to get to this venue and play in a Final Four and have 80 minutes from cutting down the nets.
RYAN BOATRIGHT: Like he said, when you in high school and you’re scoring 50, 60 points, averaging 33, you think you know it all. When I got to this level I was coachable, but I always had something to say back. So I learned right away playing for Coach Calhoun that that ain’t a good thing to do. I just started listening more and knowing that I didn’t know it all. I wasn’t as good as I thought I was.
So Coach Ollie said, Open your heart and open your ears so you can get better, and I just started doing that.
Speak Your Mind