Nolan Richardson
Nolan Richardson
Nolan Richardson, Jr.is an American basketball head coach best known for his tenure at the University of Arkansas, where he won the 1994 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament. Elected to the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame in 2008 and the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2014, Richardson coached teams to winning a Division I Basketball National Championship, an NIT championship, and a Junior College National Championship, making him the only coach to win all three championships...
ProfessionCoach
Date of Birth27 December 1941
CityEl Paso, TX
Basketball is all about decisions and we took the best ones, especially from the third quarter on.
I believe very much in winning with defence and I try to get my players to compete hard on defence to win the games.
We didn't go there to go out. We didn't go there to go eat. We didn't go to Dallas to do those kinds of things. We went to Dallas to play basketball, and that's what we emphasized.
It's a plus. Anytime you've been somewhere and supposedly some of the other teams probably have never played in (that arena), it makes a big difference.
The U.S. beat us pretty good the first game, but that's partly because we flew in at 3 a.m. the night before we played,
We used to couldn't play quarterback. The coaches were calling the plays, but we weren't even smart enough to go out there and hand the ball off.
Panama played with their heart. That's why we won, ... Today, my players understood the system I've been trying to teach them.
They've already asked me to come back to Panama, ... I had an old fan from Arkansas call me this weekend and ask me if my appetite (to coach) was wet again after this. I told him that my appetite for that was always wet ... it's just ya'll (in Arkansas) put a stop to it for a while.
They programmed him so hard. God, they wanted him to get to that NBA.
Arkansas, as a state, is not that far away. So you can get more fans in there and get you the same atmosphere that say Kentucky has when they play in Atlanta.
I hope I never have to watch that Pop Wright shoot like that again.
I'm very happy, because we played very well and we qualified (for FIBA World Championship 2006),
I'm a Tiger now. Black and gold are my new favorite colors.
I can't believe it, ... The president of Panama told me, 'You have no idea what you've done for our country.' He said people were jumping in the streets.