Rick Pitino
Rick Pitino
Richard Andrew "Rick" Pitino is an American basketball coach. Since 2001, he has been the head coach at the University of Louisville, and coached the Cardinals to the 2013 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship. As a college head coach, Pitino has also served at Boston University, Providence College and the University of Kentucky, leading that program to the NCAA championship in 1996. In addition to his college coaching career, Pitino also served two stints in the NBA, coaching the...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionCoach
Date of Birth18 September 1952
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
With seven new players, you're never going to have an experienced lineup. This is who we are. ... Our guys did a good job. The key is six weeks from now, how good can we become?
The key to coaching is not what you do, but the way you do it. The intangibles, the motivational parts of the game are the most important facets of it.
Why don't we just go to New York and we'll see you there?
You have to come away with the victory. You can't play this well and come away with a loss.
What I wanted to see was, were we proud of being in the NIT? We worked our tails off.
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.
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.
I think I do regret leaving Kentucky because I took over a team with 15 wins banking everything on the Tim Duncan lottery, and once we didn't get Tim Duncan, I realized that leaving Kentucky was not a good move.
I'd tell any coach not to move for money... Stay at your job if you're really happy.
The other guys just caught lightning in a bottle with a great game.
One thing I've learned to do with my age, I really don't look ahead. For years, I've been preaching the precious present and having to always subscribe to it.
I plan to coach at University of Louisville for as long as I can maintain the passion I have for the game of basketball. I don't want to coach anywhere else. I don't believe in anything else as much as I believe in this university and this state. I want to coach as long as they will have me.
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.
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.