Jim Calhoun Hard Quotations

It's a tribute to the hard work the kids put in because they played in the best league in the country. I think our kids should be honored. We have an awful lot of good players in this league. I couldn't be prouder of our kids.

They're faster, quicker. Are they better? It's hard to convince me of that after the way Padgett played against us.

People will fall in love with Jeff Adrien. All he does is come to work, put the hard hat on, just keep getting balls off the glass. Hopefully, as we move up in caliber and size, he's still able to do that.

I don't think we shot well (38.7 percent), but I think we played well and yet it took us 30 minutes to shake them, maybe 35 minutes to shake them. That's just by their tenacity and how hard they played. Providence has a young team. The three guys who I think played really well for us happened to be seniors and that makes a difference in college basketball.

This was an advertisement for how hard the teams in this league play. Increasing our toughness was one thing I thought we had to do. We knew we could score, but we had to show we could come up with that kind of game like we had other times this season.

This was an advertisement for how hard the teams in this league play.

I know what it's like to be A) at another level, and B) overwhelmed with talent. Tonight, it didn't come easy. ... We had to work harder than we have had to work recently. Sometimes scores can be very deceptive.

We just shut the engine off. We just couldn't get it back. It's a hard thing to do in sports and I think all of us have seen it and unfortunately an experienced team like this, it shouldn't happen to.

No matter how his shot looks - funny to all of us - or if someone is right in his face, it doesn't matter. He only sees orange, that little round thing. As long as he's squared up, he'll make shots. He's too good a shooter. And he really works so hard at it. This, by the way, is far and away his best season.

Marcus Johnson, who works very hard in our practice sessions, looks better in games than he does in practice. I like that.

Marcus Johnson continues to make who is going to play at that 'three' or 'two' a little more of a struggle. He plays harder than anybody else on the court just about.

To state the obvious, overall we were pretty good. We're now 5-0 in games decided by 10 and under. There's got to be something to that. That goes back to Maui. It's harder here (in the Big East) because now everybody is settled in.

I'll remember Marcus' smile from the office in the mornings. I'll remember his loyalty; I'll remember how hard he has worked on becoming a terrific basketball player that is, in my opinion capable of stepping into the NBA and starting for someone next year.

He's the best natural scorer of all the big kids. He's not the biggest by any stretch, but at any time he can take up space, he can move people without pushing, just by using his body, and you can't move him. He's a very difficult kid to move, especially with his hard work and passion for the game.

Elvin Hayes was such an incredible scorer that it was hard for me to believe, ... I had seen Bob Pettit do it to some degree, he was 6-foot-9, but Elvin Hayes took it to a different level. He was a scoring machine who went outside at 6-foot-9 and that was so foreign to what we knew. He never really got the credit he deserved for what he accomplished.

I have to give a special star to Denham. With Rudy (Gay) out the last three days (groin), Denham has been our special player. I told him he's put money in the bank - all the work ethic, all the things he's doing, he's got some chits with me now. Just all over the place, running as hard as I've ever seen him, making shots that I didn't see him make before, handling better, passing better - I'm exceptionally happy with him.