Pat Summitt Game Quotations

We have a mutual respect for this game and working with young people, not just on the basketball court but to see these young women become confident and successful in career opportunities beyond basketball.

We have to win that basketball game to have a chance to win the league, and that's still our goal.

Obviously, this was a tough battle for both teams. A great basketball game I'm sure to watch, a challenging one to play in and coach.

This team should not have lost back-to-back games. Kentucky was better tonight. This team has to understand that they just can't go out there and play. They have to execute a game plan and be mindful of one possession at a time on offense and defense.

I thought we played very well together and got the ball inside. We played an efficient game overall, if you just look statistically.

They know as a team they have to get better. We've been talking about this now for four games going into the Duke game as a staff and just basically trying to send out a warning signal to this team.

We lost the ball game in the first half. I don't have any excuses for this team. I don't know when they're going to show up and play.

We weren't good in any aspect of our game tonight.

She made playing basketball fun due to her ability to connect with her players. Personally, I am going to miss her tremendously and I know the game is going to miss her.

You can't win games in the first half but you certainly can lose them. We just dug ourselves too deep a hole in that first half. In the second half we played them even but in that first half we were not comfortable.

You can't win a basketball game in the first half, but you can lose one. We just dug ourselves too big a hole.

You don't win a basketball game in the first half, but you certainly can lose one.

They are very familiar with our program and our philosophy, ... but when you have been in the game as long as I have and been on television as much as we have, I think everyone knows pretty much every move we make.

What she did is unacceptable in our program. I've never approved of players talking smack or taunting. You let your game do the talking. If you want to get excited, you get excited for the team.

We were more committed and more aggressive defensively. We opened the game running a switching man, and that allowed us to keep constant pressure on the basketball. We just kept pressure on them.

I just want her to play the game under control. And for her, it's much different from any player I've ever coached in that she can be flat-footed and go up and dunk. So it's not like things have to be perfect in her basketball world for her to dunk. If she goes up inside and dunks it, more power to her.

I learned so much from Sue about the Xs and Os of the game of basketball.

You spend more of the game preparing to win in the final seconds. And that is what separates winners from losers.

If you want to be in the game you better shoot 75% from the line.

Most people get excited about games, but I've got to be excited about practice, because that's my classroom.

Class is more important than a game.

Offense sells tickets, defense wins games, rebounding wins championships.

I won 1,098 games, and eight national championships, and coached in four different decades. But what I see are not the numbers. I see their faces.

Our philosophy has always been you better pack your defense and your board work on the road. Because those ugly nights and those poor shooting nights you just have to grind games out. Today, we just had to grind it out.

Our team responded coming out of halftime. I never even imagined coaching 900 games and it is just wonderful.

It was very apparent that Duke wanted this game and they went after it in a much more aggressive, determined way than we did. Quite a difference in how their defense affected what we did offensively and what we did to them. They pretty much ran what they wanted to run. They handled traps. Defensively, they disrupted us and we did not disrupt them.

It was very apparent Duke wanted this game and they went after it in a much more aggressive way.

I thought it was a game where we developed a lot of character from beginning to end. We were very nervous offensively, but it didn't affect how we played on the defensive end, fortunately.