Billy Tubbs Quotations

This year we plan to run and shoot. Next season we hope to run and score.

One big factor was that Williams had a miraculous game. He hit some open shots, but he also hit some other shots when we were right on him. He probably got confidence from making the open ones, then that enabled him to make the difficult ones.

Ricky Woods is an exceptional player. He's certainly one of the best in our league. We would certainly like to find a way to stop Ricky, but we can't spend so much energy and effort on trying to stop him that we let other players get loose.

If we ever decided to make free throws, it would've been a different game. When we had chances to either tie or go ahead, we would go 1-for-2 at the line at best. Seventeen-for-30 isn't going to win any games for you.

I got the call at about 1 a.m. that night, and I went out to the municipal airport. In those days, we were all so close within the athletic department, so we were all losing close friends. There were a lot of funerals to go to in addition to the memorial service we had in McDonald Gym.

Ideally, everyone would like to have the same starting lineup for every game and be able to go with the same game plan for every game. Everyone would know their roles, and everyone would know the rotation.

I enjoyed coaching at Lamar the past three years and appreciate the hard work the players put in to making the program better. This will allow me to get back to doing the job I came back to Lamar to do in the first place.

Having five guys in double figures is the kind of balance I like to see. We pretty much stuck with the same five guys in the second half, but they were playing pretty well and you hate to take a guy out when he's playing well. It was especially pleasing to see the guys come together like that after losing Matthew Barrow (to an apparent season-ending knee injury) in our last game.

There are several teams that could step up and win it all. Northwestern was picked to win it, and they (the Demons) have been pretty impressive, but some other teams have been impressive, too.

Jordan had a great game. He had 15 points at halftime, and he got 15 more in the second half. He was a big key to the game.

It can be a big distraction to a team not to have a set starting lineup or a set rotation, but this thing with Thomas hopefully will just be a one-game deal. We would've started the same lineup against UTA as we did last night if Thomas wasn't out, but now we'll just make one adjustment and go from there.

Steve knows the tradition and has a genuine passion for Lamar basketball because he grew up with it. I believe he has a great future and will continue to take Lamar basketball to our expectation level of where the program should be on a yearly basis.

Texas-Arlington is a veteran team. All of their main players got in a lot of minutes last year.

The tragedy that happened at Lamar had a tremendous impact on us within the athletic department and at the university, as a whole. Like everything else, though, life must go on. I remember us coming together more at Lamar back then, and I'm sure it'll be the same at West Brook.

I don't like to compare players. But, without putting anybody down, I can honestly say Mike had the greatest range of any player I've ever coached. There were no bad shots for Mike.