Kansas State Coach Quotes
Feb 08, 2006 | General
On being prepared to step in as head coach...
“The way Coach Wooldridge lets us coach and lets us work if you have been to our practices or you’ve been to our shoot arounds or our film sessions he really lets us assistant coach. During the game, strategy and substitutions, all those kinds of things, we are right there in the middle with him. He has the final say; I suggest a lot of things that get shot down. Tonight Ben (Kelso), Charles (Baker) and Dennis (Cutts) were right there with me. They were unbelievable, just helping each other down the stretch. It is a little different because the buck stops with me making decisions. The way Coach prepares us, the way that he allows us to coach, really helps us get through those games. It helped me tonight.”
On the hardest part of adjusting...
“I wish I was not the head man. We are all together in this thing. Coach Baker is as important as Coach Kelso. I just had a little tag on me that allowed me to call timeout. The hardest thing was probably getting those guys’ energy up from the first half to the second half. We could really see what we needed to do offensively to hurt these guys. If we played harder, or cut with more energy, we had some things that we thought we could take advantage of offensively. The hardest thing for me was getting these guys to understand we had a whole second half and we needed to play with more energy. That was the hardest thing that halftime adjustment of getting our kids to play harder. They did a great job of doing that. We had easier baskets in the second half, especially to start the second half. Just their effort, their energy, carried us through.”
On his coaching style...
“What I’m trying to do is just not mess this up when Coach comes back. The way that Coach handles these guys is the right way. The way he coaches them through games and practices and the hardness that he demands and toughness that he coaches with makes our team tougher over the course of the season. I know we had some heartbreakers the last week. The toughness that we showed was because of Coach. What my style is is being myself out there. I am just trying to carry the ball and keep the things going that Coach instilled in us. It is these kids carrying the habits that Coach has instilled in them, and it showed up when we made some plays down the stretch to pull out a win.”
