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Louisville vs. TCU - Freedom Hall - Post-Game Quotes
January 08, 2005 | Men's Basketball
Jan. 8, 2005
Recap | Box Score | Notes
Louisville Head Coach Rick Pitino:
"That gentleman over there is Wayne Cook. He works at Outback Steakhouse as a motivational speaker. He really helped our guys when he came in and spoke to our team. We really needed it because after one loss, we were really hanging our heads. What he spoke to them about really got our guys to emotionally understand the game of life. Cookie was born with a handicap. When I ask him what his handicap in golf is, he says Cerebral Palsy. The great thing about his speech was that he takes out his props, the shoes he wore, the cast he wore when he was a child. For the first five years of his life he couldn't even turn on a TV set. I'm thinking about the guys and how they're all upset about Houston. As I'm sitting down, sitting next to me, Brian [Johnson] has his crutches, Taquan [Dean] has got an ice pack, Ellis [Myles] has had a serious injury, Otis [George] is right next to my left with a stress fracture,Tello [Palacios] had a really serious eye injury. By the time we were done, all of those guys wished Cookie had had their injury."
"I really want to thank him. It was really a great lesson for our guys from a fundamental basketball standpoint because we'd been feeling sorry for ourselves. They go home and they see a guy on the film traveling at the end of the game that should have been called, either a flop or a charge that should have been called. The excuses were everywhere and everyone was down about their injuries."
"This was a tremendous lesson for our players and I thank Cookie for coming in to help all of us understand the game of life."
"We played great defense tonight. We lost our momentum a little bit when we had to substitute four guards into the game because we were in a little foul trouble and we probably will be most of the season. We were able to stay with it defensively and do some good things on offense. It was a good win for us."
"Today I told Brandon Jenkins in the locker room, `You were the key to the game. You're pressure on the ball made our defense go." He's had two great games back to back. His pressure was relentless; Corey Santee is a heck of a basketball player. Brandon rebounded the basketball when it was long. He did a great job for us tonight. He was the MVP without question."
TCU Head Coach Neil Dougherty:
"Louisville was just a lot better than we were today, it's the only way you can look at it."
"I liked our kids' effort defensively. I felt that we did what we needed to do, it's just that sometimes, even when we did what we wanted to do, they still made a shot. But you can't get frustrated over that, because you have to give the other team credit."
"Where we had our problem was that they were way better defensively than we were offensively. They just took us out of a lot of things."
"It didn't help that at times during the game, especially in the first half, we just lost our focus."
