Sylvia Hatchell Quotations

(Monday) Roy Williams called, and we talked for 35-40 minutes, maybe longer. He told me, 'I lost the Final Four five times before winning it.' He helped.

None of us get the attendance that we deserve. None of us do.

I don't deserve this award. I learned a long time ago to surround yourself with great people and they make you look good. That's what I've done.

I don't feel that old. You think about winning 700 games, but with the losses it's probably close to 1,000 games. That's a lot. But you know what? I love it as much now as I ever loved it, and especially it's because of this team.

We're glad to get this one behind us. We're looking forward to playing on Monday night.

She's a great player. We may put two or three players on her, it depends on whether we have to. Candace Parker is a great player, but she's not the entire Tennessee team.

She had one turnover. I mean, I think that's why she's the best point guard in America.

She loves to pick on me. When it gets time to get the job done now, she'll get on 'em, too. If they mess up or make a mistake, she'll let 'em know in a heartbeat, too.

She is a force to be reckoned with out there. She's stronger, more aggressive and knows our system better.

She just makes people smile. She makes people feel good. She brings a freshness to the game, and her enthusiasm can't help but spread.

She does a lot of things that make a big difference for us - her defense, her rebounding, her scoring and her leadership, yet she really stays under the radar. She doesn't want any credit, but she definitely deserves it.

She has a passion for it, there's no doubt about that. And it's contagious. ... She makes people happy.

She was tired. And we were trying to get some more rebounds.

She's taken on the responsibility of defending some of the best players in the country this season and she has done an excellent job. She's an intelligent defensive player and a really good one-on-one defender.

She's the engine that makes our offense go.

She's our heart and soul. Her spirit and enthusiasm are what drives us.

She's our point guard, our leader and a winner. She's tough and I knew she would make a good decision and score or get to the foul line.

She's a winner. She's just a tough little kid and she finds a way to win.

She's a winner. She took that shot mainly because she's a winner.

She shoots like that all the time. She made good decisions and got good looks. It's not that unusual to tell you the truth.

She's in great hands with Dr. Taft and our sports medicine staff, so I wasn't surprised to hear that everything went well with the surgery this morning. Now she can get on the road to recovery. We look forward to having her back at 100 percent in the fall.

I am very confident with Alex and the rest of them out there. Alex has played a lot this year. She plays with Ivory, and I know when Ivory picked up her second foul and I took her out, we were behind at that time. Alex did a nice job running the team, and we got the lead back.

I feel like the way we play, and having a player like Ivory, sells the game of basketball. Because I want people to fall in love with women's basketball.

I felt it in my heart. She came to my camps, and she made me feel good. She made everybody else on the court better.

I don't know of any other league in the country that has that kind of parity.

I felt like somewhere down the road we would play Tennessee. I expected it to be in the Final Four. It's a shame that we have to play so early in the bracket.

Her excitement and enthusiasm and passion for the game, it makes people smile. I can't tell you the number of letters and e-mails and phone calls we have gotten from people that have just said how she brightens their day. ... I feel like the way we play and having a player like Ivory sells the game of basketball.

Her leadership has also improved. For a sophomore, she has shown a lot of maturity.

I about fainted .... When I saw that pass, I was like, 'Ah man,' because I thought she was throwing it out of the court because she threw it so far.

My relationship with my players is the best it's ever been -- I'm loving it and having a blast. And it's not just everything that's happened this year, but last year, too.

That balance is the strength of our team.

I think the biggest thing was the rebounding. I can live with everything else out there. We'll straighten that out.

Our players are just like, 'Tell us who we'll play and we'll go play. That's our attitude and that's the way we'll approach it.

Our backs were against the wall, we had to produce. We had not played on the level we normally play on. I think we shifted gears and moved to a higher level. I don't know if they were holding out or what.

Our game plan was to push the tempo as much as we could. I think playing three days in a row is really tough, but they came out with a lot of gas.

I think right now that's probably the downfall of the NCAA tournament.

I think this will definitely help us. When you go through a tough environment like this, it makes you tough.

We don't have the commitment to rebounding we need to have. We need to get better in that area.

We didn't rebound again like I wanted us to and that's the only area of our game that I feel like we've really got to step up there. If we want to be a championship team, we've got to make a commitment to rebounding.

We didn't run and a lot of that had to do with Ivory. We didn't push the ball like we normally do, get it out and go. Some of that was not getting the rebounds.

I would hope that (the NCAA selection committee) wouldn't hold one team in our conference back because of one or two others that got No. 1 seeds.

We have watched Riverside, and they are a very good motion offensive team. It's a young team that has a lot of eager players, so we know we have to be ready.

We know that we can't let down in any way, shape or form. You've got that big zero on you.

That's what I meant with everything. Her personality -- she's the whole package. She's a great role model for young kids.

We need to push the ball down the floor and run the floor. The tempo of running the floor has a lot to do with it. We need to try to create some offense off of our defense.

My biggest challenge is to keep this team level, to keep them down, to keep them from exploding. This is a high energy group. They're fun. They can't wait for tournament time.

We were mixing things up and they weren't able to feed it into the post. And we were putting great pressure on the ball, and that helps our post players, too.

When teams get physical with her, that makes her play even better. We've had lots of people try to take her down. The more physical it is, the harder and better she plays.

We have a lot of respect for each other, and I think we make each other better. I really think that's one of the reasons why we're both here. We do so much to push each other and make each other better.

There are differences between being quick and fast. I think there's no doubt Marion was faster, but as far as being quick, I don't know. It's a good comparison. Ivory is quick and she's fast, too. I'd say Marion is faster, but quick? I don't know which one.

Yes, I think Maryland is worthy of that. You look at their losses, one to us, and two to Duke and early, early they lost to Tennessee. They're a great team.

Yes, Maryland is worthy of that. They are a great team. And they are young, so they are going to be tough for a long time.

We did key a little on her. We were trying to keep her from getting hot.

We're happy with the win against a very good Boston College team.

When Ivory first came in, I would have Ivory go and sit with Phil and watch our men practice and Phil Ford would talk to her about being a point guard. In my book, he's the best point guard there's ever been.

You look at the whole picture and there are just a lot of question marks that I think a lot of people have.

We had no idea she'd really be on there years later.

When I was younger, I wanted to prove myself as a coach. But with the different things we have accomplished, now I don't have to prove myself as a coach. The main thing now is I just want my players to experience success and I want to see the smiles on their faces. I want them to have fun.

You have to deal with what's dealt to you. If we had made some foul shots, we wouldn't even be talking about (a loss).

We both have our scouting reports already done.

We go up and down the court and try to make things exciting. We play the same no matter what team we are playing. It takes people out of their rhythm and flow of their offense.

To play slow would not be the thing to do with her.

We knew they were going to give us a tough game, and they did.

We knew they would give us a good game. We just wanted to keep the tempo up. They had a lot of gas left.

At Old Dominion, we didn't start with any intensity, while they were fired up and played really well. Tonight, we went after them early.

I've been doing it 31 years, this is nice. I'd like to have it the last game of the season. It happened to me one time before, and there's nothing sweeter than that.

I've been doing this a long time, and I've had a lot of great teams. Trust me, I know, any coach is only as good as their players. I've got great players, and I've got a great staff. They make me look good.

I've been in this league 20 years and every year we say it can't get any better, but this year we're just heads above all the other conferences.

I've watched some (television) games this season at my house. Some of these games, it's like watching paint dry. And I don't like that. I want the game to be fun and exciting. I want people to want to watch women's basketball.

To be honest with you, today I wish we had moved it to the Smith Center because I don't like to say no to all these people that need tickets. My cell phone, my e-mail, my office phone, my house phone -- every one of them right now has messages from people wanting tickets, and I have no tickets.

People asked me all year how good this team could be, and I said all along they could be as good as they wanted to be. I really feel that way, this is a special group. They all complement each other so well, and the chemistry is great.

Some teams have run with us and we love that.

We had some really good moments out there, but there were still times we sputtered and stalled.

No way she's 5-6. I look down on her, and I'm about 5-6½. She wants to be 5-6, so we let her be 5-6.

Dean? Man, you make me feel old. The only time when somebody says dean that I think would make me feel good is if they compare me to Dean Smith, to tell you the truth.

A little sloppy at times, but we knew it was going to be a tough game. We're a team, with the tempo we play, lots of times we play in runs. We felt like we eventually could go on a run and get a pretty good lead.

That's why I love these kids, they play so hard for me. They play hard for each other, but I'm the coach, so I think they play hard for me, too. I'm really proud of that.

Our team will be very motivated by the strength of our bracket. We'll use it as a positive to prepare for every game we play.

Sometimes we allow the cross-court pass; sometimes we don't. Sometimes we allow the pass down the side; sometimes we don't. The other team, they don't know what we'll allow, and sometimes we don't know, either. It keeps them off-balance, and that's part of our objective.

There's going to be some really good basketball here.

This could very easily be the national championship game. There will be a lot of talent on that floor.

This is one area that should've been changed a long time ago.

You may think I'm crazy, but I think the conference will be stronger next year.

This is the 11th time in the last 13 years we've played for an ACC championship. I wish we'd won all those, but just being there is an honor.

I've got great kids, they're playing their hearts out for each other and for me. We're healthy, we're an exciting team, we've got great chemistry. This is the kind of team a coach dreams of because these young ladies are like my daughters.

I'm happy for our kids. They work really hard. But we know we can't relax. Everybody's going to be after us. And we want to be No. 1 at the end of the season.

I'm just proud of our team for being the regular-season ACC champs.

I'm pulling for George Mason because they beat our guys. The more they win, it makes our guys look good.

I'm really proud of our team. I thought we had a great year. Today, we just didn't play well.

At times we looked pretty good out there, at times we were a little ragged. We had five kids in double figures, and that balance is a strength of our team.

I want people to fall in love with women's basketball, and that's one reason why we go up and down the floor. I want them to score a lot of points and make it exciting and fun.

I want it to be exciting, up and down the floor. We can play bad, throw it all over the gym, but we're not going to slow it down.

I want the game to be exciting. I want people to want to watch women's basketball. It shows our skills and abilities. I hope other teams will start to play like we do.

The last few days have been wild, to put it mildly. It's been great, the attention, the enthusiasm over the team and our ranking. But everybody's going to give us their best shot.

It will be like a national championship game because you're going to have two teams out there that are just going to be incredible, talented, athletic, skilled, up-and-down the floor defense and blocked shots. You are going to see a lot of great basketball (today).

I just loved her. She was like a flea out there, a little bug all over the floor that people couldn't get away from. She fits us. But now, I give here a little more freedom. Not many coaches would allow her to do what I do.

I hope I get to use them one more time.

I just remember they shot lights out. We couldn't stop them. They had all of those great perimeter shooters. Their perimeter game was incredible.

I just think this is a real special group. They have a passion for playing, and not just playing but playing the way we play: up and down the court.

But I'm not taking a kid out of another program. That's why in recruiting, a kid needs to look at the style of play when they're choosing a school.