Rick Barnes Playing Quotations

One thing about Daniel is he does take a lot of pride in wanting to guard people. If I called a time out, say someone is playing really well, and I say 'who wants to guard them?' There's no doubt he puts his hand up quicker than anybody.

He's a totally different player. I think if he hadn't gotten hurt, we wouldn't be watching him right now. He would be playing in the NBA.

We know in one game, one 40-minute game, anything can happen. Any team that's playing right now has got a chance.

We have to have Daniel playing and thinking that way for this team to play to its potential.

Every chance we could go inside, that's what we wanted to do. We've always believed in playing inside-out.

This time of year, it's all about winning. It's not an advantage playing those teams before. It's all about beating people to move on.

You're not playing this time of year if you're not a good basketball team.

Once he got it going, we were playing off him, running him off screens anywhere we could. When they concentrate inside, he has enough confidence to get it going.

I don't know if I would call it a wishbone more than I would call it that Fun 'n' Gun because they spread you out. They're going to shoot 25 threes. They make more threes than any team in the country. It's almost like playing against a no-huddle offense.

The major reason for our score is we had four of our five seniors leave school early last year to chase their dream of playing professionally. I'm not sure the score is a true reflection to the commitment and success we've had when it comes to education in our basketball program.

I told our guys that if we're going to be a good team, we've got to find a way to win when we're not playing well. We did that tonight.