Rick Pitino
Rick Pitino
Richard Andrew "Rick" Pitino is an American basketball coach. Since 2001, he has been the head coach at the University of Louisville, and coached the Cardinals to the 2013 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship. As a college head coach, Pitino has also served at Boston University, Providence College and the University of Kentucky, leading that program to the NCAA championship in 1996. In addition to his college coaching career, Pitino also served two stints in the NBA, coaching the...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionCoach
Date of Birth18 September 1952
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
With seven new players, we're never going to have an experienced lineup. This is who we are. We're a very young and inexperienced basketball team. But they're willing to play hard.
We've accomplished what we've wanted to accomplish, record-wise. But we're nowhere near where we should be or where we ought to be.
The one thing I've always said: Let your family and close friends be the judge of who you are as a person. Don't worry about being judged by others who don't know you, because your family and close friends know what you're all about, good and bad.
Failure is good. It's fertilizer. Everything I've learned about coaching, I've learned from making mistakes.
The term 'overachiever' sort of makes it look like the person has mediocre talent and he just works so hard that he achieves beyond what you would think. 'Overachiever' is sort of a - it's sort of an incorrect term. An overachiever is someone that's just willing to pay the price to get so much more out of his performance.
If I had one regret in life... it's that I was not more humble at an earlier age.
Football is only once a week. NASCAR is once a week. Those sports are insanely popular. Horse racing is oversaturated. Unless tracks cut back to three days a week of full fields, a lot of people will really hurt down the road. Horse racing, to survive, has to go to that. Let's face it: Churchill Downs only does well on Derby Week.
Humility is what makes teams great. I've preached it for a long period of time.
When you coach Russ Smith, you have a nervous breakdown on every possession. He's not from a different country. He's from a different planet.
Passion and hunger are the two ingredients that I look for in first making the judgment on - whether an athlete, an assistant coach, or a horse trainer or anybody I do business with.
Basketball has consumed me since the age of 7 or 8. I don't know what I would do without it.
Basketball is my passion, and I love it, and I love to see my players succeed. I'm here for them and my children. That's my passion.
I try not to get too low. I fight adversity as hard as I can fight it, not to get too low. When good things happen, I don't really embrace it. I just say it's a lucky day.
This is not the beginning of American civilization where we need guns because it's the Wild, Wild West... There should not be guns in our society, and we all know that; politicians know that.