Buzz Peterson Quotations

What a game. I was torn because I wanted to see our league do well, but I also wanted to see those seniors for Tennessee win. It was hard to watch.

With the new team and all the new freshmen, I thought it would give us a good feel for our staff and what we need to work on for the season.

We are not a selfish basketball team. And we played some selfish basketball.

Leasure showed me some pretty good things down in Costa Rica.

She's a competitor - been a basketball player herself. So we don't do anything competitive with cards or monopoly or anything. We just watch movies or watch a ballgame. We keep it like that. We've had our wars before on different things. So we decided it's best we don't do it anymore.

If we're going to get back in this race then it's going to have to come quickly. I'm a firm believer that you've got to win your home games and go steal some on the road.

I grew up following Harry Gant and Morgan Shepard as a kid. I've always been a race fan. This is going to be fun for me.

Joseph and Moses got four fouls each. That completely takes us out of what we want to do defensively. So the game plan was thrown out right there.

That was a great college basketball game. You can't walk out of this coliseum with your head down. You've got to be able to walk out proud.

That was a great college basketball game there. Great environment. I told our guys, 'You live for opportunities like this, to have a chance to play in an environment and championship, the right to play in one of the most prestigious sporting events of all time, the NCAA basketball tournament.

You live for a game like this, for the opportunity to play in an environment like this for the right to play in the most exciting event in all of collegiate athletics.

We're excited about it and now we're going to try our best to win a championship. But you've got to remember, 10 of our 14 kids are either freshmen or sophomores.

We said this is the end of the regular season. The tournament is totally different.

We talked about it and had a good conversation,

Early in the year, we had everybody trying to hit home runs. Everybody was trying to do the spectacular thing, and they were making turnovers and everybody was just doing things uncharacteristic. Once we settled down ? we started running our offense and it's really looked good.

I've been surprised to a degree by how well he's doing. But when you look at his work habits and see what a gym rat he is, you're not surprised. Jack works on all kinds of stuff. He has a friend in the gym rebounding for him all the time.

The rule has been in there. I took Tennessee a few years ago to the Dominican Republic. They have tried to do away with it, but it didn't go through.

I've very disappointed Gregg Marshall didn't do more than he did. If I had been in the same position, I would have done anything I could.

The thing about it is they really don't know what their criteria is going to be. But I've P.R.ed as much as I can.

I want all of my assistants to have the drive and the goal to be head coaches. We've been together since 1990. ... It's his decision if he was offered. He hasn't even gotten the call, but he's someone they'd have to look at.

Sometimes you need a different face. It just wipes the slate clean and they feel better about themselves.

So to say he pushed for it probably isn't fair. But I think he probably could have stopped it and didn't.

That game, I know it helped us beat Winthrop. I think there was a motivation there. You could see it in their eyes that they were determined to be better than the letdown of losing that game.

You see it in the young kids. They seem a little bit tight on the road and they're more relaxed at home. I've tried everything and I've talked to so many people. It will come, but only by playing defense and rebounding.

They really went after him from the start.

I've got a lot of meetings to attend and we're still working hard on recruiting. I'm looking forward to building on what we had going at the end of the season and see if we can't get there next year.

The second half, they showed they weren't going to go away. We do not know how to play with a big lead.

That might have been the best 16 minutes we might have played this season. We did a good job on offense; we had patience. We got what we wanted.

I'm glad Jack was able to get player of the year, but I'm sure if you asked him, he'd rather be going to the NCAA tournament next week.

I'm sure it will be one heck of a battle. Winthrop again. We've been very fortunate to beat them twice in a row.

I'll be on the phone a lot. Hopefully with the push from other people and our conference these kids can continue to play.

I could be happy here. I really can.

You could tell it was our first time (in the finals). But we came out in the second half, made a nice little run. We thought if we could get the lead Winthrop would tighten up a little bit.