My man Herb

You may remember me saying a couple of years ago that I'd be rooting for ASU after they went and picked us Herb Sendek from NC State. He's always been a class act. A slightly goofy, bookish, uber nice guy, who seems like he should be teaching history, not coaching a basketball team. Yet his players seem to genuinely love him, and they always play hard for him.

So I had to laugh when the DBR highlighted this batch of Sendek quotes, I guess b/c they were trying to make fun of him. But they're exactly the kind of goofy quotes I like the guy for:

“If you only evaluate somebody’s impact on their numbers, you can really miss the totality of what they’re influencing in the game.”
“You could probably drive yourself wacky trying to read into every possible psychological variable that could go into play in [today’s] game. I think on the one hand, we all recognize the value that experience brings. … On the other hand, I think our guys have other kinds of experiences. … That can help mitigate the fact that no one on our team has been in the NCAA Tournament yet.”
“There is work to be done. We stay in the moment and focus on the next game. We don’t think much about the past or the future.”
“What I did at State is open to discussion based on how you define success. I felt that we accomplished a lot.”
“I thought we played some of our best basketball of the season, notwithstanding the last 20 minutes against USC.”
“James’ presence on the court creates opportunities for other guys to score. Sometimes he doesn’t get the credit he deserves because of all the attention he draws that allows other people to eat.”
“As much as you can, you try to have the discipline to stay in the moment.”
“More than anything else I think it’s important for us to stay in the moment. Enjoy what just happened and then get our rest and try to recover the best we can for tomorrow. I think it’s important that we really just try to frame this in the now.”
“I have to hazard a guess that different coaches define it different ways, so we’re not all voting on the same things. There’s a difference between most valuable player and most outstanding player.”

And Herb’s first public swear word:

“I just don’t want our guys responding to a referee’s call, because the next play is getting ready to start. We ask our guys at the beginning of the year, ‘You have a choice. You can pick one. You can either coach, officiate or play. Just pick one, because it’s hard as hell to do any one of the three, let alone two of the three.”