lmb
06-01-2007, 02:52 PM
For your reading pleasure on this sunny Friday afternoon -
I ran across this today (taken from the Main Page in 2000) and really enjoyed the memories that it brought. It was too long for one post, so part 2 will be coming soon. It's just too good to edit!
The Wit and Wisdom of Cwell! 3/03
Chris Carrawell has become famous for his willingness to say just whatever he thinks, so when a friend suggested, as a tribute to this remarkable guy, we gather his best quotes and put them together, we thought - what a great idea. It's funny, because we started it thinking that it would be humor more than anything else, but what we found out was that when you read them through, actually, it's just C-well telling the truth as he sees it.
Some of it is funny, like his baiting of Cota. Some of it's sad, like dealing with his Dad showing up out of the blue, for the first time in his life. Some of it's just plain brutally honest, like telling Jason it's time to grow up or that Duke can't be just a 3 point shooting team, or talking about the consequences of losing in East St. Louis when people have bet money on your winning instead. Some of these quotes are just classic, but all of them are interesting and revealing. They're in reverse chronological order, and since tomorrow is C-well's last day in Cameron, we wanted to put these up now, as a retrospective of a hall of fame quote machine. Enjoy, and thanks for talking so much, Chris. We'll miss you.
"As long as I had Battier out there, I figured we'd be ok. Two-on-five, I think we could have took them. Well, add Jason and make it three-on-five."
After this year's Wake game
"Whoever picked North Carolina to win the league, I'm sorry. It didn't happen this year. Probably next year. But we're still No. 1, baby. Still No.1."
''This was a total team effort. We wanted to put them away early. They were hanging around with us a little bit in the first half but we didn't want to play with the game. We've got to put teams like this away. We don't want them to think that they can play with us. Tonight we did a good job of taking them out in the first half and finishing it off in the second half."
After this year's Wake game
"The mentality is, we don't want to lose anymore."
"The big thing tonight was we kept our composure. This team has a lot of heart. Last year, we had a great team, but in the tough games, against Cincinnati and Connecticut, when it got tough, we lost. "But we've been in close games, tough games, and won. It's almost like we like them. It takes heart to win them."
''You've got to rank this in the top three Duke-Carolina games.Of course, I wasn't around in the '60s.''
"I don’t want to say (the ACC race) is over, but it’s over."
"He got his points in the second half. They didn't mean anything. The game was over."
Chris Carrawell on Will Solomon
"Stay four years and if everybody goes, you can be the man."
"Guts. We really had to fight. This was a playground kind of game, a bring-your- lunch-bucket kind of game. I've always wanted to be in this situation.''
Chris Carrawell on the overtime State game In Cameron this year
''It would have been good to go even at 1-1 on the road, but to win those two road games kind of gave us a confidence boost. We're just going to roll with it.''
''I'm usually good for one brick a game but that one shot my arm was hit and the chant wasn't fair. They got on me, to come up with some big shots at the end It was great.''
After the Maryland game
''I've been in every game situation, played against all the top players, been to the national championship game and Final Four and even was part of a team that lost a 17-point lead in a game leading to the Final Four. Even with all that, there's nothing like winning games in this league.''
Chris Carrawell, after the Maryland game
"We haven't lost an ACC game since Carolina beat us in the tournament my sophomore year."
"I didn't look at coming to a place like Duke like I was in a foreign land. 'These people don't know how to relate to me. I'm not going to involve myself with these people because they don't understand where I come from.' Nothing like that....It looked at it as, 'Hey, God bless. How many guys get an opportunity to come to a place where everybody likes each other? I don't have to watch my back now, coming down the street.' There was a sense of security. 'I know I can make it.' I didn't bring anything from the inner city except my talking, of course."
"I try to find the good in people. Skin color doesn't matter. Background doesn't matter. I like people.' I never look at race as an issue. If you're a nice person, that's who I want to be around."
"Richardson is a warrior. You are not going to stop him. He has an outside shot now, so what more can he need? I don't know what the matchup is going to be, but I definitely want to guard him. If he can score 30 on me then they deserve to win. That's how I look at it."
Chris Carrawell on Quentin Richardson
"You can't ice me. I was having cramps and I couldn't bend my legs on my shot like I usually do. The timeouts [Illinois called] gave me a chance to take a deep breath and compose myself."
Chris Carrawell on Lon Kruger's attempt to ice him at the end of the Illinois game
"I want to do what he does. When I saw him over there [at the Wooden Classic], I said, 'Man, that's Jerry West!' It was great to play, and play well, in front of him. He's a legend, and he's making his mark off the court as well. I'm old school, so I know a lot about his history."
"I learned from Jeff Capel, guys like that who paved the way for me. They showed me how to lead. How, in tough situations, you have to be strong. That's what I try to show the freshmen, trying to lead by example. It's important. We haven't had that in a long time at Duke. "
"I stayed up all night long. So by the time the team got up in the morning, I was the first one on the bus because I didn’t go to sleep.”
About losing to UConn in the Finals
"It's not high school," Carrawell said a few feet away from a tearful Williams. "In high school you can juke and do your thing, but here you've got to know when to do that, to pull up and to drive and dish. But he'll get it. He's so valuable to us. I don't want to be the point. I want to score."
After the New York games
"My teammates over here are teasing me, telling me Duke's going to hit rock bottom and I'm remembering that. I'm remembering that. Duke's not going to be [at the bottom], and I'm here to tell them and I'm going to show them that we're going to be back on top."
"I'm going to have to be more of a leader [at Duke], so I'm trying to talk out here, trying to be a leader among leaders. Any time I can do that, that's only going to help me for next year...these guys respect me and that's what it's all about. So I know if these guys respect me, I shouldn't have no problem with any freshman. If I've got the respect from the top guys in the country, I definitely think I can lead a little, bony freshman."
"I just think this is a great opportunity. There were a lot of great players here, you could have picked a lot of them to be in this group of 16. Obviously, the (Men's Collegiate Committee) felt that the 16 picked so far are the best to fit into the game plan. (Duke teammate) Shane Battier was here last year, and he told me to be sure that I came out here in shape and I thought I was in the best shape possible, considering the altitude. And Elton (Brand) told me to just play, and I took that and ran with it."
On the World University Games
"Oh God, it was ridiculous. But it paid off, it paid off. If you don't go rebound, it's pathetic. It was one of those things where we worked on the fundamentals of just blocking out."
C-well on practices after Coach K was unhappy with rebounding
"He's a freak. He was so high. He plays with so much energy. He was so high. Oh, he was so high. He was so high. Oh God, he was so high.''
C-well on a Maggette Dunk
"If there's going to be a sequel, I guess I'd call it Hey, I'm Going to Kill Jason.''
C-well, on Tropicana Field
"I don't see how you can dare him. If you dare anyone, I'd dare me. If they were going to dare me, OK. They might have a chance. "
C-well, on who to not guard outside (referring to Trajan)
"B. I wouldn't give it an A. It was more of the coach just making statements. He wasn't really getting in guys' faces or anything like that. It was more that it had to come from us. We knew we were flat. You could look at my face at halftime and see it. I was, like, just out of it. It wasn't one of his best.''
C-well rating Coach K At Halftime of the Southwest Missouri Game
I ran across this today (taken from the Main Page in 2000) and really enjoyed the memories that it brought. It was too long for one post, so part 2 will be coming soon. It's just too good to edit!
The Wit and Wisdom of Cwell! 3/03
Chris Carrawell has become famous for his willingness to say just whatever he thinks, so when a friend suggested, as a tribute to this remarkable guy, we gather his best quotes and put them together, we thought - what a great idea. It's funny, because we started it thinking that it would be humor more than anything else, but what we found out was that when you read them through, actually, it's just C-well telling the truth as he sees it.
Some of it is funny, like his baiting of Cota. Some of it's sad, like dealing with his Dad showing up out of the blue, for the first time in his life. Some of it's just plain brutally honest, like telling Jason it's time to grow up or that Duke can't be just a 3 point shooting team, or talking about the consequences of losing in East St. Louis when people have bet money on your winning instead. Some of these quotes are just classic, but all of them are interesting and revealing. They're in reverse chronological order, and since tomorrow is C-well's last day in Cameron, we wanted to put these up now, as a retrospective of a hall of fame quote machine. Enjoy, and thanks for talking so much, Chris. We'll miss you.
"As long as I had Battier out there, I figured we'd be ok. Two-on-five, I think we could have took them. Well, add Jason and make it three-on-five."
After this year's Wake game
"Whoever picked North Carolina to win the league, I'm sorry. It didn't happen this year. Probably next year. But we're still No. 1, baby. Still No.1."
''This was a total team effort. We wanted to put them away early. They were hanging around with us a little bit in the first half but we didn't want to play with the game. We've got to put teams like this away. We don't want them to think that they can play with us. Tonight we did a good job of taking them out in the first half and finishing it off in the second half."
After this year's Wake game
"The mentality is, we don't want to lose anymore."
"The big thing tonight was we kept our composure. This team has a lot of heart. Last year, we had a great team, but in the tough games, against Cincinnati and Connecticut, when it got tough, we lost. "But we've been in close games, tough games, and won. It's almost like we like them. It takes heart to win them."
''You've got to rank this in the top three Duke-Carolina games.Of course, I wasn't around in the '60s.''
"I don’t want to say (the ACC race) is over, but it’s over."
"He got his points in the second half. They didn't mean anything. The game was over."
Chris Carrawell on Will Solomon
"Stay four years and if everybody goes, you can be the man."
"Guts. We really had to fight. This was a playground kind of game, a bring-your- lunch-bucket kind of game. I've always wanted to be in this situation.''
Chris Carrawell on the overtime State game In Cameron this year
''It would have been good to go even at 1-1 on the road, but to win those two road games kind of gave us a confidence boost. We're just going to roll with it.''
''I'm usually good for one brick a game but that one shot my arm was hit and the chant wasn't fair. They got on me, to come up with some big shots at the end It was great.''
After the Maryland game
''I've been in every game situation, played against all the top players, been to the national championship game and Final Four and even was part of a team that lost a 17-point lead in a game leading to the Final Four. Even with all that, there's nothing like winning games in this league.''
Chris Carrawell, after the Maryland game
"We haven't lost an ACC game since Carolina beat us in the tournament my sophomore year."
"I didn't look at coming to a place like Duke like I was in a foreign land. 'These people don't know how to relate to me. I'm not going to involve myself with these people because they don't understand where I come from.' Nothing like that....It looked at it as, 'Hey, God bless. How many guys get an opportunity to come to a place where everybody likes each other? I don't have to watch my back now, coming down the street.' There was a sense of security. 'I know I can make it.' I didn't bring anything from the inner city except my talking, of course."
"I try to find the good in people. Skin color doesn't matter. Background doesn't matter. I like people.' I never look at race as an issue. If you're a nice person, that's who I want to be around."
"Richardson is a warrior. You are not going to stop him. He has an outside shot now, so what more can he need? I don't know what the matchup is going to be, but I definitely want to guard him. If he can score 30 on me then they deserve to win. That's how I look at it."
Chris Carrawell on Quentin Richardson
"You can't ice me. I was having cramps and I couldn't bend my legs on my shot like I usually do. The timeouts [Illinois called] gave me a chance to take a deep breath and compose myself."
Chris Carrawell on Lon Kruger's attempt to ice him at the end of the Illinois game
"I want to do what he does. When I saw him over there [at the Wooden Classic], I said, 'Man, that's Jerry West!' It was great to play, and play well, in front of him. He's a legend, and he's making his mark off the court as well. I'm old school, so I know a lot about his history."
"I learned from Jeff Capel, guys like that who paved the way for me. They showed me how to lead. How, in tough situations, you have to be strong. That's what I try to show the freshmen, trying to lead by example. It's important. We haven't had that in a long time at Duke. "
"I stayed up all night long. So by the time the team got up in the morning, I was the first one on the bus because I didn’t go to sleep.”
About losing to UConn in the Finals
"It's not high school," Carrawell said a few feet away from a tearful Williams. "In high school you can juke and do your thing, but here you've got to know when to do that, to pull up and to drive and dish. But he'll get it. He's so valuable to us. I don't want to be the point. I want to score."
After the New York games
"My teammates over here are teasing me, telling me Duke's going to hit rock bottom and I'm remembering that. I'm remembering that. Duke's not going to be [at the bottom], and I'm here to tell them and I'm going to show them that we're going to be back on top."
"I'm going to have to be more of a leader [at Duke], so I'm trying to talk out here, trying to be a leader among leaders. Any time I can do that, that's only going to help me for next year...these guys respect me and that's what it's all about. So I know if these guys respect me, I shouldn't have no problem with any freshman. If I've got the respect from the top guys in the country, I definitely think I can lead a little, bony freshman."
"I just think this is a great opportunity. There were a lot of great players here, you could have picked a lot of them to be in this group of 16. Obviously, the (Men's Collegiate Committee) felt that the 16 picked so far are the best to fit into the game plan. (Duke teammate) Shane Battier was here last year, and he told me to be sure that I came out here in shape and I thought I was in the best shape possible, considering the altitude. And Elton (Brand) told me to just play, and I took that and ran with it."
On the World University Games
"Oh God, it was ridiculous. But it paid off, it paid off. If you don't go rebound, it's pathetic. It was one of those things where we worked on the fundamentals of just blocking out."
C-well on practices after Coach K was unhappy with rebounding
"He's a freak. He was so high. He plays with so much energy. He was so high. Oh, he was so high. He was so high. Oh God, he was so high.''
C-well on a Maggette Dunk
"If there's going to be a sequel, I guess I'd call it Hey, I'm Going to Kill Jason.''
C-well, on Tropicana Field
"I don't see how you can dare him. If you dare anyone, I'd dare me. If they were going to dare me, OK. They might have a chance. "
C-well, on who to not guard outside (referring to Trajan)
"B. I wouldn't give it an A. It was more of the coach just making statements. He wasn't really getting in guys' faces or anything like that. It was more that it had to come from us. We knew we were flat. You could look at my face at halftime and see it. I was, like, just out of it. It wasn't one of his best.''
C-well rating Coach K At Halftime of the Southwest Missouri Game