March 29, 2007 QUOTES FROM KEVIN MCKENNA, INDIANA STATE BASKETBALL HEAD COACH I can’t say how excited I am to be here. I just had a chance to meet briefly with our players. I think the potential here at Indiana State is unlimited. This school obviously has a lot of great history, and I was a part of that history by losing a couple of times (while playing with Creighton) to ‘Larry Legend’ a few years back in the Hulman Center. Those were great memories; I remember it like it was yesterday. I look forward to trying to bring back some of that magic here again. We have a good corps group of young players coming back. One of the things that I think that is really important to the success of the program is having good people around. I know one of those guys, Greg Lansing, who is one of my best friends, and he is going to be a part of this. I can’t tell you how much that means to me, and how big that is for this program. That was my primary goal, to try and make that happen, and I am glad Greg has decided to continue here. My second goal was to meet with the current players, and make sure that they are all on board. In the next couple of weeks, I will meet with all of the current players and all of the recruits. I think we are in really good shape with all of those guys. I am just really excited. I think that my experiences, whether it be college or pro, bring a lot to this program from a lot of different areas. I have been a head coach at NCAA Division II. I have been an assistant coach for a pretty successful program at Creighton. I have learned a lot from head coach Dana Altman. I have learned a lot of things from him, and how to operate a program the right way. We intend to do those same things here. I learned a lot from Flip Saunders in how to play the game, and play it really fast. This is going to be a really good thing. I think that we have a lot of pieces in place. There is a lot of excitement around the community, and a lot of talent already around the program. It is going to be our job, and the player’s job, to get this thing going. We are not that far away. This game has so little margin for error. Whether you have an experienced team like we had a Creighton this past year or a younger team like we had at Indiana State, there is no margin for error in basketball. I am here; I am a member of this team. I am excited to be here, and want to thank the administration for having the confidence in me to be able to stand up here today and get this going. I would be remiss if I did not mention Coach (Royce) Waltman. I don’t know coach that well. Every encounter I have had with him has been really positive. I really like him and respect everything that he has done for this profession and for this university. I know coach (Dana) Altman always says that coach Waltman is one his favorite coaches. That means a lot to me, when coach says something like that. I know that the players really respected him, but we are just going to try to continue to move this program forward as best we can. Anytime that you try to move on in this profession, I think you have to try and find a great situation. I think I have that here at Indiana State. I am lucky that the administration found me, to be real honest with you. I like our league, and I think it is one of the top conferences in the country. Obviously, with the success that the league has had in the past few seasons by moving on to the Sweet Sixteen, and moving on to beat a lot of non-conference teams, this is one of the best leagues around. Indiana State had a couple of great victories over Butler and Purdue. I hope to continue that. This is a high level of basketball. The coaches in this league are really good
and it hard to get an easy basket in this league. That is what was
appealing to me about this situation. Also, we have some really good
pieces in place with some really good young talent already on the
roster. We are going to make this a special place for our players
and coaches.
|