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 donÂt want to say (the ACC race) is over, but itÂs 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 didnÂt go to sleep.Â
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
'They played harder than us. It seemed like they wanted it more. We won because we had more talent and our talent took over.''
Chris Carrawell
"No, no, it's a setup out there, people talking like that. I don't pay any attention to people giving us the ring already. That's all nonsense."
Junior year, about the suggestions that no one could beat Duke
"If Ruffin thought it was even, let's show him an even matchup."
C-well To Brand, After Hearing Ruffin's Opinion Of The Goodwill Competition
between himself & Brand
"I'll definitely come back. I have no choice."
Chris Carrawell on whether he'll jump to the NBA.
''If I lost? Hey, you can't lose too many more times, that's all. That's how it is in my neighborhood, know what I'm saying?''
On playing for shoe money as a kid
"I wanted to [call him], but I figured he was getting prepared for that long trip to the West Coast. I knew he had to wake up early and get ready to travel."
Chris Carrawell on his desire to call Ed Cota to discuss Ed's comments on the Blue Devils.
"Be a real man, don't come around when I'm in the spotlight. I definitely feel that guys should be there. If you're man enough to create it, you should be man enough to stick it through."
After meeting his dad for the first time in Charlotte.
''And we did it without Trajan Langdon. How do you like that?''
On beating UNC
"How you doin', Ed? Nice game, Ed. What was the score, Ed?"
Chris Carrawell, after Ed Cota talked smack about Duke after three
straight losses
"He's living in the past...we're the best team this year. Just admit it."
More on Cota
"I know the other teams in the ACC hate us. That's good; we hate them as well."
Chris Carrawell
"We're not pretty boys this year. Our attitude is, we're going to go get it."
"I said, 'What are you doing?' I said some other things I can't say. I told him it better not happen again or it's going to be payback, but we reacted in a good way, we reacted on the court."
After Clemson's Andreas Jurkunas took out Langdon on Senior Day
''I was mad that they broke our backboard, but I didn't shoot well on that rim anyway, so that didn't really matter.''
After a Wake Forest walk-on broke a Cameron backboard
"We didn't play well against Wake the first game. 'We've got to go out and show Wake who we really are. We didn't show them that in the first game, and they were in the game. We want to take it to Wake on Saturday.''
"Can you imagine coming from the background he comes from, to be at a school like Duke? And he's not an outcast. He's not a dud. He's not a dork. He's not a dipstick."
Linda Shannon, C-well's mom
"When I was coming to Duke, then I finally got the phone call: 'How you doing?' Some people probably wouldn't even speak to him, or it would be, 'Why are you calling me now? But I never looked at it harshly. I mean, I'm sorry it had to be that way, but my mom did a great job. And what if I would have had him? I don't know what kind of impact it would have had on my life."
Chris Carrawell, on his dad calling him for the first time, when he signed with Duke
"He wasn't the high school player of the year for taking charges".
Carrawell on Battier
"We haven't done anything yet. We've had the best start? Laettner's got two rings. We've still got a lot to accomplish"
"Maryland was supposed to be the team to compete with us in the league. But, hey, they're three games back. [And] Shane is the total package; he's Maryland killer."
"It'll be a relief when we beat Maryland. When we win that game, I can sit back and relax."
"I know he doesn't feel like he got shut down. But he did."
Chris Carrawell on Steve Francis
"Facing some of the best guys in college basketball doesn't seem that scary when you've seen some of the stuff I've seen growing up. I saw all types of gang fights. I remember getting beat up a little bit as a kid.
"There's nothing bad about that; I don't downplay that or anything. Not everybody can come from the suburbs. Once I made it out of that tough part, this is easy. "Everybody's friendly here. I'm playing on one of the best teams in the country. This is fun. I know where it's bad. I don't want to go back there anymore."
"We're coming off a tough game. But we'll be ready for this one. I can't wait. They beat us two times last year. I'm looking forward to beating them all the time now.''
Chris Carrawell on The Heels
"They're definitely the best team we've played since Cincinnati. In order to play us, you've got to have a couple of pro players. They had two or three."
Chris Carrawell on St. John's
''Guys are wondering. Right now, it's not a good feeling.''
After Cincinnati
"By the time I got poked in the eye, we had the game sewed up. The way I look at it, I'm a soldier, and it's a war wound."
"I call him 'The Freak' because he's an unbelievable athlete, and because of all the stuff he can do in the air.
When he plays like that, he not only gets the crowd in it, he gets us going, too."
Chris Carrawell on Corey Maggette
"I was heated; I'm still heated. I think it got ugly toward the end. Every time we play N.C. State, it's going to be one of those hard-fought, trash-talking games. I didn't like playing in today's game, but that's what you have to do."
"We can't allow teams to play with us. We allow teams to -- screw up, they get a couple of buckets and they start to feel 'Duke's not that tough,' (that) all that we do here is not really true."
"They're talented. They've got a lot of guys that are athletic. But you know, they haven't played us yet."
Chris Carrawell on the Terps
''They came in all rah-rah. We knocked them back. After that, there was no rah-rah.''
"I'm ready to get out of here, go to St. Pete, and get a little tan and try to win some games."
Before the UK game in Tropicana Field
"If we live and die by the three-point shot, we'll be going back to Durham pretty soon."
"I was trying to redeem myself."
Chris Carrawell, after Tech, about his UCLA game
''He did leave the game because he was kind of mental. Any time a crowd gets on that, it's not really good. You just want to leave it alone.''
On Loren Woods