Final Four Pre-Game Speech!

"Only the strong will survive!"

"Gentleman, this is the day that you've dreamed of your entire lives. You can't slow it down because God will only give us the same twenty four hours that he gave us on yesterday to enjoy it. So we must cherish this moment and take full advantage of the opportunity while it's in front of us.

You've dreamed of playing in the Final Four since the day you picked up a basketball. Now God has chosen you out of the millions of kids that started on this journey with you. There have been others with more talent than you possess, more athletic ability, more style and charisma; but you are the ones that have made it to Houston on this day.

Gentleman, you have been predestined to run out of this locker room to show that world that you belong in the Final Four. Now that you're here, what are you going to do with the opportunity? It's not enough to just show up, to just bring your camera or recorder and soak it all in. God didn't bring you here to have a vacation. So fella's, I ask you, what are you prepared to do this evening?

I've always told you that championships are not won of game day; that championships are only a culmination of events. This championship was won during the off season when the other teams were having a good time and we were putting in work. When everyone practiced for two hours and went home and you stayed and shot 100 more times everyday. When everyone was asleep and you got up at 5am to run 5 miles daily.

The trophy was being engraved when you decided that you weren't going to let others tell you what you couldn't accomplish. Your ring was sized the day you cut off friends that weren't going in the same direction that you were going. Your name and picture was immortalized in the athletic department the day that you bought into our mission. Every diamond in the setting of that ring represents the sweat that you put in to get to this moment.
Aristotle once said, "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit."

 So as a result fella's, this game is just a matter of formality. It's just another part of what we have to do to get to Monday.

Who's got the intestinal fortitude to last the forty minutes we've been given to decide this thing?  We don't have to be the best team, we just have to be the best team for forty minutes. It's just that simple because nothing has changed. The court is the same 50' in width and 84' in length. The goal is still 10' off of the ground. The refs are still the same guys from footlocker. If you can remember that when you run out of this locker room, you'll return as winners and we move on to the title game on Monday.

However, if you allow the moment to get too big, you'll fail miserably. So how do you want to handle this? I say we go out there and move one step closer to fulfilling our destiny, let's go!"

Coach Jay Graves (today)
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Champions are made not born! Jay Graves