Nolan Richardson
Nolan Richardson is an American basketball coach and former basketball player, born on December 27, 1941, in El Paso, Texas.
Richardson attended Bowie High School in El Paso before going on to study at Eastern Arizona College and later the University of Texas at El Paso. Following his playing career, he moved into coaching and built a record across multiple levels of collegiate basketball that set him apart from his contemporaries. He coached teams to a Junior College National Championship, an NIT championship, and a Division I Basketball National Championship — a combination that makes him the only coach in history to have claimed all three titles. His tenure at the University of Arkansas proved to be the most prominent chapter of his coaching career, spanning 22 seasons in NCAA Division I competition, during which his teams made post-season tournament appearances 20 times.
At Arkansas, Richardson led the Razorbacks to three Final Fours and won the 1994 NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament. That championship, along with the sustained consistency of his program's post-season presence, placed him among the most accomplished figures in the history of college basketball coaching. Across his 22 Division I seasons, the regularity with which his teams qualified for post-season play — appearing in tournaments 20 out of a possible 22 years — reflected the durability of the program he built in Fayetteville.
Richardson's contributions to the sport were recognized formally on two occasions. In 2008, he was elected to the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame, and in 2014 he was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. His career is defined by its breadth across levels of the game — from junior college to the sport's most prestigious national stage — and by his singular distinction as the only coach to have won a national championship at the junior college, NIT, and NCAA Division I levels.
Quotes by Nolan Richardson
I can't believe it, ... The president of Panama told me, 'You have no idea what you've done for our country.' He said people were jumping in the streets.
I'm very happy, because we played very well and we qualified (for FIBA World Championship 2006),
I'm interested in a major college coaching job, period, ... I have an agent who's working on finding me a job either in college or in the professional ranks. I said years ago that I want to win another national championship, and the only way I can do that is to be coaching.
In my estimation, he is truly one of the finest young basketball coaches around at this point in time.
Arkansas, as a state, is not that far away. So you can get more fans in there and get you the same atmosphere that say Kentucky has when they play in Atlanta.
The U.S. beat us pretty good the first game, but that's partly because we flew in at 3 a.m. the night before we played,
It's a plus. Anytime you've been somewhere and supposedly some of the other teams probably have never played in (that arena), it makes a big difference.
