Bob Knight (Hall of Fame basketball coach who successfully recruited Quinn Buckner to Indiana)
"Don't get carried away with the fact that he was a man among boys. You know he was six-two, six-three at the most, [and] weighed 195 pounds. There are a lot of kids like that. Where he was a man among boys was the way he thought, and the way he handled himself on the floor, and the things that he brought to the game that maybe only he and I understood. That's where he was a man among boys."

John Wooden (Hall of Fame basketball coach on trying to recruit Quinn Buckner to UCLA)
"I liked him very much as a person and obviously he was an outstanding athlete. I was very impressed."

Mike Bonczyk (Thornridge player on his team's remarkable starting five)
"We were the Fab Five before the Fab Five became the Fab Five up at Michigan."

Steve Fisher (Former Michigan Fab Five coach whose high school team lost to Thornridge in the first game of their perfect season)
"He's probably right. We just played on a little bigger stage than they did."

Ron Ferguson (Thornridge coach who guided his primarily black team in a primarily white school to consecutive state championships while getting complaints from racist white fans)
"It was bad, the black and white thing. You could hear the complaints. Different comments were being made. When we won though, all of a sudden it made a lot of people happy."

Boyd Batts (Thornridge player who at age nine saw his father gunned down)
"There wasn't nothin' I could do."

Greg Rose (Thornridge player admits he occasionally went hungry)
"When I was about twelve or thirteen, I did. I remember stealing a bag of potato chips from the neighborhood store. [The owner] caught me and said, 'Greg, you never did that before. Why did you do it?' I told him, 'Man, I haven't eaten in a couple days.'"

Quinn Buckner (on his winning)
"I hadn't lost. Honestly. I hadn't lost. I didn't know how to lose. All I knew is that if it didn't work, you worked harder at it. If it wasn't working, you figure out a way to work harder at it. If that didn't work, you figure out how to work smarter at it."

Quinn Buckner (on teammate Boyd Batts)
"Boyd was a radical. I'm telling you he was a rebel with a cause all the time. That's why you always had to watch him because you didn't know what Boyd was gonna get into."

Quinn Buckner (on teammate Greg Rose who formed a music group with his brothers and played gigs after games in order to support his large family)
"Greg was better skilled than I was, and Boyd Batts was better skilled than I was for the most part. They were better players, and they all figured out how to sacrifice. But for Greg to do what he did, in retrospect, it was the responsibility that he showed to his family and to the team that allowed us to be good. Again, for a guy in high school at that age to be that responsible to his family and to his passion for basketball and to his teammates, it was, I don't know if noble is the word. But it says something about his moral values