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PUERTO RICO TIP-OFF MEDIA CONFERENCENovember 14, 2013Leonard HamiltonTIM SIMMONS: Coach Hamilton, thank you. Can you just give us an opening statement on the early start to practice? I guess it was September 27th, and kind of has that been a benefit to your team? COACH HAMILTON: Well, it's worked pretty well with us. We were able to get some practices, concentrated practices in, not going too many days in a row, giving our kids a little more recovery time on their body, and plus it gave us, gave me personally as a head coach, some opportunities to get out on the road and recruit a little bit more than what we've had in the past when we've gone with the old regular rules that we had to govern ourselves with. So it's been a tremendous benefit for me. TIM SIMMONS: You've got several games under your belt so far. We saw you on TV, pretty good win last night at UCF. COACH HAMILTON: Well, we have still a developing team. We have seven second‑year players, five of which are pure sophomores, two junior college players, and even one of our seniors has had limited experience. So we still are searching trying to find ourselves at this particular point. I think we have the physical attributes, we're long, athletic, and we're fairly deep. There's not much difference between eight or nine players. But we still have to get in sync where we learn how to play to each other's strengths. I think we're still a work in progress, but I think we have potential to develop into a pretty good basketball team. TIM SIMMONS: You spent the summer, I guess, August in Greece. How is that helping with this team? COACH HAMILTON: Well, it gave us an opportunity with as many youngsters as we had to play last year, we ended up starting three freshmen, and they got some very valuable minutes. But I think it gave us an opportunity to kind of spend some quality time together in the summer before we left and work on some of our individual skills. I think we've improved our dribbling, passing, shooting from an individual standpoint. The trip to Greece gave us an opportunity to play against a very experienced team, learn a little bit about how they play, and then how we had to play in order to be successful against a very experienced team like the Greece National Team. So I think it benefits tremendously. Obviously the culture and educational factor that we received from going to another part of the world and experiencing it was very valuable, and then the opportunity to develop the camaraderie of spending time together away from the cell phones and those things that kids sometimes go through I thought was a tremendous benefit for us. TIM SIMMONS: Has there been any one player or players that have kind of stood out so far? COACH HAMILTON: No, we're the kind of team that has to win by committee. We need to have a full sum of all our parts working well for us to be successful, and I think we will be that kind of team throughout the year.  Our go‑to guy is the open man with the best, highest percentage shot. We're trying to develop that sense. I'm not real sure we have a go‑to guy like we've had, and we never really have had a go‑to guy so to speak. Each night I think you'll probably see someone else stepping up. Q. Last night you had someone stepping off the bench for you and scoring 18 points, Ian Miller? COACH HAMILTON: Yeah, Ian Miller has been a youngster who was injured last year, had a foot injury, and he never really got informed. He never could practice. He played at 222, now he's at 197, so he's lighter and he's more efficient, he's healthy. Robert Gilchrist gave us some good minutes the other night, I think he was 5 of 6 from the floor, which gave us a tremendous amount of energy. I think we blocked 10 or 11 shots. So we were active and we changed a lot with our length. We're a team that's just still trying to find itself. By no means are we a well‑oiled machine, but I like the direction we're moving in, and I think the Puerto Rican tournament is going to give us a tremendous challenge in the fact that we have some top‑ranked teams, some top‑25 ranked teams. So I'm kind of looking forward to it. It's going to give us a chance to see where we are against some quality teams. TIM SIMMONS: You have a tough side of the bracket. Your first game is against VCU who is ranked nationally and then you could be playing Michigan. Talk about that. COACH HAMILTON: Well, the first thing I have to do is concentrate on the first game. They're a handful. They beat a very good Virginia team on the road. That was extremely impressive. I think they call their system "havoc" or something of that nature, which means that they're active and aggressive and they take great pride in the energy that they play with and the decisions that they make you make. They just believe that if they continue to keep changing defenses and keeping pressure on you that that'll cause you to make poor decisions, and that has worked for them over the years and you've got to give Coach Smart a lot of credit for bringing that type of system to VCU and putting them on the map. We very well know that we have our hands full with them in the opening game. Q. It's been a couple years since you've played them in the tournament, in the NCAA Tournament. How much of that game still sticks with you? COACH HAMILTON: Well, we're a different team and so are they. I think they've gotten better and we've lost all those experienced players that we have. I'm not real sure one game is going to have a lot of bearing on the other. I do know that we have to be well‑prepared in order to compete against them. At the level that we're playing at, when you lose a game you've got to move on and can't linger on. That was two years ago. In the ACC we try to have an attitude if you lose one you've got to put it behind you, and then you've got to try to learn from it and move on. I think they're a better basketball team than they were when we played them. We're less experienced than we were when we played them that particular year, and they came back at the end like so many times they've been able to do and win games at the end because they're well‑coached and they're tremendously loaded with talent. What we're going to do is this is a new day, new team, new season, and what we have to do is be prepared. Now, if we spend a lot of time worrying about what happened in the past maybe we might revisit that situation, so in order to improve we just need to come back and be prepared to play the best we can with the team we have. Q. You're also going to have to face Terrance Shannon. What are your thoughts on that? COACH HAMILTON: Terrance is a very good player. He did a great job for us. He graduated in three years, which that says a lot about his character. But it's not going to be us playing against Terrance Shannon. It's going to be Florida State playing against Virginia Commonwealth, and we know we're going to take that for what it's worth. Q. I just wanted to get your thoughts on being a part of these early season tournaments with such a talented field. Is this something that you believe that these early season tournaments are imperative for programs to participate? COACH HAMILTON: Well, we need this type of atmosphere early on to just get our attention and motivate us and prepare us for what we know is going to be an unbelievable competitive ACC race. So I'm excited about it. That's one reason why going to Central Florida last night and the largest crowd they've had in the history of their school with the students right on top of you and them being jacked up and really emotional for the game, those games can't do anything but help you. The tournament there, my goodness, it has to be as loaded of a field as I've seen around the country. So we know that we'll have to be at our very best. There's absolutely no other way to look at it if you're going to be successful, because you have talented, well‑coached, nationally‑ranked teams. One went to the Final Four and one is in the top 25, and if you can get through that, the other side of the bracket you have talented, loaded teams on the other side. I think this is good for us, and I think it's an exciting time in college basketball because you have these early seasons to kind of set the tone during the middle of football season for the upcoming basketball season. TIM SIMMONS: Coach, thank you very much. We look forward to seeing you in a week, and good luck this weekend. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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