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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE BASKETBALL MEDIA CONFERENCEJanuary 16, 2012Leonard HamiltonLEONARD HAMILTON: Well, the last couple games we've played at Virginia Tech and Carolina, it seems like we are starting to feel more comfortable with each other. We played a little better at Virginia Tech and a little better, significantly better, against Carolina. We're anxious now to see kind of where we are with Maryland coming in Tuesday. They've done a good job, gotten off to a great start, and like typical ACC teams, we know we've got to be at our best because we know Maryland is going to give us their best shot. That's just typical of the way it is in the ACC. But I feel like we're making progress, and hopefully we can continue that as we face Maryland on Tuesday. Q. I wonder if you could talk for a minute about the game that Dulkys had against Carolina. Was it just a matter of him being especially locked in, or were you guys setting good screens for him on the outside? LEONARD HAMILTON: Well, Deividas really just scored out on the floor of the offense.  We didn't run a whole lot of sets for him. I think we had much better ball movement and ball reversal. Our execution of our offense was just better. We all know that Deividas has been our best jump shooter over the last two or three years, but unfortunately like a lot of players, he's been trying so hard that I think he just hasn't relaxed this year and shot the ball as consistently as he has in the past. He spends so much time in the gym, I just think that the fact that we have not been playing very well was weighing very heavily on him, and he just relaxed himself, and it was one of those games that I'm sure most players will have in their career where they seem to come out of their stressful mental state. So he was locked in, and we didn't do anything different than we normally do except his along with some of the other players' shots were falling. Q. Just to continue on that for a moment, I'm told that Deividas is the kind of guy who's the first one in the gym to be shooting and first one on game day to be there before everybody else. He also seems to be one of the leaders in his senior year. Can you just talk about that aspect of his development? LEONARD HAMILTON: Well, Deividas is a gym rat. Normally when I come in in the morning, his car is always here, and he's here late and he's here early. The day we were shooting free throws at 11:00, he came in at 8:00 and shot his free throws. I mean, he works on his ball handling, and he's a real competitive youngster. He has a strong competitive spirit. He wants to contribute to his team, and I just think that he is trying so hard to be a good teammate that I think sometimes it's allowed him to be maybe a little more stressed by his desire and his competitive spirit than usual. I think most coaches would tell you, he shoots the ball extremely well in practice, and we feel that it's just a matter of time before he relaxes and it kind of all evens itself out, and it happens to be one of those days. We've never lost confidence in him, he just has been in one of those season‑long shooting slumps. In games, but he has shot just as well in practice as he did the other day against Carolina. Q. When you see a game like this, how do you think it might change people's perceptions of you, of Florida State as a team? LEONARD HAMILTON: The only way it's going to change perception is that we continue to keep playing well. I mean, every team will have a game during the year where you play lights out. I think that happens to us, and hopefully some of the great teams like Carolina, they'll have 10 or 15 of those games where they play lights out. We'll have to see what this game does mean in relation to how we continue to play, how we finish the season up. I mean, we think that we have a chance to be a pretty good basketball team, but we have not been consistent in a lot of different areas. I think most of it has been mental, but that's easier said than done. What we have to do is keep stacking on some good games back to back to back, and then we'll evaluate that at the end of the season. Q. Could you tell us why you took a chance on Bernard James at the time you first came across him, and then talk about the extent to which he's developed as you had hoped? LEONARD HAMILTON: Well, I'm not real sure that I felt like I was taking very much of a chance. When you're building programs, and that's what we've done, our Odyssey, our legacy has been going to places and building programs where they have been a little bit inconsistent. That's kind of what we've done at Oklahoma State and Miami and Florida State. So we're accustomed to looking under more rocks, knocking on more doors, maybe being turned down more, but we've felt that we had to have a different focus of evaluation. We felt he was athletic and he was committed and had a great attitude, showed a certain level of maturity, and we thought the only thing we had to do was‑‑ we knew he would be eager to learn, and we just had to teach him. I never felt that it was a chance, a negative. I always felt positive that it was an opportunity for us to help each other. That was basically a conversation: We're actually committed to trying to help you reach your goals, and we think that you have the ability to help us reach our goals, and we'll be good for each other. We both bought into it, and that's why we're at this point. Q. Did you practice yesterday at all, and if not, what do you expect out of your next practice? Are you one of these coaches who runs an especially difficult one in the aftermath of a great performance? LEONARD HAMILTON: Well, no, we did practice yesterday. We have a short turnaround on the game, so obviously we have to manage our energy from that standpoint, but we had probably an hour, hour and a half practice yesterday where we went over our game plan and did some shooting, did some stretching, more shooting, did some defensive work and some offensive work. We didn't keep them very long, but we were to the point as to what we felt that our game plan would be, and hopefully today we'll come back and try to fine tune. Q. Just to return to Deividas for a moment, when he first arrived at Florida State, I know he played in the U.S. as a young man from Lithuania and not totally accustomed to American life. You've had other foreign students before. How did he fit in with everybody else? How long did it take him and that sort of thing? LEONARD HAMILTON: Deividas was fine when he arrived. His mother lived‑‑ his aunt and uncle live in Chicago. He had gone to a private school from Lithuania somewhere in Virginia, then he left there after a year and went to the Findlay Prep in Las Vegas. He was probably more Americanized than some of the players that we already had in the program from America. He had no problem adjusting at all. He's a great student. He's graduating on time. He's very conscientious. He's a great teammate, has not been anything other than a model student athlete since he's been here. I wish I had more youngsters like Deividas. Q. And as far as his game and how it's come along in the four years, how would you characterize that? LEONARD HAMILTON: Well, obviously Deividas is not the typical European player. Most of the European players you get are great skill guys with tremendous skill, not very quick and athletic but are great shooters. He has a 40‑inch vertical. He's a very strong athlete, plays tremendous defense. He shoots the ball well and had to work on improving his skills. So he was not like a lot of the European players who are extremely skilled and unathletic, not quite as athletic and as quick typically. He is extremely hard‑nosed, tough, physical and athletic, a good shooter, and he's worked hard to improve his skills. Q. He fits into your defensive scheme well? LEONARD HAMILTON: Yes, very much so. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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