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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE BASKETBALL MEDIA CONFERENCEJanuary 28, 2013Leonard HamiltonCOACH HAMILTON: We played two games last week and came from behind at home to beat Clemson at home at the buzzer. We played on the road against a Miami team that's playing very well. I thought they played very well, and I didn't think we played very well. Executed like a very mature team that's on a mission, and I think we had too many points where we played like an immature team that didn't have the right direction. We got our hat handed to us. We have another home game against Maryland. We're 3‑3. We're still trying to claw and scratch and see if we can get back into the upper echelon of the ACC. Q. I know most people who follow college basketball know about Michael. But I was wondering if you could share a little of your feelings of a guy on your team who maybe doesn't get as much attention, maybe does some of the little things, but doesn't always necessarily show up in points and rebounds? Your thoughts on maybe a guy who is a little unheralded and maybe does a little of the dirty work for you guys? COACH HAMILTON: I think that's part of our problem. We don't have enough guys on our team that are doing a lot of the dirty work. Terrance Shannon was our dirty‑work guy until he got injured. He was giving us a lot of energy, a lot of hustle plays, blocked shots, rebounds, becoming a great defender. He was our most unheralded player. Now that he is recuperating from a neck injury, we don't have anybody replacing that type of energy. We have three veterans. Michael and Miller, who has been hampered by a foot injury, and Okaro White are the three veterans we have returning. All the other guys are basically new players. I wouldn't identify us right now as having a guy that replaced what Terrance Shannon gave us. Q. I wanted to ask you, Michael did it again against Clemson. Can you just talk about his ability to hit that second clutch shot? I don't know anybody in the ACC that's done it that often as he has in the last two years? COACH HAMILTON: Well, Michael's having to make a tremendous adjustment, because we have facilitators on the team that we lost last year. Michael is more of a catch and shoot guy who finished a lot of plays and made shots because the ball was rotated to him. And this year he's been caught in a situation where he's had to become more of a distributor. That's not what he does best. So he hasn't had as many opportunities. But because Michael's such a gym rat, and he's in the gym working all the time, he has the ability to work just as hard in the gym by himself as he does when he's on the floor just playing in the game. So I think that gives him a certain level of confidence that when those stressful moments arrive in the game, he's done it enough in practice, by himself, in addition to practice, that he has a tremendous amount of confidence and he's more relaxed and focused in those situations. That's allowed him to shoot with a lot more confidence. Q. Was the bank three really what he was aiming for? COACH HAMILTON: Absolutely not. I think that probably has a lot to do with just being focused. In our game we always get some lucky bounces. If you go back and watch the game, a lot of times you'll be scrambling for rebounds and the ball bounces off someone's hand. We were playing against someone the other day and we lost four or five of those where we were hustling and getting deflections and getting our fingers on balls. It always seems to fall back into the guy's hands that put it in the basket. That's one of those things that happen. If you have enough bad things happen, you get lucky every once in a while. I think those are lucky banks for us. Q. When you win a game like you did at Maryland last month or early this month, is there sort of a concern when their team is coming back that you guys have to be maybe more focused? COACH HAMILTON: That's a tremendous observation. I feel that way every time we play. Just the quality of the teams in the ACC are such a level and all the games on TV where everybody has the machines, and all of our things are charted, your strengths and weaknesses. So there won't be any surprises. No one's going to surprise anyone of any new play or anything of that nature. We have a tremendous amount of respect for Maryland. They'll make the adjustments they need to make. They made some game‑time adjustments that we had problems handling. They're a good basketball team. They're well‑coached like all the teams in the ACC. Any time you play a team the second time around, you expect them to be a little better than they were the time before you played them. You just don't want the fact that you won the game to relax your players and them not remember it was a hard‑fought game that we had to come from 12 or 13 down, and we still were able to blow the game open by three points. Q. Just for follow‑up, what is the progress with Shannon and obviously his loss has made a tremendous impact? COACH HAMILTON:  No doubt about that. It might have been in the Maryland game. We had eight rebounds in 14 minutes. He had a big impact on that game, sending them big, strong, physical guys inside. We all know that Maryland's got some heavy duty bodies in there who take up a lot of space, and he neutralized in the last game. We lost that so someone else will have to step up. But with Shannon out for a while, I'm not encouraged one way or the other. If we're going to err on the side of being extremely cautious. I don't anticipate him coming back any time soon. Who knows? Unless he has a speedy recovery. He's still in a neck brace. I don't expect that to come off for a while. The good news is that the injury was not nearly as bad as‑‑ it was not nearly as bad. It's an injury that can completely heal, but it takes time. And everybody's different in terms of the healing process. We're going to let nature take its course. It doesn't weigh heavily into our plans right now. We'll be happy and grateful if something happened where the healing process was speeding along. But right now we're moving on with the idea that it's a strong possibility he might not return this year. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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