|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE BASKETBALL MEDIA CONFERENCEMarch 4, 2013Leonard HamiltonTHE MODERATOR: We have with us now Florida State head coach Leonard Hamilton. Coach, a few comments about your team, then we'll open it up for questions. COACH HAMILTON: Well, obviously we played a game on Sunday against a very high‑shooting University of North Carolina team. I felt we had a point there in the first half where we had, once again, about five or six possessions where we allowed them to get on top of us, and we had a very difficult time overcoming that period. We dug a hole for ourselves that we just couldn't seem to get out of. THE MODERATOR: Questions for Coach Hamilton. Q. I'm working on a story looking at the history of the dunk in the game of basketball. Could you share your thoughts on some of the good and maybe the not‑so‑good things that have come away the influence the dunk has had on the game. COACH HAMILTON: It's always been amazing to me how that athletic maneuver seems to energize the crowd. I remember before Kareem Abdul, when he was Lew Alcindor, came into college basketball, it's interesting to me how the dunk was outlawed for a year or so, which I thought was absolutely the best thing that ever happened to Lew Alcindor at the time, because that made him develop the famous sky hook. Once people realized that was a little bit unfair, they went back to allowing people to dunk. It seems as though that is one thing from an athletic standpoint that seems to energize the crowd and get people almost in a hysteria. We had it at the NBA All‑Star Game. Guys receive recognition, endorsements, commercials, all kinds of things as a result of demonstrating that athletic maneuver. It's part of the game. I'm sure it's here to stay. Little guys always want to dunk and big guys always want to shoot threes. Q. Do you feel there have been any negatives that have come away from the influence? Some have talked about it's had an effect on overall fundamentals. COACH HAMILTON: I don't feel so. I think maybe most of those guys are guys who can't jump, who complain about it. I think you're always going to have people who look at things differently. It's part of the game. I don't see any negative other than sometimes you just got to be careful not to get yourself overextended and unbalanced, get undercut. I see it as part of the game that makes it more exciting. Q. I've been asking coaches about defensive players in the league. Several coaches have mentioned Michael Snaer. I know he was a great defender last year. Has his individual defense been as good this year as you had hoped coming off of what he did last year? COACH HAMILTON: I think early on in the year we took Michael off the ball trying to develop some other youngsters for the future to defend the ball. Michael has the ability to defend smaller, quicker people, and he also has the ability to guard the setup guy as well as the guy who is the scorer. I think Michael, if there's been any lack of defensive execution, it's not been because of Michael's execution, I think it's been because of the youthfulness of players around him in terms of how they shrink the gaps, how they plug certain parts of the floor to make it easier for him to defend. We have not had the soundness as we've had in the past, which has made it more difficult for him to be as effective as he's been in the past. I don't think it's taken away from his ability. I just think that our team has been in such a learning mode in so many different facets, we have not been as good a defensive team. It may appear he's not playing as well defensively, but I think he's probably been better than he has been, it's just that we have not had the experience to support it. Q. You played everybody in the league now. Are there three or four guys that jump out at you as outstanding defenders? COACH HAMILTON: I think the Scott kid at Miami is a solid defender. He just seems to create issues for people that are somewhat different. I think he's a good on‑the‑ball defender, he seems to be play people without the ball. He has that quickness, that ability to make life difficult for us. He stands out to me as much as anybody. Q. This past weekend Terrance Shannon returned to the floor after missing 11 games. How do you view his performance? How is his neck or the injury he had? COACH HAMILTON: His injury is just about healed. There's no reason why he can't play. It's just that because of the neck injury, for those 11 games, which I guess spanned six weeks or so, somewhere thereabouts, he was not able to ride a bicycle or do any type of cardiovascular that would have jogged the vertebrae. He has not been able to do anything. He was able to do some light lifting, which was not very much. So when you take an athlete out of circulation for that long, he loses his conditioning. I told him we'd try to play him here and there, get him back on the court, that sometime during the season we might be able to get him back on the floor. We just gave him a couple minutes so the contact wouldn't bother him. He's not anywhere close to being in condition enough that we can utilize him for extended minutes. Our fear is that we need to be very careful with the condition because it could cause him to injure himself. Two days last week we did let him have some contact in practice, not very much, but a little, just to get him used to it. He responded pretty well in the game. We'll probably utilize him more in the next game, but not extensively. We're going to try to get a feel for where he is. THE MODERATOR: Coach, thanks for taking time to be with us today. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|