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NCAA MEN'S 2ND & 3RD ROUNDS: NASHVILLEMarch 16, 2012Leonard HamiltonBernard JamesLuke LoucksNASHVILLE, TENNESSEE Florida State – 66 THE MODERATOR: We'll begin with the Florida State press conference. Take an opening statement from coach, and then we'll take questions for the student athletes only. They'll return to the locker room. Then we'll take questions for coach after that. Coach Hamilton. COACH HAMILTON: I thought St. Bonaventure was very well prepared. They did a tremendous job fending us in the first half. They defended us a lot better than we defended them. We had some missed assignments that they created for with their execution. It's different to guard a tremendous low post player like Nicholson and him receiving screens to go out to the perimeter to shoot 3s, it was a difficult challenge for us. We didn't adjust nearly as well as we did the second half. I thought Bernard did a real good job of making him work for his opportunity. He still scored way too many points for us, but I'm not really sure it was as much about what we didn't do or how well -- us not playing as well as we're capable. I think it was more St. Bonaventure doing a great job with the game plan, taking certain things away from us that we been accustomed to doing, but I'm proud of our team. I thought we made the adjustments in the second half. We went to some different offensive systems. Got the ball to Bernard a little more regular, consistently, and he was able to come through for us. We've been kind of a resilient team all year. We've been in a lot of these close games and this was another typical ACC blowout by 3 points. THE MODERATOR: Questions for the student athletes. Q. Luke, after the game, you kind of were keeled over a little bit. Is that just exhaustion, or just talk about the emotions at the end of the game. LUKE LOUCKS: Yeah. I think physically and mentally our team was just really spent. And, again, like coach said, you know, that was one of the toughest games we're played all season, and that's all the credit to their team. They came out, fists swinging, and we really didn't hit back until, you know, maybe ten minutes to go in the second half. So you know, again, all the credit to them. We really, really had to fight to win that game. Q. Luke, talk about the rebound I think Okaro White knocked out to you after that first -- after the miss on the 1-and-1, 2-point game, just how big a moment that was in the game. LUKE LOUCKS: I think for as well as BJ played obviously the whole game, I think that single play was the most important play of the game. Before that, you know, St. Bonaventure had thrown in a couple of unbelievable shots. They really had the momentum. I don't know what the exact score was, but when he -- when Okaro uses his athleticism and goes in between three, four guys and somehow manages to get his hand on the ball and then have the talent to throw it back to us, it was just an unbelievable play -- I think the most important play of the game. Q. Bernard, you really kind of put the team on your back tonight. Can you kind of describe that a little bit and also describe that dunk you had there I believe it was about 6:52 left in the game to tie things up. BERNARD JAMES: Our guards were kind of struggling a little bit with shooting, you know, so, I mean, really needed to step up. I was able to get a couple post catches and finish some plays and get a couple of offensive put-backs off rebounds. Just -- I just felt like I did what my team needed. I played as hard as I could and, you know, wasn't being selfish, trying to do whatever the team needed. The rebound from the put-back from Luke, you know, I saw him coming down the court. I actually thought he was going to lob the ball to me, but that's why I kept running, but he went for the layup and he missed it, and I'm pretty good as reading my teammates off of what side of the rim the ball is going to bounce back off of. And so, I mean, when he laid it up, I knew it was coming back off the same side. So I just chased it down and was able to dunk it, and I think it was a pretty big momentum swinger for us. Q. Bernard, can you just talk a little bit about the matchup with Nicholson, and were you looking for like the cumulative effect defensively on him? Obviously, he's going to do some scoring for them. Was the idea to tire him down and make him keep working all day long? BERNARD JAMES: The idea was really to keep the ball out of his hands as much as possible, so he did a really good job getting to the ball. There were periods in the game where we were able to no-catch him and make his teammates do stuff with the ball, but overall throughout the game, he got the ball more than we wanted him to, and, you know, he definitely shot the ball much better than we wanted him to. I think he went 4-for-5 from 3. He normally -- I know he's a good 3-point shooter. He normally doesn't shoot like that. The guy was really focused. I've not nothing but respect for him. I see why he's an NBA prospect. Q. Luke, Ian gave you guys the first lead of the game on a 3 from the top of the key. Just talk about -- he wasn't shooting the ball really well and for him to have the confidence to step up and take that shot. LUKE LOUCKS: Yeah, Ian has no conscience shooting the ball in. Sometimes it can get him in trouble, but that's what he's in the game for. He's an unbelievable scorer. He can score in bunches. Anytime he's open, no one would argue we want him to shoot the ball. He sets up big and hit a huge 3-pointer and really kind of shifted the momentum. We were clawing and scraping our way back. That shot gave us one of the first leads of the game. It was a huge shot. I'm glad he made it. Q. Luke, can you talk about getting the ball to Bernard more. Is that something you guys talked about? Was he asking for it more, and just talk about how much it meant the way he played with the way you guys were struggling shooting the ball. LUKE LOUCKS: Yeah. I think, you know, to start our team has six seniors on it and quite a few upper classmen. We just kept saying over and over again, we don't want to go home, we don't want to watch of this tournament from our couches. In the midst of all that, BJ just kept screaming at me "Just get me the ball, I'm going to finish." As a point guard, when a 6-foot-10 Army veteran -- or Air Force veteran is screaming at you, you listen. So, you know, a few plays we weren't even running any plays. I was kind of waiting people out, giving him the ball, and obviously, you know, you look at the stat sheet he was producing all night long. THE MODERATOR: Any other questions from the student athletes? All right. Thanks guys. Questions for Coach Hamilton. Q. Coach, what's it like coaching this team? You've beat the likes of Duke, you beat some big teams, you've come from behind, you've played to the caliber of a team that's less. Every week seems to be a new experience. What's it been like? COACH HAMILTON: Well, the last comment you made that we play to the caliber of teams that's less, you got to be careful if you're talking about St. Bonaventure because I don't think they were less. I thought they were well prepared. They're loaded with talent. They executed very well. We were very fortunate to come away with a victory. They won their league. Some teams from the Atlantic 10 have done real well in the NCAA Tournament. I want to give them their just due. You know, we're battle tested. We've started the season off with moving parts all over the place, guys moving to different positions and have to adjust to different roles on the team, not having people get hurt. There was a time when we were still trying to put it together, but as the season moved on, everybody accepted their role, they become closer together. There have been times when maybe we have not been quite as sharp, and I think that might have been the case tonight a little bit. We weren't quite on it defensively, but this was a different challenge for us defensively. We normally can come up with schemes defensively to handle opponents. Nicholson created a different scenario, low post guy they run picks for to get out to the 3-point line. We didn't handle that very well the second half. I thought we made some adjustments the second half, much better. This team has responded. It's one reason why, from my standpoint what I've learned with this team is that exercise a lot of patience, because I know they always give good effort. We're not quite as skilled in certain areas as maybe we like to be. When they give a good effort and their heart is in the right place, I just figure if I'm patient with them, give them confidence, that we'll come around and we're talented enough we can win games. That's been working for us all season. Q. Leonard, could you talk about Luke's play, especially the last ten minutes of the second half? I know you had taken him out after a turnover that hit over the back backboard. COACH HAMILTON: I didn't take him out for the turnover that he hit the backboard. I took him out because he was beating himself up on defense, not playing with the same emotion that he had been playing. He was disappointed and down about that shot. That play was over. It was time to move on. I thought defensively he allowed that play to affect his energy. I took him out. Look, that mistake is behind us, you made a mistake, good player. Don't let it take away your energy. Let him go back in the game and let's play. That was my communication with him. Q. Leonard, Luke just described, you know, Bernard kind of screaming at him, "Give me the ball" down the stretch there. With Michael struggling, some of the guards struggling outside, how important was it for him to play the way he did on both ends of the floor tonight? COACH HAMILTON: Lots of games this year when we were not scoring as well from the perimeter, as a coach you try to get a feel for where you need to take the ball, you know, to be the most productive in that particular game. We ran several different offensive schemes to get him the ball and he responded real well. Then they started making adjustments. And for the most part, we like to look to our perimeter guys, I mean with our inside guys, every time we came down the court. We don't always do that. Sometimes Bernard doesn't always call for the call. He's such an unselfish player, he's just trying to play the game. During this particular game, he realized that if we were going to win, we had to get the ball to him inside. He was hungry for it. We were running things for him. I thought Luke made -- did a very good job of getting the ball to him without us even calling anything to get him the ball inside. It was a team effort. The guys realize let's take the ball inside, because we weren't shooting that well from the perimeter. Q. You talked about how much difference James has been in the offense. I was just wondering defensively particularly his job on Nicholson, he seemed to be on him quite a bit in the second half. How much difference did that make, kind of slowing him defense a little bit? COACH HAMILTON: We slowed him down a little bit. We didn't stop him. He had 20. We held him to 20. Great defensive job. He's a great player. You got to give him credit. I thought the coach did a great job of utilizing him, utilizing his skills. I think their schemes of posting him up, you can't get the ball inside, they do a dribble action, him over the baseline, get two, three screens to pop him out to shoot the 3-pointer. That's just unusual. I haven't seen very many inside guys with that type of versatility. We did slow him up a little bit, but then again, the other teammates stepped up and made plays to keep right in the game. The last ten minutes I thought we had a series there of a stretch where we held them in check for awhile until we kind of -- were able to inch back into the game and hit a couple big shots and some free throws and get some rebounds and come away with victory. I also thought, though, there were several times we got deflections inside where the ball went inside, we got some steals and extra possessions we were not getting in the first half. That gave us an opportunity to score as well. Q. How encouraging is it for you to come away with a tight win when Michael goes scoreless and what did St. Bonaventure do to take him out of the game? COACH HAMILTON: I'm not real sure that St. Bonaventure did anything that they didn't do to our entire team. They just defended very well. Michael had good looks that normally go down. He's a good shooter. It's just one of those days. Like sometimes you have guys that go out and play and not missing. You don't miss or do anything. That's the game of basketball. Sometimes great free throw shooters go to the free throw line, don't make the free throws. What we do in a situation like this, we keep playing. We had -- we won a lot of games with one person in double figures and other guys getting 6 and 8. That's kind of who we are. We have to play to each other, create offense for each other as a team, and defend our rear ends off. That's who we are. So, really, during the course of the game, it didn't really bother me that Mike hadn't made a basket or scored a point. He was doing a tremendous job on the defensive end. I thought he got some big rebounds, got some deflections, and his pressure on the ball I thought was huge. Gave us a little better time -- made it a little easier for us to find some of the screens as they were trying to initiate the offense. Even though he didn't score, I thought he had an impact on the game in a tremendous way. Q. Coach, could you talk about the Tampa connection and the players you have on your team and what they mean to you outside of their skills on the basketball court, what they brought to the team? COACH HAMILTON: Obviously Luke is a fourth year senior. He's going to finish school with his with his Master's degree. It says an awful lot about his character and willingness to take his academics seriously. Okaro started as a freshman. We moved him to the three this year and he was a four last year. That adjustment wasn't working very much. Not as much about what he was doing. We moved him back to the power forward. He comes off the bench behind Xavier Gibson and never complained one minute. That's one thing I said about those guys, they accept their roles even it if changes from game to game, but that's the way our entire team has been. Ian Miller is one of our better scorers. He doesn't start but comes in off the bench and plays as hard as if he was in the beginning the game. Xavier Gibson is one of our starters. They went small tonight. Okaro was a better match-up for us in this particular game. He stepped up and made his big plays. One of reasons why our team has been able to have certain measure of success is because of their unselfish spirit. Okaro and Luke are two of the most unselfish guys we have on our team. So, people in the Tampa area can be very proud of these guys. They do a tremendous job representing them as well as Florida State in the Tallahassee community. THE MODERATOR: Thanks, Coach. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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