Leonard Hamilton: "We're Not Who We've Been"
Florida State head coach Leonard Hamilton met with the media following the Seminoles' 94-66 loss to NC State Wednesday evening.
NOTE: Click on the video in the player above to watch Hamilton’s press conference.
Opening Statement
Obviously, from the way NC State played tonight, you can see they were extremely motivated. They were energized to the maximum degree. I thought their defense was about as good as we've ever played them. Normally, we like teams to press us. Over the years, we have schemes that we think that have the most presses, so they took advantage of our inexperience. They took advantage of our lack of experience on this FSU basketball team. I thought they exploded and did an outstanding job. I always tell people, “It's hard to shoot 60% from three when you're by yourself with no defense.” It just shows that they have a unique ability to create off the bounce and be accurate. They had one of those nights where their schemes and their abilities matched. When you get 32 baskets and you only have 10 assists, those are the guys who can really score by creating it off the bounce. That's a unique skill, and they have several of them. That makes it more difficult. When I look back over my coaching career, maybe five or six times, I've had two or three guys who were really good at creating off the dribble and knocking down threes, as well as taking the ball to the basket. That's the unique thing about them. You’ve got to give [D.J.] Burns a lot of credit because he's such a unique guy. He has such a high basketball IQ, and his skill set is that he is a great passer, and he sees the floor very well. It's hard to double him because he knows where everyone is on the court. He's like a point five. I don’t know if we've played against anybody with his skillset and his physical presence on the court. If they continue to keep playing this way, I think you can expect it to be a tough out for people when they get to the NCAA Tournament. We’re who we are right now. People have watched us play over the years. We’re getting the focus because of teams' past at Florida State. We keep seeming to get everybody’s best shot, whether we're at home or on the road. That's a compliment to our team, but this edition of our team is struggling, trying to live up to the standard that we’ve set. Hopefully, we will learn from this game when we get on the road to play against Louisville, and we can straighten it out. This has been one of those years where we are not who we have been, but we will be back.
On how hard it is to not be able to double team NC State...
We've been known to take people out of systems, we front the post, we switch one through five. That doesn't necessarily affect these guys because they have the unusual ability to create off-the-bounce and be accurate. They haven't always shot as well as a team as they shot tonight but when you see they are doing it somebody is always shooting this way and creating this way. Tonight they had everybody creating at the same time and that's a dangerous thing for a team coming in and playing a team of this caliber. You just have to take your hat off to them. If they keep staying with who they are and keep playing the way they played against us, you can expect them to have a good year. It's extremely challenging to defend when people can score from four spots from the perimeter and they're quick enough to drive by you. Then when the ball goes down, they have a big guy in the middle that makes decisions like he's a coach on the floor or a point guard. Those are unusual skills to match up with, especially with a low center of gravity where you're not really going to move him. They have a unique skill if they’re consistent they're going to be extremely challenging for people.
On his thoughts on NC State and being a good defensive team...
Well it's one of the better defensive teams we've played against all year. Tonight, I thought that they made us uncomfortable from the beginning. They were extremely active, overplaying and pressuring the ball. That really kept us out of sync almost the whole first half. Their defense was excellent, their offense was even better.