Isaac Fleming knows what you think about him. He also doesn’t care.

The Hawaii basketball sophomore is out to play every game this season proving that he has what it takes to stick around in the game long term.

“Just take it every day like I’m already a professional and just showing that I am mature and I’m not just no knucklehead out there, just talking,” Fleming said. “You hear a lot of stuff people say, ‘He’s this and that. He can’t control his mouth, antics and all.’ They don’t know me. So it feels good proving them wrong and just to continue to prove them wrong. It’s fun.”

This new ethos applies to both his skill set (prodigious) and his demeanor (work in progress). Watching the guard from Wilmington, Del., last season, one could underline the latter. He was the Quadruple T — talent, trash talk and technicals — rolled into a 6-foot-3 package.

Growing up in tight-knit Delaware, everybody knew everybody, and everybody who mattered talked trash. It was the game within the game. So if Fleming converted one of his slashing lefty drives to the hoop on you, he’d probably let you hear about it. He’d expect no less from his opponent.

“It’s very intense, because don’t nobody like to lose in Delaware,” he said. “So when we get out there and play, it’s a lot of trash talking. It shows where your heart is, if you can handle it. If you can’t handle it, then you don’t belong to play out there.”

In that respect, Fleming had an internal battle with his hoops roots when he first arrived for college in 2014. Through some rough patches and a little into his second season, he’s found some harmony. The team’s top scorer off the bench (10.5 points per game) is coming off his best back-to-back games as a Rainbow Warrior, and has impressed others with some maturity to boot.

“I can say he’s doing a little better job trying to control his emotions during the games,” said guard Niko Filipovich, who sometimes takes Fleming up on some verbal sparring. “And you obviously see that in practice a lot, when he drives in and doesn’t get a foul call or takes the hit, he just keeps on playing.”

Coach Eran Ganot has exhorted not just Fleming, but the other ’Bows to “play through” in-game adversity.

“We all deal with some frustrations within games, within plays, within practices,” Ganot said. “And the ability to play through things at a better level, to fight through things, has served him well.”

For Fleming, it goes back to taking things as a future pro.

That includes today’s game at the Stan Sheriff Center against UH’s Division II counterpart, Hawaii Hilo. For the winless Vulcans (0-5), it counts as an exhibition. But for the Rainbow Warriors (5-1), at least on paper, it is just like any other game.

“We take every opponent the same,” Fleming said. “We start looking at opponents different, that’s when upsets happen. So we’re just looking at it as we’re playing a Kentucky or somebody.”

That Fleming is still at the Sheriff, talking about the next opponent and how the season has gone so far (“we’re starting to play together more”), is remarkable in itself.

More than any other returning UH player, it was a rocky transition for him to go from interim coach Benjy Taylor, who recruited him out of the Massanutten Military Academy (Va.), to an unknown Ganot, who demanded much more structure.

Fleming tried to buy into the new schemes and Ganot’s philosophies for the first few weeks of the 2015-16 preseason. But he heard his name called — not in a good way — plenty of times during practices. Then, suddenly in late October, Fleming was gone from team activities. For more than a week in the preseason, Fleming was away from his brethren.

While Ganot left the possibility open that he could return, things didn’t look promising for several days. Then, after many long meetings, a truce was reached. Fleming returned, first as a spectator in practice, then to end of the bench just before the Chaminade exhibition. He had to earn his way back into the team’s good graces.

Even when he came back, it wasn’t easy, as he was asked to play with the second unit.

Fleming said he “definitely now” believes in the team’s direction.

“At first I felt like they didn’t believe in me as much as I thought they should,” Fleming said. “But they’re starting to show it now and I’m starting to grasp onto it. I’m trying to improve more and more and more, just to show them what type of player I really am.”

Ganot has been pleased by Fleming’s progress. After racking up five techs last season, Fleming so far has just one — against Nevada, when an official issued preemptive, offsetting techs to him and Nevada’s Marqueze Coleman.

“Give him credit for choosing the path that heads in the right direction,” Ganot said.

Fleming had a career-high 21 points in UH’s loss at Texas Tech on Nov. 28 and followed that up with an efficient 13-point outing against Arkansas-Pine Bluff on Dec. 2.

He is averaging 10.5 points on 51.3 percent shooting from the field, 34.8 percent shooting from 3 and 78.9 percent shooting at the line. All are above his 9.5/47.1/25.8/64.1 splits as a freshman.

Ganot also noted that Fleming’s turnover rate has gone from one every 10 minutes to one every 17 or 18.

“He tells me when I’m wrong, and he also tells me when I’m right,” Fleming said. “For him to see the progress and acknowledge it, it means a lot.”