OPINION: Miami Hurricanes look in the mirror at Texas with program’s first Final Four berth on the line
For Miami Basketball Coach Jim Larranaga it was about practicing what you preach. He has a blueprint for building a winning basketball program and it was blown up in 2017 by a bogus FBI investigation that robbed Miami of two recruiting classes.
We aren’t just talking about ordinary recruiting classes. We are talking recruiting classes that included guys like Saddiq Bey, now a forward for the Atlanta Hawks, and Nassir Little, who currently plays for the Portland Trailblazers.
Larranaga was approaching his 70th birthday and he was careening back to square one. Many of his veteran coaching contemporaries were headed for the golf course in dismay over what college basketball had become. It would have been easy for Larranaga to walk away and call it a career, make a clean break. But all Larranaga could do was look inward for strength, wait for things to play out and do what he has done – bring it all back to the point where he is in the Elite 8 for the second season in a row.
“I tell them (the players) this all the time every day, over and over again. You have to go through life with a positive attitude. Life is 10 percent what happens to you and 90 percent how you react to it,” Larranaga said Saturday in between preparations for Sunday’s 5{05 p.m. game against Texas for a berth in the Final Four. “Second is you have to make a total commitment to being the best that you can be in every category, whether it’s basketball or academics or social life. You want to learn how to be successful.
“The third thing is that it’s very, very important to behave in a first-class manner. You hear all the major stories that’s constantly in the news about someone’s bad behavior. We never want that. We always expect — and in the recruiting process, my staff has done a great job of finding players who come from good families, good backgrounds, and have good values. So that’s very, very important.”
In other words, Larranaga rose above. He didn’t complain publicly even though he had every reason to do so. He rode out the nightmare rather than fade into the sunset. And when the cloud had finally moved on, the coach rolled up his sleeves and went back to work.
Four years later, he is still here and back commanding college basketball’s greatest stage in a bigger and better way than he ever has before. Miami might be in the Elite 8 for the second season in a row, but this time around you can feel a bit of an edge to the effort.
Anything can happen Sunday against Texas. But you get the sense that the Longhorns are going to have to play a very complete basketball game at the T-Mobile Center to have a chance to derail what Miami has going on right now.
“Man, they’re well coached,” Texas Coach Rodney Terry said Saturday. “Coach Larranaga, I’ve got a lot of respect for him. Over the years we’ve had a chance to compete previously, when he was coaching at George Mason, and I was at UNC-Wilmington.
“He has his team playing at the highest level right now. They can play really fast in transition. They do a great job of really sharing the basketball. They’ve got great guard play. They have an elite offensive rebounder with Omier inside. They’re a very talented ball club. They’re underrated defensively. They do a great job of really trying to turn you over, their length. They’re stunting and doing a great job of really trying to get after you defensively. It’s underrated. They’re a really, really good ball club. Any time you win the regular season ACC, you’re pretty doggone good.”
Larranaga is in his 39th season of coaching, has gone 724-482 and is in his 12th year at Miami where he is 254-148. He is No. 9 on NCAA’s list of winningest active DI coaches, No. 34 on the NCAA’s list of all-time winningest coaches, and the only coach in NCAA history with 100-plus conference wins at three Division I schools and/or in three Division 1 leagues. He is one of three coaches in NCAA history with 150-plus wins at three DI schools.
But this is only his third time in the Elite 8. It may be the second year in a row, but this is nothing to be taken for granted.
So Larranaga likely will be appreciative when he walks out on the court Sunday night. But you also can’t diminish how much this moment will mean to him.
“No one is satisfied getting to an Elite Eight,” Larranaga said. “Every team wants to get to the Final Four and win a National Championship.
“We’re no different than the other seven schools. But it’s a challenge. Every team you play is different than the previous matchup, the way they defend, the way they rebound, the way they execute their offense.”
This is the first time since 1978 that there are not any No. 1 seeds left in the Elite 8. They have all been eliminated. Miami is still standing.
The Hurricanes are in a similar situation to where they were last year, just the name on the other jersey has changed from Kansas to Texas and the Longhorns are a No. 2 seed as opposed to a top seed and eventual national champion like Kansas.
Miami took a six-point lead into the half in Chicago 12 months ago, thirty minutes from the Final Four. In the second half, the Hurricanes experienced nerves and foul trouble and got run off the court.
Larranaga was asked if there’s a lesson to be learned from that experience a year ago.
“Yeah, don’t get in foul trouble,” the coach said. “Really, we were ahead by six at halftime against Kansas in the Elite Eight, but we had several guys sitting on the bench in foul trouble, and that really made the difference. We could not sustain the effort. We had a couple of guys foul out. They had a great team, and they ended up winning the National Championship.
“They experienced this last year. They understand the level of competition and what’s at stake, but Jordan and Isaiah and Wooga were on that team, and hopefully they can kind of help bridge the gap with the other guys on the team, including Nijel and Norchad, of getting them to know that it’s not about who we play and it’s not about where we play, but it is how we play. How we play means we have to execute our game plan better than our opponent executes its game plan, and that will be true against every team we play.”
Guard Isaiah Wong nodded his head in agreement.
“I feel like last year we gained a lot of knowledge of like how it was,” Wong said. “So I feel like with this team this year, we’re just going to play through it. We have me and Jordan and Wooga to show Nijel and Chad the experience and just help each other throughout the game tomorrow and just be the best version of each other.”
In Texas, they are facing a team that is much more a mirror image of themselves.
“In the ACC we’ve played against a lot of teams that had two 7-footers in the starting lineup,” Larranaga said. “This is a much different matchup for us. I think it should make for a great game.”
Most college teams look for quality closed scrimmages before a season as a quasi-exhibition game. Texas played Houston in a true test to see what kind of team it had.
So the Longhorns understand what Miami just accomplished in its Sweet 16 game against the top-ranked Cougars Friday night. The Hurricanes will not catch them by surprise after scoring more points against them than anybody has in more than five seasons.
“They’re a great team and obviously they’re playing really well right now,” Texas guard Marcus Carr said. “They played really well yesterday. Just the physicality. That’s the biggest thing we noticed.
“We understand what a physical team they (Houston) are and how they attack the glass. So to see the job Miami did against them and the physicality and the way they rebounded the ball, definitely speaks to the toughness of their team and how they play. So we’re going to have to match that.”
Texas has Miami’s attention as well. The Longhorns have had some ups and downs. They lost their head coach Chris Beard before the season after Beard was arrested when his fiancé called 911 and told police Beard had strangled, bit and hit her during a confrontation in his home. The Longhorns also dropped some tough games like everyone else, but they also beat Creighton, split games with Kansas State and won two of three against Kansas. They are a legit No. 2 seed.
“This is a very complete team,” Miami forward Jordan Miller said. “Looking at the box score yesterday, they had all five of their starters in double digits. So I’m assuming whoever is hot that night is who they’re going to get the ball to.
“The main theme has been every team in this tournament is good. Don’t sleep on any opponent. Anyone can have a night like Nijel had yesterday. So you’ve just got to make sure you’re locked in and don’t let your opponent get any easy buckets to get them going.”
Miami came into the NCAA Tournament as a clearly underrated No. 5 seed, tainted by head-scratching losses to Georgia Tech and FSU. The Canes have certainly outplayed their seeding in victories over Indiana and Houston.
“It feels great being part of this, making history,” Omier said. “It just feels good doing it with my brothers. But we’re not finished yet.”
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