Coach Jim Larrañaga met with the media to discuss the disappointing 15-17 season and the imminent flood in the Portal (Bensley Joseph, Michael Nwoko, Christian Watson and AJ Casey have already declared). Below is everything Coach L was talking about in his sobering post-season press conference:
On what went wrong: When we were a hundred percent healthy, we were a very good basketball team. It's hard enough to be successful missing one of your key players. But it's almost impossible to be successful when you have a different guy injured almost every game and you can't develop the kind of chemistry and bond. That's the first thing. The injuries impacted us in a huge way.
Second, I thought our bench players were very inexperienced, younger guys that hadn't really been through the wars and weren't able to help us overcome those injuries. Last year's Final Four team had Anthony Walker and Harlond Beverly and even Bensley Joseph. Experienced players that had been in the battles before. If you have that, then maybe you can make up for a key starter being out. But when you look at the injuries to Nigel Pack and then to Wooga Poplar, and then Norchard [Omier] misses a game, and then Matt Cleveland misses several games, and then Kyshawn misses a game. When there's no continuity in practice and preparation, you'll lose a lot of close games, and we did.
On leadership: You're only going to be as good as your leaders can provide. But the leaders also have to have guys who are willing to follow. One of the reasons we've enjoyed so much success in the last couple of years, getting to the Elite Eight and getting to the Final Four, is we stayed healthy the whole time.
Probably the biggest, maybe the most important decision that was made by a former Miami player was Sam Waardenburg's decision to stay. In what would have been his last year here, he broke a foot. Everything changed the day he broke that foot. He's a starter. We didn't have someone exactly like him. We had to start making adjustments. Then all of a sudden, Chris Lykes sprains an ankle and gets hurt. Kam McGusty pulls a hamstring. And all of a sudden, that team implodes. Why? Well, there's not enough leadership there to guide us in the right direction through all these minefields.
When Sam Wardenburg came into my office and I asked him about even the possibility of returning for a sixth year, I remember quite well him saying to me, “I'm not leaving here with the program being in bad shape. When I got here, we were really good, getting to the NCAA tournament with terrific players. I want us to get back to that. And I'm committed to coming back next year and helping that happen.”
So you have a leader like that, who not only comes back, but says why he's coming back. And then he gets the transfers, like Charlie Moore and Jordan Miller, to buy into his vision of what the team could be. And then the younger guys, the Wooga Poplars and the Bensley Josephs, kind of follow the system. And then you got a great player like Isaiah Wong, who's so excited to have a Charlie Moore and Jordan Miller next to him because they're smart, good basketball players, and they sense the confidence they have as a group. Then the younger guys kind of just follow suit.
When Sam graduated and Charlie graduated, who was going to fill that void? Well, the guys who filled that void were Nigel Pack. He came in and took Charlie's place. Norchard Omier, he took Sam's place. But the key was we had Isaiah and Jordan back, letting them know, “Hey, we're really good. And we're going to be really good. And we've got to keep our focus and keep healthy.”
We were healthy [in 2023] for the most part. We lost to Florida State at home. Who didn't play? Nigel Pack. We lost to Duke in the tournament. Who didn't play? Norchard Omier. So when you lose a key player, it's just very difficult. We're not so deep that we can sustain an injury to one of our very top guys and expect to be just as good.
This year, we started out fine. We went to France. We did some good bonding. We had some good chemistry. We weren't great in December. We had some bad halves, not terrible games. We lost at Kentucky. Very, very hard place to win. And we lost in New York to a good Colorado team. But we also beat Notre Dame. We also beat Clemson, who's in the NCAA tournament. We beat Pitt, who finished fourth in the league. And we played the number one seed, not just in our ACC tournament, but the number one seed in the NCAA tournament in North Carolina. We played them to the last possession.
But not having that combined leadership of everybody staying healthy and working towards it at the end of close games, we just weren't as good the year before. We were great at the end of close games. In [21-22], we were down 10 against Syracuse with a minute to go and won the game. We were down 18 against Syracuse at home, came back and won the game. The game of basketball really is about a team of players devoted to winning and having great synergy where they bring out the best in each other. It was very, very hard for our players to do that this year.
On whether he misevaluated players: Here's what I would say. When you recruit a young man, you have a picture of what he's going to be able to do during the course of his career. If it's not immediate satisfaction, if they don't play immediately, then all of a sudden they get discouraged very, very quickly. And then their mind is not on getting better, it's on, “Where am I transferring to?”
So you have a battle. Am I really working to improve? Or am I really thinking about leaving? Because commitment means both feet in, not one foot in and one foot out. With those same players who are going to enter the Portal, would they be better next year? How good was Isaiah Wong as a freshman? He was okay. Sophomore, a little bit better. But junior and senior year, he was great. So could these guys, if they stay and play next year and the year after, could they fall into that category? Yeah, sure. But I can't make those decisions for them.
There’s so many voices in their ear with opinions. You’ve always had parents who have their opinion, but now you have agents who have their opinion, you have AAU coaches, you have high school coaches, you have their friends, you have their roommates, you have guys they played high school ball with that went to other schools and found success and they're comparing themselves to them. Social media, oh my God. You have so many factors that determine a kid's mindset.
It’s a very popular thing to do to put your name in the transfer portal. There are approximately 4,000 Division I players. There's going to be 2,000 in the portal. That means half the players in college basketball are looking for a new destination. Does that make any sense to anybody? It doesn't to me.
In my mind, a lot of those players are actually actually saying, “I'm giving up on myself.” I have to go someplace else because I can't prove myself here. To a certain degree, that could be true. But in a lot of cases, as you get older, you get better. My coaches and I talk about it all the time. How many guys have transferred out of here and enjoyed greater success? You can look at the four that transferred last year and tell me what you think.
If you're looking at the whole recruiting landscape, you have two different categories. You got your fall recruiting for high school kids, where I think we've enjoyed a lot of success. Our recruiting class is ranked 11th in the country. We have three top players, Jahlil Bethea, McDonald's All-American, Austin Swartz, who's a top 50 high school recruit, and Isaiah Johnson-Arigo, who's got a very good chance of being Player of the Year in Minnesota. So we've done that part.
Now we've got to focus on what we call spring recruiting, which is mostly the Portal, although there might be some high school players that have slipped under the radar. Last year, we picked up Paul Djobet. We didn't sign him until June. But right now, we're going to be focused on the Transfer Portal. As we have players enter their names, we're going to be following other college Division I players who have put their name in. Then during this next month, try to sign for our needs.
So we need a guard, we’ve got to try to sign a guard. If we need bigs, which we obviously do, we just don't have very many big guys. It's been one of the things we were able to overcome for two years in a row by staying healthy. Then this year, with all the injuries, we just weren't.
On prioritizing the Portal versus high school kids: You have to do both. Let's use one of our players for an example. Let's say he decides to put his name into the NBA draft. OK. Norchard Omier and Nigel Pack did that last year. So did Isaiah Wong. All three players could have returned. So should we have signed somebody or should we have kept our fingers crossed that they were all going to come back? Well, you kind of do both. You kind of keep your eye on their progress and say, boy, it looks like Nigel may come back. It looks like Norchard may come back. And it looks like Isaiah's gone. So you kind of have to keep your eye looking towards the present and then looking forward towards the future.
Right now, we're going to have several players put their name in the NBA Draft. Well, will they pull their name out in a month? I don't know. My guess is no, they won't. Why? Because every player on our team, when asked, “Do you want to play in the NBA?” Every hand goes up.
On older coaches leaving the profession: I think a lot of the coaches that you're referring to have realized coaching is not as much fun. Normally, you bring a player in as a freshman. He plays a little, but he's not ready to really compete at the highest level. His sophomore year, he progresses. Then junior and senior year, he’s an all-conference player. Isaiah Wong's a perfect example.
But now that's no longer the system. The system is, I go someplace as a freshman, and if I don't have immediate satisfaction, I go someplace else. So let’s say a player is a freshman and you're working with him a lot to try to develop him. He's not quite the player you need to really be successful, but he's got the potential to do that in a year. So you spend a lot of time with him, and at the end of the year he tells you, “Thanks, but I'm going to put my name in the Portal and transfer and go someplace else.” That's very disappointing, very frustrating. It’s why I think a lot of my friends in coaching have just said, there's no sense in doing this anymore because they've taken the joy out of it.
On the joy he gets from coaching: If any of you have met my wife, you know I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing. The players are going to keep doing what they're doing. I don't have control over that. It's not like, hey, you call a play, and all of a sudden, the players just execute the play. No. You call the play, and then it is up to the players to execute. If they don't execute, nothing I can do about that. Well, practice it. Get them to do it right.
That’s what the game comes down. It doesn't come down to your preseason polls. Two years ago, we were picked 12th and finished in the Elite Eight. Last year, we were picked fourth in the preseason poll and finished in the Final Four. This year, we were picked top 10 in the country and second in the ACC and finished 14th in the league. I mean, there's no predicting accurately because you just don't know who's going to be healthy. You don't know how your chemistry is going to develop.
I love coaching. I love being around the players. I love practice. Practice is my favorite time of the day. So I'm going to keep doing it until practice is no longer my favorite time of the day.
On whether the players took for granted they’d be in the tournament: I do think our players assumed that. I think they took winning for granted. I think if you look at the other three teams that were in the Final Four, Connecticut's a one seed, San Diego State's a five seed, and FAU is an eight seed. We belong in there. But the issue we've had, as I explained over and over again, is things I can't control. When a kid sprains his ankle, he sprains an ankle. How long it takes him to recover from that, I have no control over.
On if any players have told him they’re returning: No. No, I don't know who's back. All the guys I met with last week [Five] are gone. By Friday, I'll have a much better feel for who's returning and who's not.
On building a team around Jahlil Bethea: Basketball is about building a team. A team is about having players with complementary skills. So you need guards who can handle the ball. You need guys who can shoot the three. You need everyone to be able to defend. You need big guys who can play with their back to the basket. Some big guys can stretch the floor and shoot threes as well. So we keep our eye on the portal trying to find the right complementary players to our guys. Hopefully, a half a dozen of our guys return. We only had 11 scholarship players. We’ve already lost half of them. This is a crazy business now.
On what went wrong: When we were a hundred percent healthy, we were a very good basketball team. It's hard enough to be successful missing one of your key players. But it's almost impossible to be successful when you have a different guy injured almost every game and you can't develop the kind of chemistry and bond. That's the first thing. The injuries impacted us in a huge way.
Second, I thought our bench players were very inexperienced, younger guys that hadn't really been through the wars and weren't able to help us overcome those injuries. Last year's Final Four team had Anthony Walker and Harlond Beverly and even Bensley Joseph. Experienced players that had been in the battles before. If you have that, then maybe you can make up for a key starter being out. But when you look at the injuries to Nigel Pack and then to Wooga Poplar, and then Norchard [Omier] misses a game, and then Matt Cleveland misses several games, and then Kyshawn misses a game. When there's no continuity in practice and preparation, you'll lose a lot of close games, and we did.
On leadership: You're only going to be as good as your leaders can provide. But the leaders also have to have guys who are willing to follow. One of the reasons we've enjoyed so much success in the last couple of years, getting to the Elite Eight and getting to the Final Four, is we stayed healthy the whole time.
Probably the biggest, maybe the most important decision that was made by a former Miami player was Sam Waardenburg's decision to stay. In what would have been his last year here, he broke a foot. Everything changed the day he broke that foot. He's a starter. We didn't have someone exactly like him. We had to start making adjustments. Then all of a sudden, Chris Lykes sprains an ankle and gets hurt. Kam McGusty pulls a hamstring. And all of a sudden, that team implodes. Why? Well, there's not enough leadership there to guide us in the right direction through all these minefields.
When Sam Wardenburg came into my office and I asked him about even the possibility of returning for a sixth year, I remember quite well him saying to me, “I'm not leaving here with the program being in bad shape. When I got here, we were really good, getting to the NCAA tournament with terrific players. I want us to get back to that. And I'm committed to coming back next year and helping that happen.”
So you have a leader like that, who not only comes back, but says why he's coming back. And then he gets the transfers, like Charlie Moore and Jordan Miller, to buy into his vision of what the team could be. And then the younger guys, the Wooga Poplars and the Bensley Josephs, kind of follow the system. And then you got a great player like Isaiah Wong, who's so excited to have a Charlie Moore and Jordan Miller next to him because they're smart, good basketball players, and they sense the confidence they have as a group. Then the younger guys kind of just follow suit.
When Sam graduated and Charlie graduated, who was going to fill that void? Well, the guys who filled that void were Nigel Pack. He came in and took Charlie's place. Norchard Omier, he took Sam's place. But the key was we had Isaiah and Jordan back, letting them know, “Hey, we're really good. And we're going to be really good. And we've got to keep our focus and keep healthy.”
We were healthy [in 2023] for the most part. We lost to Florida State at home. Who didn't play? Nigel Pack. We lost to Duke in the tournament. Who didn't play? Norchard Omier. So when you lose a key player, it's just very difficult. We're not so deep that we can sustain an injury to one of our very top guys and expect to be just as good.
This year, we started out fine. We went to France. We did some good bonding. We had some good chemistry. We weren't great in December. We had some bad halves, not terrible games. We lost at Kentucky. Very, very hard place to win. And we lost in New York to a good Colorado team. But we also beat Notre Dame. We also beat Clemson, who's in the NCAA tournament. We beat Pitt, who finished fourth in the league. And we played the number one seed, not just in our ACC tournament, but the number one seed in the NCAA tournament in North Carolina. We played them to the last possession.
But not having that combined leadership of everybody staying healthy and working towards it at the end of close games, we just weren't as good the year before. We were great at the end of close games. In [21-22], we were down 10 against Syracuse with a minute to go and won the game. We were down 18 against Syracuse at home, came back and won the game. The game of basketball really is about a team of players devoted to winning and having great synergy where they bring out the best in each other. It was very, very hard for our players to do that this year.
On whether he misevaluated players: Here's what I would say. When you recruit a young man, you have a picture of what he's going to be able to do during the course of his career. If it's not immediate satisfaction, if they don't play immediately, then all of a sudden they get discouraged very, very quickly. And then their mind is not on getting better, it's on, “Where am I transferring to?”
So you have a battle. Am I really working to improve? Or am I really thinking about leaving? Because commitment means both feet in, not one foot in and one foot out. With those same players who are going to enter the Portal, would they be better next year? How good was Isaiah Wong as a freshman? He was okay. Sophomore, a little bit better. But junior and senior year, he was great. So could these guys, if they stay and play next year and the year after, could they fall into that category? Yeah, sure. But I can't make those decisions for them.
There’s so many voices in their ear with opinions. You’ve always had parents who have their opinion, but now you have agents who have their opinion, you have AAU coaches, you have high school coaches, you have their friends, you have their roommates, you have guys they played high school ball with that went to other schools and found success and they're comparing themselves to them. Social media, oh my God. You have so many factors that determine a kid's mindset.
It’s a very popular thing to do to put your name in the transfer portal. There are approximately 4,000 Division I players. There's going to be 2,000 in the portal. That means half the players in college basketball are looking for a new destination. Does that make any sense to anybody? It doesn't to me.
In my mind, a lot of those players are actually actually saying, “I'm giving up on myself.” I have to go someplace else because I can't prove myself here. To a certain degree, that could be true. But in a lot of cases, as you get older, you get better. My coaches and I talk about it all the time. How many guys have transferred out of here and enjoyed greater success? You can look at the four that transferred last year and tell me what you think.
If you're looking at the whole recruiting landscape, you have two different categories. You got your fall recruiting for high school kids, where I think we've enjoyed a lot of success. Our recruiting class is ranked 11th in the country. We have three top players, Jahlil Bethea, McDonald's All-American, Austin Swartz, who's a top 50 high school recruit, and Isaiah Johnson-Arigo, who's got a very good chance of being Player of the Year in Minnesota. So we've done that part.
Now we've got to focus on what we call spring recruiting, which is mostly the Portal, although there might be some high school players that have slipped under the radar. Last year, we picked up Paul Djobet. We didn't sign him until June. But right now, we're going to be focused on the Transfer Portal. As we have players enter their names, we're going to be following other college Division I players who have put their name in. Then during this next month, try to sign for our needs.
So we need a guard, we’ve got to try to sign a guard. If we need bigs, which we obviously do, we just don't have very many big guys. It's been one of the things we were able to overcome for two years in a row by staying healthy. Then this year, with all the injuries, we just weren't.
On prioritizing the Portal versus high school kids: You have to do both. Let's use one of our players for an example. Let's say he decides to put his name into the NBA draft. OK. Norchard Omier and Nigel Pack did that last year. So did Isaiah Wong. All three players could have returned. So should we have signed somebody or should we have kept our fingers crossed that they were all going to come back? Well, you kind of do both. You kind of keep your eye on their progress and say, boy, it looks like Nigel may come back. It looks like Norchard may come back. And it looks like Isaiah's gone. So you kind of have to keep your eye looking towards the present and then looking forward towards the future.
Right now, we're going to have several players put their name in the NBA Draft. Well, will they pull their name out in a month? I don't know. My guess is no, they won't. Why? Because every player on our team, when asked, “Do you want to play in the NBA?” Every hand goes up.
On older coaches leaving the profession: I think a lot of the coaches that you're referring to have realized coaching is not as much fun. Normally, you bring a player in as a freshman. He plays a little, but he's not ready to really compete at the highest level. His sophomore year, he progresses. Then junior and senior year, he’s an all-conference player. Isaiah Wong's a perfect example.
But now that's no longer the system. The system is, I go someplace as a freshman, and if I don't have immediate satisfaction, I go someplace else. So let’s say a player is a freshman and you're working with him a lot to try to develop him. He's not quite the player you need to really be successful, but he's got the potential to do that in a year. So you spend a lot of time with him, and at the end of the year he tells you, “Thanks, but I'm going to put my name in the Portal and transfer and go someplace else.” That's very disappointing, very frustrating. It’s why I think a lot of my friends in coaching have just said, there's no sense in doing this anymore because they've taken the joy out of it.
On the joy he gets from coaching: If any of you have met my wife, you know I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing. The players are going to keep doing what they're doing. I don't have control over that. It's not like, hey, you call a play, and all of a sudden, the players just execute the play. No. You call the play, and then it is up to the players to execute. If they don't execute, nothing I can do about that. Well, practice it. Get them to do it right.
That’s what the game comes down. It doesn't come down to your preseason polls. Two years ago, we were picked 12th and finished in the Elite Eight. Last year, we were picked fourth in the preseason poll and finished in the Final Four. This year, we were picked top 10 in the country and second in the ACC and finished 14th in the league. I mean, there's no predicting accurately because you just don't know who's going to be healthy. You don't know how your chemistry is going to develop.
I love coaching. I love being around the players. I love practice. Practice is my favorite time of the day. So I'm going to keep doing it until practice is no longer my favorite time of the day.
On whether the players took for granted they’d be in the tournament: I do think our players assumed that. I think they took winning for granted. I think if you look at the other three teams that were in the Final Four, Connecticut's a one seed, San Diego State's a five seed, and FAU is an eight seed. We belong in there. But the issue we've had, as I explained over and over again, is things I can't control. When a kid sprains his ankle, he sprains an ankle. How long it takes him to recover from that, I have no control over.
On if any players have told him they’re returning: No. No, I don't know who's back. All the guys I met with last week [Five] are gone. By Friday, I'll have a much better feel for who's returning and who's not.
On building a team around Jahlil Bethea: Basketball is about building a team. A team is about having players with complementary skills. So you need guards who can handle the ball. You need guys who can shoot the three. You need everyone to be able to defend. You need big guys who can play with their back to the basket. Some big guys can stretch the floor and shoot threes as well. So we keep our eye on the portal trying to find the right complementary players to our guys. Hopefully, a half a dozen of our guys return. We only had 11 scholarship players. We’ve already lost half of them. This is a crazy business now.
