OPINION: Miami tries to stay afloat as college basketball changes

Starting to become harder and harder to distinguish college athletes from pro athletes.

Lykes? Won't be missed see you later imo as that was one heck of an ankle deal the surgery must have attached all the ligaments and then some. More to all these stories like somebody said with the Paul Harvey deal.

I wanted a new coach but if it is Coach L gonna support it and hope he can work some magic. I am sure he would like to dance some more with his players but maybe it wasn't in the cards with the current group? Recruiting failures on coaches part? Me first players hence he wouldn't meet with the coach first?

Who knows...seems like quite the dysfunctional program at the moment.
US sports culture is an anomaly.

In most countries, you're always a professional. The 10 year olds on the youth squad study, run, lift, and eat at the club.

Whether it's preparing to be a professional player, coach, trainer, the athletes here are acting more and more the way internationals have for decades.
 
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I understand what you're trying to say, but there are not a lot of great 70+ year old coaches. I think there are about 360 Division I basketball programs and you named 5. I agree with Pitino, Coach K, Boeheim, Roy and Ham, but an argument can be made that most of these guys if not all of them are past their prime as coaches. Aside from the coaches listed, who else over 70 can you say is a great coach?
They are all great coaches, and all are in the twilight of their careers. The sun will be setting on each of them in very short order.
 
They are all great coaches, and all are in the twilight of their careers. The sun will be setting on each of them in very short order.
I agree. Interesting as I noted above, though, that FSU just gave Hamilton a 5 year extension (to age 77).
 
US sports culture is an anomaly.

In most countries, you're always a professional. The 10 year olds on the youth squad study, run, lift, and eat at the club.

Whether it's preparing to be a professional player, coach, trainer, the athletes here are acting more and more the way internationals have for decades.
I understand that BUT college sports here in the states used to be different. I am all for soccer academies here in the US as that is the only way we catch other countries in that sport. However, if you still want to play minus the academies then the NCAA could be your outlet. Watered down perhaps but you could still play in college.

Free agency? Was never a big fan and now it is college too. I am all for paying these kids now. With that, pick your package...

Straight salary no school
Salary and school
Education paid for

With that, it is a 4 year contract unless you quit to turn pro...I would suggest you take the straight salary option

This will probably be unpopular but it is just a not thought out well opinion by this author lol
 
I understand that BUT college sports here in the states used to be different. I am all for soccer academies here in the US as that is the only way we catch other countries in that sport. However, if you still want to play minus the academies then the NCAA could be your outlet. Watered down perhaps but you could still play in college.

Free agency? Was never a big fan and now it is college too. I am all for paying these kids now. With that, pick your package...

Straight salary no school
Salary and school
Education paid for

With that, it is a 4 year contract unless you quit to turn pro...I would suggest you take the straight salary option

This will probably be unpopular but it is just a not thought out well opinion by this author lol
We agree. I've read a bunch of articles on the subject and these authors don't realize the 'solutions' they propose are more convoluted than what already exists.
 
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Maybe Coach L is just trying to leave the Hurricanes program the way he got it. This guy is starting to make me miss Frank Haith.
 
Maybe Coach L is just trying to leave the Hurricanes program the way he got it. This guy is starting to make me miss Frank Haith.
Haith didn't leave the program in that bad a shape for L. We went 21-15, 6-10 in the ACC and lost in the NIT Quarterfinals in Haith's last season here. Certainly much better shape than we are in now.

When L got here, he inherited some good players from Haith: Durand Scott, Malcom Grant, Trey McKinney-Jones, Rion Brown, Garrius Adams, Reggie Johnson, and Julian Gamble.

In fact, many of the key contributors on the 12-13 team were Haith's recruits: Scott, TMJ (transfer), Brown, Johnson, and Gamble. There were a few exceptions: two key transfers brought in by L - Larkin and Kadji.
 
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The transfer portal gave this program life bc we couldn’t land elite guys. Now that we’ve landed top 100 guys it’s obvious that the coaches are lost. No big has gotten better outside of Tonye. He went from a disaster to serviceable.
Even from the 2013 team, most of those guys just needed PT to show what they could do. Larkin, Kadji, TMJ, JG, and Rion Brown were all good players who got that chance at Miami. Reggie was solid but he never got better.

Top guys have been a disaster too, except for Lonnie.

Dewan might’ve gotten worse here. Beverley and Wong play pick up basketball.
Waardenburg has gotten worse. Timberlake showed no signs of progression. Anthony Walker is lost 90% of the time.

Newton never got better and never learned to shoot. He and Larkin, to me, both fall into the category of progressing bc they stopped turning it over as much. Nothing fundamental about their game changed other than who was around them.

Durand Scott is the only player who kept getting better At all phases of the game under this coaching staff.
 
The AD needs to step in and do something. Coach L has been great for us, but he's not what we need for the future. If you look at the guys he's focusing on in the transfer portal, you can already see he's not going to get many of those kids. We don't want to miss out on transfers and then miss out on the 2022 recruits.


I laughed. Hard.
 
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Larrañaga is actively destroying this team with his pride...ego...stubborness...whatever the fvck you want to call it, but regardless, it needs to be discussed with him via someone above him (lmfao...I know) or gtfo (lmfao...I know)

I agree with everything you say here, but unfortunately Larranaga made up his mind a while ago. He doesn't plan on leaving anytime soon. He's been telling people he wants to see this thru and plans to coach his contract out. So, unless he has a change of heart or the UM administration decides to make a change, L will be with us until 2024.
 
If all of this is true, L is acting like he's Coach K or someone like that. They can maybe get away this. Like Nick Saban can. L cannot.
 
He really does sound like a bitter, stubborn old man for the majority of that article. I get his concern over today's basketball culture, but he also sounds like someone who refuses to accommodate and adapt to today's game and the modern athlete's mentality. The Lykes excerpt is just unfathomable if true. You don't take back your best (or second best) player just because he didn't attend a meeting?
problem with today's kid's, it's all about me, which really doesn't translate to the team concept older coaches prefer.
 
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Wow. Just read.

It's almost as if Ferman has a formula or template for these articles—where make some intro statement, give some analogy (taking on water here, "fog of war" always used in football articles), come off like he's taking a stance against the problem—and then spend the rest of the article making excuses for or defending said maligned coach.

This whole sentiment that "most coaches around the country are in the same boat" as over 2,000 kids will have transferred by year's end—so what? There are countless programs finding a way to win and succeed.

Seems to be such a common refrain for Miami athletics; a laundry list of reason why things go wrong, countless excuses and finger pointing in regards to scandals that crippled the program years back.

A lot of words here that say and do nothing, outside of making excuses for Larranaga's backsliding this season.
Basically our plan to come out of this is to zoom call as many players as we can. Can someone actually looked at our strength and conditioning program, or offseason individual training. Good grief do we even have a shooting coach, we are consistently the worst 3 point shooting team in the ACC. I think we have a defensive and a offensive coach what that entails I really don't know. You watch the really good teams, and they are really fun to watch on offense.
 
US sports culture is an anomaly.

In most countries, you're always a professional. The 10 year olds on the youth squad study, run, lift, and eat at the club.

Whether it's preparing to be a professional player, coach, trainer, the athletes here are acting more and more the way internationals have for decades.
Kobe Bryant made a great point about this same subject. He hated AAU ball, he mentioned that in Europe you worked on your game ( fundamentals) all week long. Only on Sundays, as a reward for working on your game, were actual games schedule. According to Kobe, AAU is the worst thing that has happened to US Basketball, all they do is play games.
 
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