Remember the 27-second press conference with Jim Larrañaga after Miami had lost 60-38 to the UVA Basketball team back in February?
It lasted all of one question, that question being a modest attempt at just getting the coach on the record about the game.
“The game? They just outplayed us in every aspect of the game. We didn’t play well. They played really well. Thank you for your attention.”
And …
That was it.
No BS; he got up and just left.
I gotta be honest here: that was the best postgame presser I think I’ve ever seen.
ICYMI
- ‘The game?’ Miami coach Jim Larranaga had enough of that press conference
- Virginia puts Big Monday chokehold on Miami, in convincing 60-38 win
- Miami, Final Four team a year ago, ends season with 10th straight loss
It was also, as it turns out, the beginning of the end of the coaching career for Larrañaga, a former assistant at UVA, back in the Ralph Sampson era, who led George Mason to a Final Four in 2006, then got Miami to the Final Four in 2023, just a year and a half ago.
The blowout loss to the Cavaliers back in the early part of the year began a 10-game losing streak for Miami, which had come into that game with a 15-7 record, a 6-5 mark in the ACC, very much in the running at the time for a return to the NCAA Tournament.
The 10-game losing skid last year was compounded by a 4-8 start to the 2024-2025 season, with a loss at home to Charleston Southern on Nov. 30, and a 78-74 home loss to Mount St. Mary’s this past weekend, in what turned out to be Larrañaga’s final game.
The reason he’s stepping down now is a similar reason that we saw UVA’s all-time wins leader, Tony Bennett, step down before the 2024-2025 season had even tipped off.
ICYMI
- Tony Bennett steps down as UVA Basketball coach: Why this isn’t a surprise
- UVA Basketball: Tony Bennett, with humility, decides, it’s finally time
- UVA Basketball: Tony Bennett passes the torch to right-hand man Ron Sanchez
“I just didn’t feel like I could successfully navigate this whole new world that I was dealing with,” is what Larrañaga told The Athletic, after the news had gotten out on Thursday about his decision to step down from the Miami job, effective immediately.
Now, it happens also that Larrañaga is also 75 years old, and a source close to him from his UVA days tells us that Larrañaga is “just not physically up to coaching right now,” that Larrañaga is “physically exhausted,” and had thought about retiring after the 2023-2024 season, but talked himself into another year.
You shouldn’t have to wonder much about how going 4-18 in his last 22 games, with a roster that looked nothing like the group that he took to the Final Four in 2023, might have factored into his thinking.
Only Nijel Pack, who had been lured to Miami by NIL money, is still around from the guys who were key contributors to the 2023 Final Four run, with Norchad Omier now at Baylor, Wooga Poplar at Villanova, Harlond Beverly at Wichita State, Bensley Joseph at Providence and AJ Casey at Saint Louis.
“What shocked me beyond belief was, after we made it to the Final Four just 18 months ago, the very first time I met with the players, eight of them decided they were going to put their name in the portal and leave,” Larrañaga told The Athletic today, which, yeah, wow.
“I said, ‘Don’t you like it here?’ ‘No, I love it. I love Miami. It’s great.’ But the opportunity to make money someplace else created a situation that you have to begin to ask yourself, as a coach, what is this all about? And the answer is, it’s become professional,” Larrañaga said.
Larrañaga was making $2.5 million a year at Miami, which is well below market value for an ACC head coach, but still, good money, obviously.
I don’t get the sense that he begrudges the kids making money, as much as, it’s just hard to do the job that he had been doing since his first head-coaching gig at American International in the late 1970s, with rosters turning over every year, with money as a key factor there.
“It’s a pro sport,” Larrañaga said. “Now, you have to have a pro mentality, and you have to have a pro system in place to deal with all of it. If we’re going to have agents, if we’re going to be paying substantial amounts of money, then there needs to be some accountability for that.”
That’ll happen, eventually, hopefully, sooner rather than later.
The NCAA and its member institutions, and their presidents and ADs, will realize that it’s up to them to change the rules to allow schools to enter into long-term contracts with top recruits, treating the relationship between schools and student-athletes more like the “work study” arrangement that Larrañaga thinks is the best model going forward.
But whatever is coming in that respect won’t come for another uncomfortable year or two or more.
In the here and now, college athletics, when it comes to football and men’s basketball, anyway, is very much the Wild, Wild West.
And if you’re a guy like a Tony Bennett, like a Jim Larrañaga, and you know you’re not the best guy to be in place to handle things as is, it’s probably best to move on.
“When I’m not able to do that, I say to myself, you need to step down,” Larrañaga told The Athletic. “I needed to step aside and let someone who is better equipped to handle this new world than I am.”
Video: Jim Larrañaga steps down
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Chris Graham
