Overheard, one reporter whispering to another, after Jim Larranaga’s 27-second press conference following Virginia’s 60-38 win over Miami on Big Monday.
“The sea was angry that day, my friends. Like an old man trying to send back soup in a deli.”
There’s a handy “Seinfeld” reference for just about everything.
Seriously, the bus to the airport, and the flight back to Coral Gables, that’s not going to be fun for anybody in the Miami Basketball program.
Larranaga, who took Miami to the Final Four a year ago, tried several times to call timeouts to stem Virginia runs – there was a 12-0 run, another 11-0 run, then an 18-4 run, in this one.
All for naught.
His team was averaging 80.8 points per game coming in.
Its previous season-low was 62, and that was in a win – a 62-49 win over Notre Dame in December.
Thirty-eight.
That’s simply unfathomable.
Larranaga, credit to his quickness off the dribble, he beat Tony Bennett to the podium, which takes an act of god – Bennett famously likes to get in, and get out, of postgames.
Bennett would rather have a root canal than have to sit through more than five minutes of questions from us media types.
As reporters were still hustling into the interview room postgame to try to beat Bennett there, it was a visibly perturbed Larranaga who was posted up at the head table behind the mic.
“OK, let’s go, anybody got any questions?”
I’m not sure here if he was the angry sea, or the old man trying to send back the soup.
I’m going to go with the angry sea, just because I don’t want him yelling at me about the soup.
There was, as it turns out, one question, an 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’s the best postgame presser I think I’ve ever seen.
I’m just saying, I don’t want to be on the other side of that deli counter.
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Chris Graham
