Everything Jim Larranaga Said After Seven Straight Losses
Seven in a row and 3-17 in the last 20 games for Jim Larranaga as the Miami Hurricanes suffer another quad-one loss, this time to No. 1 Tennesee 75-62.
Larranaga knows that this season is starting to become a lost cause, and if things don't turn around quickly, it could become even worse for all parties involved.
Opening statement...
"In the first half we had a terrible last seven minutes. We were outscored 14-zip, giving them their 13-point lead. And then in the second half, we found a combination that worked very well for us. We cut the lead down to seven and then we made two real critical errors and it went immediately back to 10 and for the most part, that ended our chances of winning the game. But you got to give a lot of credit to Tennessee. Rick Barnes does an amazing job. His players played great. Zakai Ziegler is an amazing player and Chaz Lanier, we actually played against him last year. And he was great last year, but he's with this group around him. He's really special. I thought it was an entertaining game."
On the 14-0 run by Tennessee to end the first half...
"We were awful. It was like we never practiced before and we just met each other at that last timeout because it didn't look like our team. Everybody was shooting off the bounce, there's no passing, no assists, bad shot selection and when you do that, it's really demoralizing because it's hard to play good defense when everybody's mad that we took such a bad shot."
On key plays after cutting deficit to 7 points...
"We had three freshmen at the time on the court and I think they got a little excited and tried to hurry and cut the lead even more. And in basketball, it's all about control. You got to control yourself. You got to control the guy that you guard. And you got to be in control with what your other teammates are doing. So in those particular cases, when you get in a rush, like you saw and everybody in Madison Square Garden saw, whoa, what is he rushing for? But that's what happens."
On Tennessee's Chaz Lanier...
"He was really good last year, but confidence has a way of growing. So you're young, you're in high school, you're playing well, you're being highly recruited, your confidence grows. Everybody's telling you you're really good. You get to college and then all of a sudden, you're not playing quite as well. You're not scoring quite as much. All of a sudden, you start to question how good you are. The guys like Chaz keep working, get better, get stronger, get smarter and last year he was the number one, most efficient player in the country. Now he goes to a team that he's surrounded by other terrific players especially a guy like Zakai Ziegler, who can find him every time he's open. So he gets the shots that he wants and he can either shoot it or pass it up. And tonight he went 8 for 15, but he might have gone 10 for 15 on another night. He's going to be special."
On Divine Ugochukwu and three freshmen playing in the second half stretch...
"We got a little too anxious. We had three freshmen in the game and we rushed. But to go back to last May to tell you how crazy recruiting is. We'd already basically completed our high school recruiting when Hakeem Olajuwon called me. Hakeem is friends with my son Jay and he told my son Jay, ask your dad if he needs a point guard because I got a kid who plays with my sons in high school. They were 32-1 and I think this kid is going to be a really good guard. My son told me. I spoke to Hakeem and I told him really not looking for another guard, but he convinced me. You can take him in and redshirt him, I said, okay, we'll redshirt him. Then you have a player sitting out. Actually, he's in your program. Because now you don't even know if you're going to have guys back. OK, we're going to get this guy back. We have a year to work with him. And instead, during the summer, after about three weeks of watching him in practice. I said, oh, we're not redshirting this kid. But he still has a lot to learn today. He played very, very well, and he's had games like this already. But we're trying to bring him along. He's kind of understudying Nijel Pack. At the end, and I should have gotten Nijel back in earlier so they could have played together more and moving forward. That's in the back of my mind."
On defense and rebounding...
"I don't think it had anything to do with the building as far as I can tell. But if you go back to when we started practice and every time we had a scrimmage, the final score of the scrimmage was, like, 96-92. We were just scoring our brains out against each other. And the coaches kept saying to the players, this is not real. We have to improve our defense and our rebounding. We're not going to be scoring 90 points a game against the kind of competition we play. But as players, until you really show them, until we open up the season. The first game we scored 113. The next game we scored 96. And now the players are saying, coach, I told you we can really score. Well, then we go to a tournament. We're playing against higher level competition now. We're having a heck of a time trying to score and we're not defending very well. So in the last 12 days, two weeks, the attention to detail and practice by the players, not the coaches. The coaches have been doing the same thing. The players have all of a sudden realized that's what we have to do to improve as a team and they have a chance to win. And we did a better job tonight. If you look at the stats, they shot 40% from 3 and 48% overall, 83% from the foul line, so we still got a long ways to go. And we did get out rebounded, but we kept them up. They're a great offensive rebounded team. They only had five offensive rebounds so our rebounding is getting better. Our defense is getting better. And eventually, and here's what I told the team afterwards, eventually the winning will follow. You have to follow the process. You're not good at something, get better at it."
On Isaiah Johnson-Arigu...
"Isaiah is one of those laid back kids, very quiet, very unassuming and so he's a little bit behind some of the other guys in July and August. September, October and now in the last few weeks of practice, he has started to pick it up. He's been more aggressive. He's defending better, rebounding better. So in the second half, we needed to give Brandon Johnson a little bit of a rest. I never intended to just let Isaiah stay in the whole time, but he went in and he helped us. So if he can continue to improve, you'll earn playing time, and that's what I told the team afterwards, we haven't determined a set rotation yet because there's too many inconsistencies on the player's part. If you're inconsistent on defense, if you're inconsistent on rebounding, if you're inconsistent on offense, you're not going to earn consistent playing time."
