Everything Jim Larranaga Said Heading Into The 2024 Charleston Classic
Tournament season is here for the Miami Hurricanes basketball team and they have a difficult challenge ahead of them as they prepare to take on Drake on Thursday to start play.
How To Watch: Miami Basketball at Drake, 2024 Shriners Children’s Charleston Classic
Hurricanes head coach Jim Larranaga knows how important this tournament is and plans on taking advantage of it to enlighten himself, his coaching staff, and his team on how well they can play before conference play starts.
On the tournament and what the team can get out of it....
The first thing every opponent is so differnet. We played Drake on Thursday. Unlike the first three opponents we've played, they play at a slow tempo. So far fewer possession, a very disciplined offense, and defenses. They play to pack it in. So this is good preparation for many teams in our league that play the same defense and offense. And then whoever our next opponent is, those teams again are different. They got some really big guys. We haven't faced that kind of size yet. The whole purpose of playing in a tournament like this and this field will provide it, is preparation for the ACC. We'll have a chance to play different opponents with different styles from different leagues and in our league, the couches have so many different styles that game preparation is very challenging. We will have three games in a short period of time and leave an awful lot about where we are.
What has been learned from the first three games of the season...
Well in these games we liked to play fast and our opponents were willing to play fast with us. We learned that we can score the ball at a pretty high level. We scored almost 90 points in every game. We had a lot of different guys scoring so from an offensive standpoint it was very satisfying. From a defensive standpoint, however, we also learned that we're capable of playing very good defense which we did in those three games all in the first half. But in the second half, we also learned that we didn't sustain that same defensive intensity once we got the lead. That is a major concern for us.
On the growth of Paul Djobet...
Well, Paul is someone that was really under the radar and when we signed him, he came into a program that he was really basically counted on being like a tenth man. We were really looking for him to be in the rotation. But he kept really plugging away and working harder and harder and eventually making his way into the rotation. He helped us with his performance against Pitt, and he was able to maintain that role for the rest of the season. He worked very hard in the weight room after the season and during the summer. he is much stronger. he is playing much harder, much better defensively, and he's worked on the 3-point shot, which hasn't shown up recently but I think later on in the season that will start to show up and see that he is a consistent three-point shooter.
What have you seen from AJ Staton-McCray...
Bill Countrey brought him to my attention, very late in the portal season. We were still looking for a versatile guy and the way Courtney described him is 'AJ is playing at Samford and they went 28-2'. That sold me. He was a starter, at least a part-time starter, and he plays multiple positions. He can play the two, the three, and the other day we played him at the four when we went small ball. So with that in mind that intrigued me. Then we heard that he was from Florida, played at West Oaks Highschool, he's traveled a good bit but to bring him back home we thought he could fit in very very well. Paul Djobet also went to the West Oaks and has a great relationship with those folks so we thought this would work out very very well. We told him because of how deep the team is he might not start and he was fine with that. We have a guy that has a great attitude, and a great work ethic, comes from a winning program, has versatility in his game, he's a very good defender, so he checked all the boxes.
On something that has surprised him about this group...
I think the things that have surprised me most, are the extreme difference between our execution and ability to score the ball on offense and our inability to stop the opponent from putting the ball in the basket. Normally a team as good as we've been at scoring the ball is normally pretty good at guarding because the guys are smart. They know the offense, and they know how to guard people we're rebounding the ball pretty effectively so far we haven't played against any big team yet so this tournament will really enlightenment me and my staff and about where we are because we're going to see three different styles of play, especially against Drake a team that's extremely well coached, extremely well disciplined who plays a very slow tempo.
