Miami embraced college basketball’s changes, and it put them in Final Four

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Miami’s Final Four run happened by welcoming college basketball’s changes, not running from them.

KANSAS CITY — Jim Larrañaga didn’t have to look back very far to find the motivation his team needed when the Miami Hurricanes entered the halftime locker room down eight points to the Texas Longhorns in the Elite Eight of the 2023 men’s NCAA tournament.

“I said look, against Kansas, we were up six at the half, but they got us in foul trouble and ran us out of the building,” Larrañaga told reporters after securing Miami’s first ever berth in the Final Four with an 88-81 win over the Longhorns. “I said we have to do that to Texas, and we did.”

Miami men’s basketball had never been to a regional final in program history before it hired Larrañaga in 2011. Now the Hurricanes were in the Elite Eight for the second straight year, both times when no one believed they should be there. Last season, as a No. 10 seed, Miami was 20 minutes away from the Final Four until the eventual national champion Kansas Jayhawks blitzed them in the second half by forcing turnovers, getting to the foul line, and breaking a shaky Hurricanes defense. Kansas out-scored Miami 47-15 in the second half to end their season.

So many key players on this year’s Miami squad were also around last year. Isaiah Wong, Jordan Miller, and Wooga Poplar felt the pain of last year’s defeat, and didn’t want it to happen again. This year, the Hurricanes had some extra reinforcements: Nijel Pack — the most talked-about transfer of the offseason after signing an $800K NIL deal to leave Kansas State — gave Miami another deadly shooter. Norchad Omier left Arkansas State to provide toughness and rebounding inside.

Miami earned a share of the ACC regular season championship with Virginia, and rose as high as No. 12 in the AP Poll after never being ranked last season. A dynamic offense from a year ago was even better now with Pack in the lineup. Unfortunately, the defense wasn’t much better, and it made the Hurricanes feel like a team that could beat anyone on their best nights and lose to anyone on their worst.

With just under 13 minutes to play, Texas led Miami by 13 points. The Longhorns had more size, more depth, and wonderful guard play in their own right. After everything Texas had been through this season after firing head coach Chris Beard following a domestic assault charge, it felt like interim coach Rodney Terry and his Horns were something of a team of destiny. Miami had other plans.

The comeback started on a viral play: inbounding the ball under his own basket, Poplar threw the ball off back of Texas’ Timmy Allen and finished an easy layup for two points.

Over the rest of the game, Miami would out-score Texas 37-17.

The Hurricanes got to the foul line at will, and finished a remarkable 28-for-32 from the free throw line. They consistently got stops and forced turnovers down the stretch. Wong — who scored just two points in the first half — caught fire in the second and led the charge with a typical array of pull-up jumpers that feel like bad shots until they splash through the net.

A year ago, Miami got blitzed in the second half by Kansas to fall short of the Final Four. This time, Miami is the team that did the blitzing.

“That loss sat with me for a really, really long time,” Miller said after the game thinking back to last year. “I had to put it in the past because it was a new season. Having the opportunity to kind of right your wrongs almost and get past something that stumped you previously is a great feeling.”

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On the surface, the story is pretty believable: a team goes to the Elite Eight last year, adds arguably the best transfer in the country, learns from its mistakes, and conquers its demons on the way to the Final Four this year. That sort of neat packaging might be true, but it discounts just how unlikely the run by Miami this year really is.

In a tournament full of upsets, the Hurricanes have had to play the highest seed at every opportunity. Their biggest test improbably happened in the first round against No. 12 seed Drake: the Hurricanes trailed by eight with under five minutes left, but ended the game on a 16-1 run to pull out the victory.

No. 4 seed Indiana was supposed to give Miami trouble with a stud like Trayce Jackson-Davis in the front court, but the Hurricanes ran out to a big lead early and again close strong to punch their Sweet 16 ticket. Houston was waiting next as arguably the tournament’s biggest favorite. The Cougars’ size, tenacity, and defense was supposed to be too much for Miami, but instead great offense beat great defense, and the Hurricanes delivered a knockout punch coming out of halftime to earn a convincing victory.

Texas should have been too big and too deep for Miami — and they were for the first 30 or so minutes. Miami got back in it by dictating the terms of the game: going small with Miller at center, playing an aggressive, trapping defense built on pressuring the ball, and then burning Texas’ slower defenders off the dribble to get to the foul line. When Miami starts its’ offensive avalanche, it feels almost impossible to stem the tide.

Miami is now into the Final Four with a top-five offense and a defense that still falls outside the top-100 of Division 1. The Hurricanes have never had the size to a traditional defensive power, but they can still put up a fight by getting into ball handlers on the perimeter and staying disciplined in their closeouts. Sometimes, the other team just misses, and when that happens Miami’s scorers are off to the races.

“A big factor I would say is we know we’re pretty good offensively, but what’s going to decide a game for us comes down to how many stops we can get,” Miller said after the game. “Even though we shot that good of a percentage, they were scoring too, and we knew we couldn’t just keep scoring back and forth because they had the lead. So we had to dig deep, find a way to get stops.”

If the game was played on a spreadsheet, Miami’s defense wouldn’t be good enough to knock off teams like Houston and Texas and break into the Final Four. On the court, though, Miami has just enough fight to let their offense carry the day.

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Miami had no hoops history to speak of when it hired Larrañaga five years after his Cinderella run to the Final Four with George Mason. Larrañaga was 61 years old when he came to Coral Gables, and most wondered how an older mid-major coach would be able to turn around a dormant power conference program.

How foolish that looks now. Larrañaga, at 73 years old, still seems as youthful in spirit as ever. He’s college basketball’s chillest grandpa, empowering his players to play a fun style on the court and not shying away from the new realities of the sport off of it.

Few programs in America have adapted to the changing landscape of college basketball better than Larrañaga’s Hurricanes. On the court, that means giving his players freedom on offense to bomb transition threes, get up and down, and bend opposing defenses in a drive-and-kick game. Miami’s offense feels like an NBA offense, just without the size. It’s easy to imagine players watching their style and deciding they want to be part of the party.

And then there’s the NIL and the transfer portal. Pack wanted to leave Kansas State in part because he wanted to prove to NBA teams that he could play point guard, and the Wildcats already had a great point guard in one of this year’s biggest March Madness heroes, Markquis Nowell. Miami gave him the chance to play point guard …. and also gave him $800K and a car, thanks to wealthy booster John Ruiz and his company Life Wallet.

As Pack splashed seven three-pointers in the Sweet 16 to knock off No. 1 seed Houston, that money sure felt like a bargain.

When Pack committed, Miami’s other players — Wong, Miller, and Norchad Omier — needed NIL money to feel wanted, too. Life Wallet hooked them up, as well. Not everyone was happy: 78-year-old Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim went on a viral rant in Feb. where he said Miami “bought” its team. Boeheim retired, or was pushed out, at the end of the season with his program slipping. Larrañaga never resented the idea of players getting paid. He’s adapted, and Miami has, too.

With his team cutting down the nets in the foreground, Larrañaga was asked how it would feel to be the oldest head coach to ever win a national championship if his team can win two more games.

“I’m not that old!” Larrañaga exclaimed.

He sure doesn’t feel like it. Larrañaga may be a senior citizen, but no one is playing college basketball’s current game any better. So much has changed in the sport since Larrañaga led George Mason to the Final Four as a No. 11 seed 17 years to the day as he clinched the second Final Four berth of his career at Miami. Unlike so many of his peers in coaching, Larrañaga wasn’t intimidated by those changes. Miami is two wins away from a national title because of it.