Jim Larranaga shares challenges Florida State's defense presented Miami

On Wednesday night, Miami Hurricanes head coach Jim Larranaga watched as the Florida State Seminoles were able to go into Miami and come out with a win.

After the game, Larranaga shared what Florida State was able to do on defense to challenge Miami’s offense.

“We start our offense normally with a pass to Norchad Omier and then he hands it off or passes it to the next guy,” Jim Larranaga said. “And we couldn’t do it. We came out in the second half and we backdoored them because we knew they’d be doing that and they blocked the shot. That’s the difference.”

In the end, Miami lost 84-75, despite coming into the game as a 7.5-point favorite. There were plenty of issues for the Hurricanes, but Florida State’s length and size on defense gave Miami a ton of problems getting comfortable throughout the game.

By the end of the game, Miami had 13 turnovers, while shooting 25% from three-point range and 46.6% from the field. The Hurricanes had 10 assists on the game to 17 by the Seminoles.

“When you execute a play and the defense is still able to stop it, you’ve got to give credit to the defense. It’s not the offensive player. We didn’t do anything wrong except we didn’t get the two points, but that’s when you have a lot of size and shot-blocking ability.”

For Miami, this was the third loss in the team’s last four games. On Saturday, the Hurricanes will look to bounce back against Syracuse.

Jim Larranaga stresses importance of getting balanced contributions from Miami players

One of the most important things for Miami is getting balanced contributions on both sides of the floor. That’s something Jim Larranaga knows and recently emphasized after beating Clemson.

“It’s basically them making our philosophy a reality. They’re doing everything we’re asking them to do. We ask them to defend and rebound better, we did that. We asked them to share the ball and more assists and fewer turnovers and they did that. We asked them to run offense with pace and space, create openings for our shooters and openings for our bigs, we did that,” Larranaga said.

“So, from start to finish, this is a great game, but it’s only one game. Now we got to go on the road. I think we’re off to a good start, but instead of 19 games, now we got 18. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.”