Jim Larranaga likes where Miami is at entering March

The Miami Hurricanes are rolling, extending their win streak to seven games following a 76-70 win on the road against Virginia Tech on Tuesday. The Hurricane’s recent win streak started on January 31 with another win over the Hokies, and they’ve looked seemingly unstoppable since, going undefeated in the month of February thus far.

Miami is heating up at the right time with the month of March looming right around the corner, and head coach Jim Larranaga was asked if he’s liked how his group has been playing lately down the regular season stretch.

“Yeah it’s pretty good, here’s what I would say, our practices have been terrific,” Larranaga said. “The attention to detail, the energy level, and at both ends of the court.”

The Hurricanes have been going on a scoring tear, scoring over 90 points on three different occasions during their win streak. They now boast the ACC’s top field goal percentage draining 48.4% of their shots on the season and are the conference’s highest-scoring team averaging 79.5 points per game.

The offense may seem like they’ve cracked the code for the Hurricanes, but according to Larranaga, they key to Miami’s success has been in their practice and preparation. And more specifically from some of the team’s unsung heroes that you may not see light up the box score on any given night.

“When you’re having great preparation, and the guys I give tremendous credit to is what we call our scout team, they’re freshman but they have to simulate what the opponent is doing and they are doing a fabulous job of just creating game-like situations where our guys,” Larranaga said.

Freshmen like Danilo Jovanovich, Jakai Robinson, and Favour Aire may be averaging less than a point per game for Miami in their freshman seasons, but are likely the ones contributing to the current success of the team at practice day in and day out. And sometimes even get the best of the Hurricane’s starters according to their head ball coach.

“We’ve had days where the scout team just crushed us because our defense wasn’t good and those guys just scoring their brains out,” Larranaga. “And then I get on them, look we can’t lose to our scout team, but those guys are practicing very hard and very well.”

The proof is in the pudding for Miami, and whatever they’re doing at practice is clearly working, as they’ll look to extend their win streak to nine games with just two matchups left on their regular season schedule heading into tournament play.