College Basketball Weekly: Dishing on Jim Larranaga and JUCO eligibility

At last, another long, cold December of little-to-no college hoops comes to a close this week as conference play kicks into full gear next Saturday.

Our Notable Results section is a bit light and the action on the court won’t get a ton of attention today. Instead, we’ll quickly recap the games of the week and then address two bigger-picture off-the-court issues in college basketball: the widespread retirement of older coaches and the new JUCO eligibility loophole.

Let’s talk some ball.

Notable Results

Oregon State 66 vs. Nebraska 78
(16) Ole Miss 70 @ Memphis 87
(14) Gonzaga 62 vs. (22) UCLA 65
Utah State 67 @ San Diego State 66

Once again, college hoops provided few contests of interest since we last convened. So, frankly, there’s not a ton to nosh on with that listing of games, but let’s rattle off a few important takeaways from the notable results we did have.

Memphis bounces back. Penny Hardaway admitted he was a jerk to his players all week in practice following a 13-point loss vs. Mississippi State last weekend and the result was a wire-to-wire pounding of the other Mississippi school, a 16th-ranked Rebels squad at that. The Tigers have one bad loss but several true resume wins over Ole Miss, UConn, Michigan State and Clemson.

Gonzaga’s spiral continues. The Zags smacked Baylor by 40, handled what looked like a decent Arizona State squad, and then beat a ranked San Diego State team to look like a top contender in November. Well, since blowing an 18-point lead to Kentucky in Seattle, Mark Few’s group has dropped that game plus two others vs. UConn and UCLA, really docking their seeding upside come March as they transition into WCC play.

How about Mick Cronin? UCLA was atrocious to start last season and finished alright, but this year, a group that’s still young looks like a very serious Big Ten frontrunner. The Bruins are 11-2 with wins over Gonzaga, Arizona and at No. 9 Oregon, yet they have just two seniors in their top 10. The program is also back to Cronin’s roots, winning with chaotic defense, as they lead the nation by forcing turnovers on more than a quarter of their defensive possessions.

So long, Jim Larranaga

After 38 straight seasons serving as a D1 college basketball coach, Jim Larranaga just bailed on Miami and retired following a 4-8 start which featured a seven-game losing streak and a most recent defeat vs. Mount St. Mary’s. Like most outgoing older coaches of late, he credited his decision, in part, to NIL and the transfer portal.

Now, he’s already been reamed on social media for those comments in juxtaposition with the Hurricanes’ aggressive NIL efforts which brought their 2023 Final Four squad together — and he should be. However, it’s worth examining the bigger issue here just a bit.

In the 2020s alone, we’ve lost Coach K, Roy Williams, Jim Boeheim, Tony Bennett, Jay Wright, Jim Larranaga and others. Four of those six accounted for five straight national championships from 2015-2019 before COVID canceled the 2020 tourney and the transfer/NIL changes followed right after. The kings of this sport abandoned their thrones in the first half of the 2020s. My question is: Why?

Bennett retired and said he “was equipped to do the job here the old way” and “came to the realization that I can’t do this” in the new era of NIL and an open transfer portal. He also called for collective bargaining. These both are arguments several other coaches across college sports made when stepping down.

Coach K’s retirement was a long time coming regardless, but even he has said there’s “no transparency at all” in the current era and believes college basketball is “run by bureaucracy.”

How about Jay Wright? He didn’t blame the changes for his retirement, but nonetheless shared his own critiques, expressing shortly after his decision in 2022 that the NCAA screwed up by not getting in front of the NIL/transfer changes and now the landscape is just going to be in a crazy and reactionary state for a few years.

Boeheim’s comments on the matter have been fiery as well. In 2023, he brazenly critiqued a Syracuse booster in an ESPN article, saying that booster “doesn’t give anyone any money” while programs like Pittsburgh, Miami and Wake Forest all “brought a team” in his words.

On one hand, shut up, coaches. You’re paid millions, especially the ones we’re talking about, and any one of hundreds of people would take these jobs in a heartbeat for hardly the price. So if you can’t keep up, then hop off the treadmill.

In another sense, though, it’s a sign of bad health for a sport when its entire cast of main characters gets wiped out. Duke is less interesting under Jon Scheyer, same for UNC with Hubert Davis, Syracuse with Red Autry, and so on. New stars will emerge, surely. Just look at Dan Hurley and Mark Pope. But maybe these wise old blokes actually have some important perspective to offer against the current changes of a sport they’ve all spent several decades immersed in.

Just because change can happen doesn’t always mean it needs to. That’s not to say the NIL and transfer portal changes shouldn’t have happened, but it’s very clear there was a much better way to handle all of this vs. the complete maelstrom we’re in now. As a result, the older generation of coaches simply said, “Ah, to heck with this!”

Old Players Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere

In another off-the-court storyline, Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia’s legal team just pulled off a maneuver that alters college sports, and basketball, altogether. He sued for an extra year of eligibility, claiming his years spent at the Junior College (JUCO) level shouldn’t count against his four years of eligibility in D1.

Well, he was awarded a waiver to play another year, and as a result, per Ralph Russo, that option will be available to all athletes in Pavia’s situation for the next school year, 2025-26.

“NCAA’s Division I Board of Directors granted a waiver Monday that permits all current athletes who attended junior colleges or other non-NCAA schools to remain eligible for 2025-26 if they otherwise would have been out of eligibility,” he wrote for The Athletic.

So, old college athletes ain’t goin’ nowhere, to quote Bob Dylan. Just when we were finally getting out from under the barrage of 24, 25 and even 26-year-old players thanks to the extra COVID years, now we’ll get those same old guys if they’d like to stick around after playing in JUCO. I’d just ask: did any basketball fan really think it was fun trying to guess which seniors had more years? It’s a confusing mess when you start allowing 6th and 7th-year guys.

Again, just because Pavia and his team found this legal loophole doesn’t mean it needs to be abused. Every 24, 25, 26-year-old is just taking a spot from a talented player who actually is college-aged. All we’re doing here is moving up the age ladder, and the top seniors will become 24 or 25-year-olds who spent two years in JUCO and are full-grown adults going against 18 and 19-year-olds.

Let’s get back to some normalcy. Four-year players, that’s what college sports is for and ought to be for. Instead, it seems more likely that older players (and their lawyers) will continue to scratch and claw for more eligibility. That’s greedy behavior which may erode some of the youthfulness that makes college athletics truly unique in the sports world.

Games To Watch

(3) Iowa State @ Colorado | Mon.
(24) Illinois @ (9) Oregon | Thurs.
(18) Michigan State @ Ohio State | Fri.
Creighton @ (8) Marquette | Fri.
(6) Florida @ (10) Kentucky | Sat.
Georgia @ (16) Ole Miss | Sat.
(25) Baylor @ (3) Iowa State | Sat.
(22) UCLA @ Nebraska | Sat.
(12) Oklahoma @ (5) Alabama | Sat.
Texas @ (13) Texas A&M | Sat.