What Miami's Jim Larranaga said after 75-62 loss to No. 1 Tennessee in Jimmy V Classic

NEW YORK — What Miami coach Jim Larranaga said after No. 1 Tennessee‘s 75-62 win over Miami in the Jimmy V Classic Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden:

Opening Statement

“In the first half, we had a terrible last seven minutes. Get out-scored 14-zip, giving them their 13-point lead. And then in the second half, we found a combination that worked very well for us. We cut the lead down to six. And I’m not sure how much time was left. We got it cut down to six and then we made two real critical errors and it immediately went back to 10. And for the most part, that ended our chances of winning the game. 

“But you got to give a lot of credit to Tennessee. Rick Barnes does an amazing job. His players played great. Zakai Ziegler is an amazing player. And Chaz Lanier, we actually played against him last year (at North Florida), and he was great last year, but he’s with this group around him, he’s really special. So I thought it was an entertaining game.” 

If the final eight minutes of the first half was about what Miami was doing wrong or what Tennessee was doing right

“Oh, we were awful. It was like we never practiced it before. Like we just met each other at the time last time. Because it didn’t look like our team. 

And everybody was shooting off the bounce. There’s no passing, no assists, bad shot selection. And when you do that, it’s really demoralizing because it’s hard to play good defense when everybody’s mad that we took such a bad shot.”

If Miami starting pressing a little bit when Tennessee started building its lead 

“I don’t know if you know, we had three freshmen at the time on the court. And so I think they got a little excited and tried to hurry and cut the lead even more. And, again, in basketball, it’s all about control. You got to control yourself. You got to control the guy that you guard. And you you got to be in control with what your other teammates are doing. Right? So in those particular cases, when you get in a rush like, you saw it. Everybody in in Madison Square Garden saw it and said, oh, what is he rushing for? But that’s what happens. 

How different Chaz Lanier is at Tennessee compared to last season at North Florida 

“He was really good last year. But, you know, confidence has a way of growing. You’re young, you’re in high school, you’re playing well. You’re being highly recruited. Your confidence grows. Everybody is telling you that you’re really good. You get to college and then all of a sudden, you’re not playing quite as well. You’re not scoring quite as much. All of a sudden you start to question how good you are. The guys like Chaz keep working, get better, get stronger, get smarter. And last year, he was the No. 1 most efficient player in the country. Now he goes to a team that he’s surrounded by other terrific players, especially a guy like like, Zakai Zeigler, who can find him every time he’s open, so he gets the shots that he wants. And he can either shoot it or pass it up. And tonight, he went 8-for-15, but he might have gone 10-for-15 on another night. But he’s going to be special. 

Miami freshman guard Divine Ugochukwu

“Well, I said we got a little too anxious. We had three freshmen in the game and and we rushed. But to go back last May, to tell you how crazy recruiting is, we already basically completed our high school recruiting when Hakeen Olajuwon called me. Hakeem is friends with my son, Jay. And he told my son, Jay, ask your dad if he if he needs a point guard because I got a kid who plays with my sons in high school. They were 32-1, and I think this kid is gonna be a really good guard. My son told me, I spoke to Akeem, and I told him, we’re really not looking for another guard. But after he convinced me that you can take him and redshirt him, I said, okay, we’ll redshirt him. Then you have a player sitting out that is actually in your program because now you don’t even know if you’re gonna have guys back. But, okay, we’re gonna get this guy back. We have a year to work with him. And instead, during the summer, after about three weeks of watching him in practice, I said, ‘oh, we’re not redshirting this kid.’ But he still has a lot to learn. Today, he played very, very well. And he’s had games like this already. But we’re trying to bring him along. He’s kinda understudying Nigel Pack. At the end, I should’ve gotten Nigel back in earlier so they could have played together more. And moving forward, that’s in the back of my mind.”

Some of his freshmen struggling at times throughout the game

“I don’t think it had anything to do with the building as far as I can tell. But if you go back to when we started practice and where every time we had a scrimmage, the final score of the scrimmage was like, 96-92. We were just scoring our brains out against each other. And the coaches kept saying to the players, this is not real. We have to improve our defense and our rebounding. We’re not gonna be scoring 90 points a game against the kind of competition we play, alright? But as players, until you really show them, so we open up the season, the first game we scored 113, the next game we scored 96, and now the players are saying, ‘Coach, I told you, we can really score.’ Well, then we go to a tournament, we’re playing against higher-level competition. Now we’re having a heck of a time trying to score and we’re not defending very well. So in the last, I’ll say, we played Arkansas on Dec. 1, and it’s now Dec. 10. In the last 12 days, two weeks, the attention to detail in practice by the players, not the coaches, the coaches have been doing the same thing. The players have all of a sudden realized that’s what we have to do to improve as a team. And they have a chance to win. We did a better job tonight. They still, you know, if you look at the stats, they shot 40% from three and 48% overall, 83% from the foul line. So we still got a long ways to go. We didn’t get out-rebounded, but we kept them off there. They’re a great offensive rebounding team. They only have five offensive rebounds. So our rebounding is getting better. Our defense is getting better. And eventually, and this is what I told the team afterwards, eventually, the winning will follow. You have to follow the process. You know, you’re not good at something, get better at it.”

The performance of Miami freshman forward Isaiah Johnson-Arigu

“Isaiah is one of those laid back kids, very quiet, very unassuming. And so, he’s a little bit behind some of the other guys in July, August, September, October, and now, in the last few weeks of practice, he has started to pick it up. He’s been more aggressive. He’s defending better, rebounding better. So in the second half, we needed to give Brandon Johnson a little bit of rest. I never intended to just let Isaiah stay in the whole time, but he went in and he helped us. If he can continue to improve, he’ll earn playing time. And that’s what I told the team afterwards. We haven’t determined a set rotation yet because there’s too many inconsistencies on the player’s part. If you’re inconsistent on defense, if you’re inconsistent on rebounding, if you’re inconsistent on offense, you’re not gonna earn consistent playing time.”