A seismic change is coming for Miami Hurricanes basketball, as longtime coach Jim Larrañaga is stepping down after more than 13 seasons at the helm in Coral Gables, the veteran coach announced Thursday.
Bill Courtney, Larrañaga’s associate head coach, is expected to take over as the team’s interim coach, the school announced.
Larrañaga, 75, has been Miami’s head coach since 2011-12 and led the team to its best performance in the NCAA Tournament in 2023. But this year’s team is off to a disastrous 4-8 start, including disappointing home losses to Charleston Southern and Mount St. Mary’s.
“I love the game,” Larrañaga said. “I’ve loved coaching it. I love practice every day. I love working with the players. But because I love the game and I love the university that much, I felt like, OK, there’s one thing you’ve got to constantly ask yourself: Are you going to give everything you have, the commitment that it deserves, 100 percent of yourself, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually?
“And quite frankly, I’ve tried to do that throughout my life and throughout my time here, but I’m exhausted.”
Larrañaga was under contract through the 2026-27 season, but he cited the challenge of coaching in college basketball’s changing environment as the reason why he ultimately decided he had enough.
Athletic director Dan Radakovich said Larrañaga informed him of his decision on Sunday, and Radakovich tried to persuade him to stay. On Monday, Larrañaga informed Radakovich of his final decision. The UM AD said the decision was purely Larrañaga’s, and the athletic department is going to work with Larrañaga to keep him involved with the program.
“Of course, my admiration for Jim and our basketball program, I certainly asked him to reconsider, talked through a number of items,” Radakovich said. “But as I was going through my little spiel, I could tell that maybe this mind was already made up. But I felt like I had to do it, and it was important for me to do that. But certainly respecting the decision that he made and allowing us to be in the position that we are, the great history that he’s brought here to the University of Miami lays a great foundation for us to move forward.”
Larrañaga is the winningest coach in the program’s history, putting together a 274-174 record at UM. He took the Hurricanes to the Final Four for the first time in 2023 after an Elite Eight run in 2022. He took Miami to the NCAA Tournament six times in his 14-year tenure.
But Larrañaga said after the Hurricanes’ run to the Final Four, eight players came to him and told him they intended to transfer to seek more money elsewhere.
“What shocked me beyond belief was after we made it to the Final Four, just 18 months ago, the very first time I met with the players, eight of them decided they were going to put their name in the portal and leave,” Larrañaga said. “I said, ‘Don’t you like it here?’ (They said), ‘No, I love it. I love Miami. It’s great.’
“But the opportunity to make money someplace else created a situation that you have to begin to ask yourself, as a coach, what is this all about? And the answer is it’s become professional.”
Another ACC coaching legend, former Virginia coach Tony Bennett, gave a similar reason for stepping down in October.
“I talk to a lot of my friends, and they’re having all the same problems I’m having,” Larrañaga said. ‘How long they will last is anybody’s guess.”
The Hurricanes struggled massively at the end of the 2023-24 season, losing their final 10 games. This season started out promising with three straight wins, but a group built around promising freshmen and transfers has lost eight of its last nine games.
“We should be competing for an ACC championship or even a national championship on a fairly consistent basis, and I thought we were doing that and we were moving closer and closer to being able to do it, and then this happened,” Larrañaga said. “Going into this year, I just felt like, ‘OK, we need to get back to where we were.’ I’ve got a great group of kids. It’s not their problem. It’s the system now, or the lack of a system. I didn’t know how to navigate through this. … I’m all for transferring, but what the portal created is transferring every year.”
Larrañaga’s Hurricanes teams produced multiple NBA players, including Bruce Brown Jr., Lonnie Walker, Shane Larkin, Jordan Miller, Davon Reed, Isaiah Wong, Dewan Hernandez and, most recently, Kyshawn George.
“Thank you,” former Miami basketball player Anthony Walker wrote on social media. “You have molded me into not only the basketball player I wanted to be but a person, as well. The lessons you have taught me throughout the years will never be forgotten. (You are) a living legend, coach L. Glad that it gets to end on your terms. I love you.”
ACC commissioner Jim Phillips released a statement, congratulating Larrañaga for his career.
“Jim Larrañaga is a tremendous man who has left a mark as not only the most accomplished coach in Miami basketball history, but as one of the premier coaches in ACC history,” Phillips said. “His coaching record speaks for itself with over 700 career wins, but he always has led his program with the utmost integrity and class. He elevated the Miami program to new levels during his tenure, including a Final Four, and made lifelong impacts on his student-athletes through his lessons on the court and in life outside of the game. Our league has been better because of him and we will miss his presence and voice. We wish Jim, his wife Liz, and their family all the best in their next endeavor.”
Larrañaga has a career record of 744-507 over a 41-year college career that also included coaching stints at American International, George Mason and Bowling Green. He led George Mason to the 2006 Final Four.
“I just didn’t feel like that I could successfully navigate this whole new world that I was dealing with because my conversations were ridiculous,” Larrañaga said. “With an agent saying to me, ‘Well you can get involved if you’re willing to go to a million-one (dollars). I’m like,’ What? A million dollars?’ And that be the norm. That was the norm. You’re talking to people that expect a million dollars for playing college basketball.”
Radakovich said UM will have a “national” search for the next men’s basketball coach.
“It’s a difficult atmosphere out there,” Radakovich said. “The lack of what Jim was just talking about — no collective bargaining, no limited antitrust exemption, all the things that you talk about and hear about in intercollegiate athletics has led to the symptoms that Jim just talked about. That has to be the longer-term view of what we need to have happen. Will that occur before we need to move forward and conduct a national search? I highly doubt it.
“So we’re going to be looking at the attributes that the University of Miami can provide to a potential coach, looking at obviously, playing in the Atlantic Coast Conference, which is an incredible basketball league, and making sure we put our best foot forward to get someone that can come in, be a part of the community, part of the university but at the same time feel like they have the ability to navigate this world and the changing world that we’re in.”