Jim Larranaga steps down amid 14th season as Miami head coach todayheadline

Jim Larranaga stepped down as Miami’s men’s basketball coach Thursday amid his 14th season at the school.

Larranaga, who turned 75 in October, told reporters that though he still loves basketball and coaching it, he doesn’t love what the college game has become, which is why he decided to exit.

“At this point, after 53 years, I just didn’t feel that I could successfully navigate this whole new world that I was dealing with because my conversations were ridiculous with an agent saying to me, ‘Well, you can get involved [with a prospective player] if you’re willing to go to $1.1 million,’ and that would be the norm,” he said at a news conference.

Larranaga took over Miami in 2011, leading the Hurricanes to six NCAA tournaments and four Sweet 16 appearances — including a Final Four run in 2023. Miami went 11-6 in NCAA tournament games during Larranaga’s tenure and won two ACC regular-season championships.

Veteran assistant Bill Courtney will be Miami’s interim head coach for the remainder of the season.

The Hurricanes are 4-8 this season, with losses in eight of their past nine games, including home defeats to Charleston Southern and Mount St. Mary’s. Jalil Bethea, who became the program’s highest-ranked recruit in nearly 40 years when he committed in September 2023, has started only one game.

“They’re a great group of kids,” Larranaga said. “It’s not their problem. It’s the system or the lack of a system. I didn’t know how to navigate through this.

“I’m exhausted. I’ve tried every which way to keep this going.”

The 2022-23 season was the best in program history. The Hurricanes won the ACC regular-season title and reached the program’s first Final Four — one year after going to the program’s first Elite Eight. Miami earned a 5-seed in the NCAA tournament, but then knocked off No. 4 seed Indiana, No. 1 seed Houston and No. 2 seed Texas en route to the Final Four, where it lost to eventual national champion UConn.

Since that Final Four appearance, though, it has struggled. The Hurricanes entered last season ranked No. 13 in the preseason AP poll but missed the postseason after going 15-17. They lost their final 10 games of the campaign. Larranaga had eight players — all of whom said they were happy at Miami — enter the transfer portal after the Hurricanes went to the Final Four in 2023.

“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,” Larranaga said. “And the answer is it’s become professional.”

Before taking over at Miami in 2011, Larranaga was the head coach at George Mason for 14 seasons. He guided the Patriots to a Final Four appearance in 2006 as a No. 11 seed — beating Michigan State, North Carolina and UConn along the way. He won four CAA regular-season championships and three conference tournament titles at George Mason, making five trips to the NCAA tournament.

The New York native also spent time as the head coach at Bowling Green and served as an assistant coach at Davidson and Virginia, where he coached three-time national player of the year Ralph Sampson.

Larranaga will be offered a role within the university in the coming weeks, Miami athletic director Dan Radakovich said.

“It’s still all about The U,” Larranaga said.

Larranaga becomes the sixth longtime ACC coach to step down since April 2021, following North Carolina’s Roy Williams, Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, Notre Dame’s Mike Brey, Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim and Virginia’s Tony Bennett.

When he surprisingly stepped down less than three weeks before the Cavaliers played their season opener in October, Bennett said NIL has changed the game for coaches and not in a good way.

In a statement, ACC commissioner Jim Phillips called Larranaga “a tremendous man … who has led his program with the utmost integrity and class.”

Among the others to pay tribute to him Thursday was Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra, who called Larranaga “a friend.”

“I think so highly of him,” Spoelstra said. “The way that he’s able to build a program that has a sense of community and we all rallied around the basketball program. I live in Coral Gables, so I’ve been part of this movement. You could just feel it the last several years. It’s been a lot of fun. He wins wherever he goes, but he does it in a way that it’s a fun brand of basketball.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.