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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE BASKETBALL MEDIA CONFERENCEFebruary 11, 2013Jim LarranagaTHE MODERATOR: We have with us now Miami head basketball coach Jim Larranaga. Coach, a couple comments about your team and then we will go to questions. COACH LARRANAGA: I thought we played two very good games this past week. Now we really got to get focused this week. We're going to Florida State. It's rivalry week. Florida State is our biggest rival. I'm sure it's going to be a real war. THE MODERATOR: Questions for Coach Larranaga. Q. Four weeks ago you were unranked. You've gone to 25 to 14 to 8. Today you're probably going to be in the top 3. How is the team handling the sudden explosion of national interest? COACH LARRANAGA: I would say so far so good. They very had a clear mindset as to what they want to accomplish. They've worked very hard. I think when you make a commitment to something and you're willing to devote a lot of time and energy, then you start to see the results of all your hard work, you feel very, very good about it. I think they're very excited that we've gotten a lot of support here in Coral Gables. The arena has been packed, great home crowds. We were sold out on Saturday. They have appreciated the media attention we've gotten. It's something that they know a lot of the programs in our league and around the country have gotten, and maybe some of these guys haven't. They were pretty hungry to try to do something that they hadn't done before. They stay focused and keep working towards improving. Q. You say they stay focused. For you, you must be getting requests to be on ESPN, national radio shows. Is it at all adding to the difficulty of your job to have to handle the explosion of national interest? COACH LARRANAGA: Well, I wouldn't call it difficult. I would say that you need to appreciate that because that only happens when you're doing well. If you don't want that, that says you don't want to win. That's not the case. We want to be as good as we can be. We want to accommodate the media because, as I've told the team, we've got our job to do, and the media has their job to do. They shouldn't interfere with each other and they shouldn't be a distraction. My responsibility is to promote the University of Miami and our men's basketball program. We feel very, very fortunate that people do have interest. When we took the job, everybody said, You're never going to have anybody interested in your program. Yet we saw the other day when we played North Carolina, not only did we have a great crowd on hand, we had LeBron James and Dwyane Wade sitting courtside. That's a major step for our program in the right direction. That's something I think the national media pays attention to and we hope that our future recruits will pay attention to it and want to come and play here. Q. Because North Carolina and Duke have been top programs for so long, they tend to get everybody's best shot. Students line up to see their games. Obviously they have at Miami in the past even. Are you expecting to see that the rest of the way from teams? Not that they wouldn't give you a good shot, but the special kind of focus and attention that a top team draws, is that something else these guys need to learn to handle? COACH LARRANAGA: First of all, you know everybody gets ready for Duke and Carolina because they've been in the top 10 and winning national championships. If you can't get excited about playing them, if your fans can't get excited about playing them, they just don't have interest in basketball. Any time a team gets ranked in the top 25, they get more media attention. If you're in the top 10, it increases. If you're in the top 5, it increases even more. When Duke came here, they were ranked the No.1 team in the country. You don't get that many opportunities to play against the No.1 ranked team in the country. So we're just appreciative of where we are right now. We're appreciative of the support we're getting. I'm very, very proud of my team right now for how they've been able to stay focused and do a good job. Q. Coach, looking back at the last two games, one performer that stood out to me in terms of improving is Rion Brown. Can you talk about what he brings to the team? Has he made any adjustments or are shots just starting to fall? COACH LARRANAGA: Well, I think Rion Brown as a sophomore last year got off to a slow start. But by January he started to play really, really well. Even by the end of the season, he was in our starting lineup. This year, I don't know why this is, he also got off to a slow start. But he's been playing very well in conference play. He's our leading three‑point shooter in conference play. He's a very valuable asset to us because he is very aggressive coming in off the bench, and you always need kind of a high‑octane scorer to come in and give your team a lift. In the last several games he's been huge for us. On Saturday against Carolina and Tuesday against Boston College, he was very, very effective in coming in. Instead of us losing a step, we actually improved. Q. You're coming up on Wednesday night to Florida State. You handled them easily. They're really scrambling. When you're going so well, they're struggling so much, does that present any particular problem or does the rivalry outweigh all that? COACH LARRANAGA: I think all the previous games, the games we've played, they've played, are meaningless when it comes to the Miami and Florida State game. You want to be playing well, of course. I'm sure their crowd will be sporting them and their players will be ready and our players will be ready. Q. Since Reggie has come back, he and Julian have combined at that center spot to give you really good production, particularly in the rebounding area. Did you think it was going to work out as well as it has so far? COACH LARRANAGA: I don't really think about what's going to work out or not. We just prepare. These two guys are seniors. Reggie is a fifth‑year senior, Julian is a sixth‑year senior. They've been through the wars before. They really know what to expect. They really want to play well. If you go back to our NC State game, I had them in together for a major portion of the second half. Those were the two guys that were in there when we made our run and took the lead. They're going to play the center position, but they're going to play together a good bit. It all depends on matchups, who is playing well, how we're being defended. Q. Reggie, is he back to playing the way he was before he injured that thumb? COACH LARRANAGA: Well, I would say he missed an entire month of practice. When you come back, despite the fact that he's in great shape, running the floor better than he ever has, he's defending and rebounding, I think offensively his presence was missed. We had to go a little bit in a different direction offensively. It still worked for us very, very well. Now that he's back, we haven't been able to incorporate his scoring ability into our offense yet. He's been able to practice more. When you think about it, he came back January 23rd. It's now February. We've had him back for two weeks or so. But we're just getting comfortable with him being back and in sync offensively with us. Q. Coach, your games have been real decisive margins. That's something I know a lot of coaches strive to do, have a team to put people away. Is that the kind of ballclub you have, kind of a killer instinct? COACH LARRANAGA: I would just say every day is different, every opponent is different. We were 3‑21 from three at NC State. That was a one‑point game. Against Carolina we were 10‑16 in the first half. Same players, same shot. Some days you make them, some days you miss them.  When you make them, you have an opportunity to build a substantial lead. We were able to do that against North Carolina. Every game, you just don't know. Kids are kids. They're 17 to 22, 23 years old. The opponents play them differently. So we're more focused on just we're well‑prepared and the guys are playing hard. THE MODERATOR: Coach, thanks for taking time being with us today. COACH LARRANAGA: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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