ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE BASKETBALL TIPOFF MEDIA DAY

October 12, 2021

Jim Larranaga

Kameron McGusty

Isaiah Wong

Miami Hurricanes

Press Conference

Q. Coach, just what you can say about going through this transfer portal and the ability to play right away as well as NIL and dealing with the season as interesting as it was last year? There's been a lot of challenges for head coaches and how you've navigated through that.

JIM LARRANAGA: Okay. That's quite a question that requires a lot of different answers. First of all, we've always enjoyed great success with transfer students. So I'm okay with transfers. Kam is a transfer from Oklahoma.

But what I liked about that is the guys who transferred in had to sit out and kind of get adjusted before they're actually competing for playing time and playing in games.

Now with the transfer portal, it's a little bit different, but we're still going to engage in recruiting transfers.

We had a couple of kids transfer out, so we recruited a couple of transfers ourselves.

Charlie Moore and Jordan Miller have transferred in to the University of Miami, both great kids, and I think have a very bright future at the University of Miami and they fit in very well with our returning players.

Is the transfer portal here to stay? Probably. So we'll just have to adjust and construct our rosters a little differently than we've done in the past.

Was there more to the question?

Q. (Regarding name, image and likeness.)

JIM LARRANAGA: Well, I think name, image and likeness has been a long time coming, and now I have clearly -- it's going to have a tremendous impact on college athletics overall and in basketball. I think we're learning. We're going to have some kids who are able to generate some income.

But I think for the most part, not going to be a lot of guys making millions of dollars signing NIL contracts in college.

Q. Kameron, coach mentioned Charlie Moore. You and Charlie are the old guys on the crew. What are you teaching all the younger players this year?

KAMERON McGUSTY: Me and Charlie, we just kind of use our experience to our advantage and help out our younger guys as much as possible. We've both been to a lot of places. He's played in two different conferences. He's played in three conferences actually; this will be his third.

I've played in two different conferences. So we just try to use our knowledge that we gained through our six years and use all the things that we've seen too from different teams and different conferences and just help our team prepare and try to help our young guys get on track so they're ready to help us contribute this year.

Q. Isaiah, you played roughly 14 more minutes in each game as a sophomore compared to your freshman year. What was it about your game between the two years that gave you such a big boost?

ISAIAH WONG: Just more experience coming in. Like freshman year I didn't have a lot of experience, so just playing more minutes and getting more playing time. It just got easier and easier and adjusting more to the game.

Q. Coach, I wonder heading into the season given the retirements of Coach Williams and the impending from Coach K, 36 years as a head coach, how do you put your career in perspective when your two colleagues are heading out the door?

JIM LARRANAGA: Well, you have two of the great coaches of all time, legendary coaches, Hall of Fame coaches, and one of my goals when I came to the ACC was to outlast them.

At the end of next year I will be able to say I accomplished my goal.

But you're talking about also two of the great leaders of college basketball, role models who really set the example of how to run a program, how to develop your players and prepare them for life after basketball.

So hats off to two guys that I consider friends and contemporaries, but certainly two men that deserve all the accolades that they've earned throughout the years.

Q. Talk about how you've been able to keep in good shape and some of the things that you've done to be coaching this long?

JIM LARRANAGA: Well, the first thing I would say is I love basketball. I love coaching, and my favorite time of the day is practice. I love being around these guys. They work very, very hard. They're very conscientious and they're very goal-oriented; they want to be professional basketball players at the next level.

And my job, my staff's job, is to try to help them reach those goals. And I've tried to stay in as close to being in decent shape as I can. I don't do a great job of working out every day.

But as I mentioned to you, Doug, I found a chiropractor who's helped my back. He's got this machine called a DRX9000 and it's got me now pain free. These guys are laughing, but they know I'm bouncing around in practice a little bit more lively than I did the last several years.

But I don't play tennis anymore. I don't play any other sports or anything like that. But the last time I was challenged to a free throw contest by one of our players, I did win, so...

It's just fun being around the guys. They're young. They've got lots of energy. I try to follow them on social media. And they're really good people.

You know, one of the things about coaching is if you're around guys who are high maintenance guys who drive you crazy and makes coaching no fun, you really don't enjoy it. It's no fun. But these guys are a lot of fun to be around. And the only thing is I really want to help them be successful, especially this year after what happened last year with COVID, being such a challenge. But we stay COVID free from -- we started testing July 20th until the end of the season, we did not have a single player test positive. So I'm really proud of the guys for following all the protocols, wearing their masks, social distancing, washing their hands. I think it was really, really important.

Q. (Regarding free throws.)

JIM LARRANAGA: My own? I made a thousand free throws in an hour to raise money for Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

These guys can't do that. I shot about 90 percent. These guys shoot in the high 80s.

Q. Kameron, you're a sixth year redshirt senior. Now that's a term you don't hear very often. When you finish your time in college, what do you think your biggest takeaway is going to be given all you've experienced?

KAMERON McGUSTY: I would say my biggest takeaway is never let any type of negativity to affect your end goal. Just to always keep the end goal in mind. I've had so many ups and downs through my college career, injuries, my time in Oklahoma to being here. So it's always a roller coaster.

You've just got to keep going, always keep your best foot forward and just never give up.

Q. Isaiah, what do you like about your name right now, and if you could wave a wand to magically change something, what would it be?

ISAIAH WONG: I really don't have anything to change. I'm appreciative person, so the opportunity I'm in, I'm just happy to be in this opportunity and just -- I'm just loving every day of it.

Q. So what do you like about your game right now?

ISAIAH WONG: I like about my game just how I create for myself and how I can create for myself and both for my team and help both me and my -- me and my team.

Q. Kam and Isaiah, this is for you. Just what you've taken away from Coach Larranaga in practice and now that he is moving around, how is he challenging you even more in practice right now? And is he playing good defense? I know one of the coaches up here earlier talked about as being the best defenders out there.

KAMERON McGUSTY: Well, for one, it always is a lot more fun and easy to bring energy when Coach L is in practice. He's always very energetic. He's always moving around and telling us what to do it. Someone can't do something right, he likes to demonstrate. So it's always -- it always helps you and it's always good when you have a coach that's very encouraging and has energy and we just feed off of it.

And he comes in every day and you could never tell that he's either tired -- you can never tell that he doesn't like coaching.

He loves it. He brings all the energy he can and we just feed off of it like I said earlier.

ISAIAH WONG: Yeah. Pick up on what Kam said. Coach L, he brings great energy every day on court. And you can tell he loves the game every day. So just bringing -- he really helps the players during practice and sometimes he makes some smart comments, but we've got to understand that that's coach L personality and we've just got to go through it and he really teaches us a lot throughout the process, which like you said, playing defense, I feel like that is going to really help us throughout the future .