NCAA MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: REGIONAL SEMIFINAL - MIAMI (FL) VS HOUSTON

March 23, 2023

Jim Larranaga

Isaiah Wong

Jordan Miller

Anthony Walker

T-Mobile Center

Miami Hurricanes

Sweet 16 Pregame Media Conference

THE MODERATOR: We are ready to begin our news conference for the Midwest Regional. Our first, our lead-off hitter is Coach Jim Larranaga from the University of Miami. Welcome back to the Sweet 16, second year in a row.

JIM LARRANAGA: Thank you very much. Very nice to be here.

THE MODERATOR: Maybe an opening statement, and we will start questions from our media. Anything in particular you want to say about getting here to Kansas City?

JIM LARRANAGA: First of all, I think March Madness is the greatest sporting event in the world. We're so proud to represent not only the University of Miami but the Atlantic Coast Conference. We believe it's a fantastic league with 15 great universities.

I'm very proud of our players for the way they played last weekend in accomplishing the goal of reaching the Sweet 16.

Q. I wanted to ask you about Nijel Pack, the impact he's made. He seems to have assimilated into your culture and your team pretty quickly. How critical has his play and the him in the locker room been in getting to this point?

JIM LARRANAGA: First thing is we had a great point guard last year on our run to the Elite Eight, a young man named Charlie Moore. We were looking for someone similar to Charlie, who could pass it, shoot it.

Nijel was an interesting prospect for us because he had played the two guard spot but was really was interested in moving to the point. So we were very interested in that because we wanted a point guard who could really shoot.

So he has made such a smooth transition from Kansas State to Miami, primarily because of his personality. He and Isaiah Wong hit it off like day one, and they developed a great bond on and off the court, a great relationship of handling the ball and sharing the ball and playing to win. They both just care about winning, so they're both very team oriented.

Nijel's teammates love him. He's a very articulate young man. His mom and dad have raised him very, very well, and we're just happy to have him. He's a fantastic shooter, but he's also working very hard defensively, and he's sharing the ball with his teammates as the quarterback of our team.

Q. When you put on U of H game tape, what's that first game that pops out to you?

JIM LARRANAGA: I'd say their defense and their rebounding. Is that two things? Okay. It's a combination of those two things.

First of all, at the defensive end of the floor, they're as physical as any team that I've seen all year long. They put so much pressure on you at every position. Some teams are good putting pressure on the guards, but these guys put pressure at every position.

Then they rebound the ball tremendously well at both ends, especially at the offensive end, where they're able to, if they miss a shot, just offensive rebound and score either at the rim or kick it out for a three.

They've got great guard play, and they've got really terrific, athletic big guys. So they've earned their ranking of Number 1 in the country.

Q. Little bit different situation to what Kelvin is going to face next year, but obviously you went from a mid-major to the ACC. He's going from a mid-major conference to the Big 12 next year. What is the difference? Is it the constant barrage and the consistency of the teams? Or what can you tell me about what that transition is like going from a mid-major to a Power Five conference like that?

JIM LARRANAGA: Well, I'll tell you a story. When I got the Miami job, someone said, oh, you're going to be able to recruit so many better players. It's going to be so much easier for you than it was at the mid-majors. I said, yeah, sure, it will be real easy beating Duke and Carolina for a recruit.

The fact of the matter is it's all about competition. So you go to the Big 12, you've got to compete with those people. And each of them has a tradition of how they play. The coaches have their own style. And Kelvin is an experienced guy. He coached in the Pac-12. He coached in the Big Ten. He coached in the NBA. So he's been around the block. He will have no problem making the adjustment.

It's all in the recruiting, and now that comes down to really two things, the portal and NIL. So I have no idea what kind of commitment all those schools are making in the Big 12, but to be competitive, you've got to be competitive in that category.

Q. Obviously in today's game the transfer portal is very important. So I wanted to ask if you thought that getting deeper into the NCAA Tournament could be a disadvantage for the portal because there's a lot of teams right now who are out and they're able to recruit guys and they have guys leaving, stuff like that. So I just wanted to get your thoughts on that.

JIM LARRANAGA: Yeah, how about that? The more you win, the less you're able to recruit. That doesn't really make sense, but it is true. It's a fact.

While we're playing, our focus is on playing Houston tomorrow night. I think all the teams that have made the Sweet 16, their goal is to move on. Recruiting is a separate challenge.

So whenever you can -- like right now, I don't even know how many guys we'll have back because we may have guys who want to transfer. We don't know. We were one of only nine teams last year that did not have a single transfer, nine teams, out of 363. That's 356 teams that had a transfer.

We'll do our due diligence in finding out who might be interested in us and see how many scholarships we have to fill. But I think every school has that challenge because the portal for everyone is like recruiting an McDonald's All-American in a fast-forward situation, because the portal starts basically now in this past week or so, and it's only going to last until May. When you recruit high school kids, it starts when they're sophomores, juniors in high school, and you recruit them for a year or two.

This is like speed dating. It's like going on match.com. I have never been on match.com. I don't want anybody to get the wrong impression. (Laughter).

THE MODERATOR: Thanks for clarifying, Coach.

Q. I wonder, what, four Sweet 16s in the last ten tournaments, what does that say about your program?

JIM LARRANAGA: It says we're in very good company because only 16 teams have been able to do that in the last ten years, and all them are the names that, if you had to guess, those are the ones you would guess. I think, if you didn't know that we were one of the 16 teams to make a run to the Sweet 16 four out of the last ten years, you would not have guessed us until maybe you got to guess 100.

Everybody has looked at the University of Miami as a football program, as a football school, and there's a good reason for that. Our football program has won five National Championships. And even those who follow baseball know we've won four National Championships in baseball.

But our basketball program has really been elevated over the last 12 years. My staff has done a fantastic job of recruiting quality young men who play quality basketball, and they're all graduating. So we're very, very pleased with the company we're keeping.

Q. I saw Wooga Poplar was back in practice today. Do you have any update on his status?

JIM LARRANAGA: Well, we didn't practice Monday. He can't practice Tuesday or Wednesday. Today's the first chance he had to go up and down since our game against Indiana.

So he looked good to me. I'll talk to my trainer, and he'll give me an indication of whether Wooga's ready to go tomorrow. If he's ready to go, he'll be in the starting lineup as always.

Q. Hi, you guys can hear me? Hi, Coach Larranaga. You have a kid from Perry Hall, Maryland in Anthony Walker. You do a really good job recruiting around the Baltimore metro area, D.C. What do you have such good players from this area?

JIM LARRANAGA: That's easy: The DMV, as we all know it, the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Northern Virginia, is the most fertile land for recruiting that there is in the entire country. If you go from Baltimore south into any area of Maryland, Washington, D.C., and into Northern Virginia, there are tremendous prospects, a volume of prospects that every school in the country comes to that area to recruit.

And when I was at George Mason, we made a run to the Final Four in 2006, and eight of our players came from the DMV. So at Miami, we always made it a priority to stay in touch with our network of friends in the D.C. area, high school coaches, AAU coaches, former players. We have now three players from the -- four. Anthony Walker is one, a senior, terrific young man. Jakai Robinson, Christian Watson, and Favour Aire -- all played in the DMV.

THE MODERATOR: Coach, we'll let you get out of here and start thinking about tomorrow's game.

JIM LARRANAGA: Thank you.

THE MODERATOR: We'll have the student-athletes for Miami on stage in just a few seconds.

The student-athletes for Miami will be Jordan Miller, Anthony Walker, and Isaiah Wong.

We are ready to begin with the Hurricanes of Miami, our student-athletes are Jordan Miller, Anthony Walker, and Isaiah Wong.

Q. For each of you, you guys answer in your own way, how do you guys relish an opportunity to go up against a team that prides itself on the physicality, defensive rebounding, and all that sort of stuff? When you see them, what do you see? What are the challenges that they pose?

JORDAN MILLER: They're a physical team, but there's a lot of physical teams in the ACC too. Obviously we've never played them. They're a Number 1 seed for a reason.

With the preparation time that we've had, we feel like we're pretty well prepared. Obviously there's going to be in-game adjustments that need to be done, but that's just basketball.

We're just focusing on coming out and playing our game and adjusting if needed.

ANTHONY WALKER: I feel the same way. We have preparation that we've been going over. We'd like to think we're a scrappy, physical team also. It's going to be a good game.

We worked hard. We've got a game plan for them. We'll see what happens tomorrow night.

ISAIAH WONG: Like you said, they're a physical team. For us in that game, we just have to play physical and match their energy. Our one through five is the same as their one through five. We just play with energy, and we'll have a good game.

Q. Kind of off the wall here, how often do you guys encounter people saying, hey, Miami, that's a football school, and how do you deal with that?

JORDAN MILLER: Yeah, we hear that a lot. I mean, the best way to deal with it is to just come out, win basketball games. I say this all the time. The best way to get recognition is to win something, whether that's games, championships, conference championships, you name it.

The best thing we can do to get recognition, instead of asking for it, is to do something about it. You know what I mean?

Q. Isaiah, I wanted to ask, Nijel coming in, he's moving from shooting guard to point guard, what was that relationship like? Coach Larranaga said you guys hit it off real quick. Can you give me the insight as to why you guys hit it off so quick and why you kind of thrive together?

ISAIAH WONG: I feel like for Nijel he's a great player to play with. He's an easygoing person, and he can transition any role he plays in.

He came in, like you said, he was a scoring guard, and he came in and played point guard very easily. The transition was easy. He had a lot of players like me, Jordan, Norchard, Ant and Wooga to pass the ball around. I feel like we're making his job easy too.

So the transition with Nijel is he's just a great shooter and he likes to pass and play defense at the other end too. So he's just been a great piece to the team.

Q. Was it a good personality fit, though? Jim seemed to say that the locker room -- the chemistry you guys have personally was a big factor too.

ISAIAH WONG: Oh, yeah, most definitely. He's just a great person. Me and Nijel, we're great friends. He's just a great person to be around, easygoing person to be around too. He's just fun to be around. We have a good time being around each other.

Q. Jordan, speaking of Nijel, his NIL deal was one of the first that got a lot of publicity when it happened. It seemed to me we've heard from coaches say that NILs could have an effect on locker rooms or clubhouses, that sort of thing. I'm wondering did that happen with Miami, with somebody who had an NIL deal as publicized as that one?

JORDAN MILLER: I would say no, to answer your question. At the end of the day, he's our teammate, and everybody's happy for him. We all have the same opportunity. How you get that is, however, which way it is.

Again, I'm just going to reiterate everybody was happy for him. There's no bad blood. The more we got to know Nijel, the more we got to see him as a person and how he is as an individual basketball player. So at the end of the day, everyone is happy for whoever gets whatever NIL opportunity comes their way.

Q. Following up on that, did you any of you guys feel bad that his did get publicized and he had to answer so many questions? And fairly or unfairly, people say he left K State just for the money or things like that. Did you get a sense that bothered him, or did you feel bad that he had to deal with it?

ISAIAH WONG: I wasn't really focused on that topic at the time. I was just worried about basketball and all that. I feel that's not a situation or answer that I could answer for you.

ANTHONY WALKER: I just feel like, if it did bother him, he didn't show us. He always smiles. He's always happy. He's always up.

Again, that's a situation I don't feel like I could answer well, but it don't look like it bothered him to me.

JORDAN MILLER: It just comes with the territory. There's pros and cons to everything in life. Again, like Anthony said, he handled it well. I'm sure he knew a lot of questions were going to come his way, or if he played bad, people were going to say negative things. At the end of the day, all you can do is come out and play basketball.

THE MODERATOR: Any other questions for our student-athletes from Miami? I don't see any hands. You're excused. We'll see you tomorrow.