NCAA MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP - FINAL FOUR: MIAMI (FL) VS UCONN

March 31, 2023

Jim Larranaga

Nijel Pack

NRG Stadium

Miami (FL) Hurricanes

Semi-Finals Pregame Media Conference

COACH LARRAÑAGA: After an exhausting day of doing media interviews yesterday, I thought our players did a great job in practice of putting the interviews behind and concentrating on basketball.

We had a very nice team event last night. We had a guest speaker, and he did a wonderful job. And hopefully we'll have another good practice today and a good night's sleep tonight to get ready for tomorrow night.

Q. I know you've been asked a lot this week about the George Mason game against UConn 17 years ago, but I wanted to know if you had any recollection of the last time you faced UConn years ago, maybe you've got stuff in your memory? And if I'm not mistaken, were you going through health issues at that time as well?

COACH LARRAÑAGA: I remember we played in an ESPN event in Charleston, I believe, and we were awful, and UConn was dominant. And I had a back issue, and it kept me in a wheelchair actually for a few days. I got that corrected, and now I have my 40-inch vertical back and I'm doing good.

Q. Beyond the obvious of getting to the Final Four with this group, what is the greatest gift that you receive from these young people day in and day out as part of this journey? And how does that help keep you so enthusiastic about what's going on around you?

COACH LARRAÑAGA: Everybody talks about my age, but my players, they don't see it that way. They might see me as their grandfather, but we have a great working relationship because they know I care about them a great deal and that I want to help them achieve their goals.

And for me, it's just a great joy of having the privilege of working at such a great university. University of Miami is paradise. Our campus is beautiful. And then to have such a great group of kids to work with who are just fun to be around every day.

Someone asked me about the difference between Isaiah Wong when he was a freshman to now, and I say the funny thing is that young man has never had a bad attitude day or a bad effort day. He just has a great attitude towards life and a great work ethic towards basketball.

And, quite frankly, that leads to other guys wanting to be just like him. He's a great role model for the other guys. You add Norchad Omier, Nijel Pack, Jordan Miller, they're all like that. When you have kids like that, it's fun coaching.

Q. From watching UConn in this tournament, maybe in person in Albany or on film, what have you taken away from them, not in the basketball Xs and Os sense, but more in the vibe or the body language or the looseness, confidence that they've been playing with?

COACH LARRAÑAGA: Well, I've known Bob Hurley Sr. since I was a young coach. I've known Danny and Bobby for a long time as well. And I think their team reflects the Hurley clan philosophy of play really hard and aggressive at both ends of the court. And you have to be impressed with their size, their physicality, but also their skill.

Like Jordan Hawkins is one of the premier shooters in the country. They have skills at every position. My staff and I have been very, very impressed with them. And we know we have a big challenge ahead of us tomorrow night.

Q. Who was your speaker? And why did you choose that person? And then you remember a name from the past, Donnie Lewis?

COACH LARRAÑAGA: Donnie Lewis who played with me at Providence College? Of course I remember Donnie Lewis. He's one of the best defenders in college basketball at that time.

Our guest speaker was Patric Young who played college basketball at the University of Florida, helped out the University of Florida get to the Final Four, and had a tragic car accident and right now is rehabbing right now trying to go from a wheelchair to walking again.

Our strength and conditioning coach, Preston Greene, previously worked at the University of Florida, and Preston approached me about Patric maybe addressing the team via Zoom. I was all for it. And Patric addressed the team for about 20 minutes last night after our team dinner. He did a fantastic job. He's a terrific motivational speaker.

Q. Since you went through that with Patric Young, what was the message he gave? My other question, what do you do with the team the next -- what are you going to have, 36 hours? Or maybe not that much, but what do you do with the team?

COACH LARRAÑAGA: What we're going to do is what we do routinely. I'm a great believer in routines. I try to keep it as routine as possible every day in practice. We have about 52 routines that we follow daily. And we're going to try to do that.

Now, it varies a little bit because we've added media responsibilities. But the moment our responsibilities end here, we'll go out on the court and we will practice.

And the practice, hopefully, will have a lot of energy. And we want to get the players comfortable on the court and then also confident, that they feel that they can play really good basketball come Saturday night.

And then when we're done, we'll do our normal routine. We'll have dinner together as a coaching staff and team. We'll have a team meeting.

We'll go over all our last-minute details about the game plan, and then hopefully the guys will get a good night's sleep. We have a shoot-around tomorrow and then the game tomorrow. So game day will be very, very similar to every game day that we've played so far.

Q. All week you've been talking about the change of venue, going from 8,000 at the Watsco to 75,000. Just with the one practice, how does your team adjust to that? Simply because we won't be able to talk to you after practice.

COACH LARRAÑAGA: I think they've done a very good job. We practiced yesterday in the arena. And it was a very intense practice. Guys were aggressive at both ends. The group I would love for you guys to write about, you should interview them, is our scout team. I'm telling you, they do an amazing job of simulating the opponent.

It's mostly a group of freshmen with a couple of walk-ons, and DJ Irving, my assistant coach, has to prepare them for every nuance we're going to face, whether it's offense or defense. He's got to break down the video. He's got to study the opponent. Then he's got to teach the scout team how to do it, how to execute. And then our rotation players, the top eight or nine guys, have to then defend the scout team and then try to score against the scout team.

They did a great job yesterday. They did a great job back on Tuesday when we practiced. And I'm sure they'll do a great job tomorrow at the shoot-around because we basically do like a dress rehearsal. And when you have a great scout team, it often leads to great preparation and then good execution during the game.

Q. There's been a lot of talk about this Final Four and the seedings of the teams. What's your general feeling about seeding? It doesn't feel like they got everything right this time?

COACH LARRAÑAGA: If you're expecting all four No. 1 seeds to be at the Final Four every year, it doesn't work that way. There's too much parity in college basketball. There's too many changes in rosters every year now. The transfer portal has created that. We've got transfers, every team has transfers.

So even how your season starts is not really reflective of how you might be in February and March. And it's an impossible task for the committee to seed 1 through 68 and for everything to fall into place.

What we tell our team is if you've made the Dance, if you're in March Madness as one of the 68 teams, you've earned your way in, either by winning your conference tournament or being selected because of your body of work.

And it's been proven year after year, after year, that the seeds create the upsets. So a seed that's No. 1 loses to a team that's an 11 seed or a No. 9 seed. To me, those are not upsets. Those are about matchups that happen to work in the favor of the lower seed for some reason.

And I reflect back even on our run to the Final Four in '06, we were an 11 seed. We beat Michigan State, North Carolina, Wichita State and UConn; they were all seeded higher than us.

Q. I'm asking you this because all your guys brought it up yesterday, but how would you say your dance moves have evolved over the years? And they seem very impressed with it.

COACH LARRAÑAGA: Well, Tremaine Price, who was my point guard back in my first years at George Mason, he was interviewed by the "Washington Post," and he said my dance moves haven't changed but they have gotten worse.

And my players have said you're so stiff, you've got to loosen up. Well, I can't. I don't have that flexibility anymore. You can rate it or the players can rate it. I just know my wife likes it.

Q. One of the things that has made this Final Four unique, the lack of McDonald's All-Americans, the lack of consensus top 30 recruits. Is that a blip or a trend to you, and are schools starting to devalue those top freshmen at all more so than in past years?

COACH LARRAÑAGA: I would say this is certainly an unconventional group of four teams. Only one Blue Blood in UConn. The Blue Bloods get the McDonald's All-Americans. If the Blue Bloods are back here next year, you'll have McDonald's All-Americans in the Final Four.

But right now it's not that all the schools don't try, but you get eliminated quickly and the young man tweets his list of Duke, Carolina, Kentucky, Arizona, Michigan State, and you're out of it. So you've got to find other players, maybe your plan B is someone that's going to develop in your program and be a great player at some point.

We've been very, very fortunate over the years to recruit a player. And I'll use Isaiah Wong as an example. He was pretty highly recruited. His list narrowed down to us and UConn. But he was not a McDonald's All-American. He was a young man with a great heart and a great competitive spirit.

He's just gotten better and better. And we're always looking for those kind of guys. And my staff does a great job. Bill Courtney, who I hired at Bowling Green 26 years ago, he's now back on my staff in Miami, he's always telling me about guys that I'm hearing of, great players, but he says they're not for you. Then he finds a guy. This guy is not rated as highly, but I think you'll love him.

And one of those guys is Tony Skinn, who I think, if I'm correct, we were his only scholarship offer for Division I. Tony helped us get to the Final Four in '06. He's now the head coach of his alma mater of George Mason. I think he was named that -- I think it was yesterday.

Q. A lot of people asking you questions about your relevance, your relatability, your dance moves. I'm just wondering, have you ever been considered cool, or is the art of your uncoolness your coolness, if you will?

COACH LARRAÑAGA: You know, I like self-deprecating humor. And when I dance, that's self-deprecating. Michael Jackson. So the whole idea of March Madness and the reason it's called the Big Dance is it's fun. Everybody loves dancing. Even if you can't dance -- I know a lot of people can't dance, they love getting out on the dance floor.

So for me, if I can entertain my players, bring a smile to their face or have them laugh, that's great because I got thick skin. I don't worry about stuff like that.

Q. I think it's a little over 40 basketball alum from UM are making the trip going to be here. A bunch of other football, other sports. What's that mean, knowing that the guys that paved the way, the pride they take and what this program has accomplished?

COACH LARRAÑAGA: At each of my stops, Bowling Green, George Mason and Miami, we've tried to build tradition where the people loved coming back and revisiting and sharing their memories. I just did that with two of my George Mason players that were on the Final Four team. They joined us for breakfast. My former assistant coaches are back here.

And those University of Miami former players, they can take great pride in laying the foundation because we didn't even have a basketball program for a while. There was no interest in basketball, supposedly, and then in 1985 we brought it back, and we've had some tremendous coaches build the program and lead us to this point.

I know Bill Foster gave up being the head coach at Clemson to come here and rejuvenate a dormant program. Seth Greenberg helped him. These are guys I have great respect for. And then Leonard Hamilton, one of the winningest coaches in the history of college basketball. He's actually older than me, by the way. Many people don't know that. He's done a great job wherever he's been.

So I feel like we want to keep advancing the Miami basketball program and compete with all the best schools in the country. And those guys should take great pride in what we're doing and what they did.

Q. How difficult is it for you to keep Coach Cristobal away from Norchad?

COACH LARRAÑAGA: (Chuckling) I hadn't thought about that but I better start. Norchad Omier is 6'7", 240 pounds of dynamite. His personality, his body language, his ability to relate to everybody. Here's a young man whose first language is Spanish and he's up on stage speaking English and still very, very comfortable and confident that he can relate to all of you.

And like this is his roommate. Just ask him what Norchad's like. And they have become so close, and I love them both.

Q. I ask that because Miami is obviously having one of the famous college basketball-to-football conversions. He seems like a guy whose physical profile -- I was curious what you think his professional future actually could be.

COACH LARRAÑAGA: He's going to be in the NBA. I'm telling -- in football you get hurt. I don't want him even thinking about playing football. I don't think he ever will because he's a dynamic basketball player.

He hasn't even scratched the surface. His offensive skills, as good as they are, can reach not just one level up but two or three levels up. And we're going to spend a lot of time with him spring, summer and fall leading into next season, and we'll see a much improved offensive player.

How do you say that when the guy's already averaging double-figure points in rebounds? I don't know. But he's just getting better and better.

THE MODERATOR: We're joined by Nijel Pack.

Q. UConn's bigs, standing at 6'9" with Adama Sanogo and Donovan Clingan at 7'2", Norchad Omier, as you said, so physical. He said that ACC play has really helped with preparing for guys who are bigger than him. Can you just talk about what Norchad's able to do with this size advantage that his opponents have?

COACH LARRAÑAGA: Norchad's an undersized big man, but he's competed against big guys throughout the season. Duke has two seven-footers in their lineup. Carolina has Armando Bacot. And Wake Forest has huge guys. Virginia has like 6'11", seven-foot.

So he's faced them. He's learned how to defend them and how to attack them with his offensive game. And it's a challenge. When I see them walk out for the jump ball, I'm like, man, the other guy's got him by four or five inches, and yet still at the end of the game he's leading rebounder, scored double-figure points.

I'm very, very confident in his ability to compete.

Q. Both you guys and the women's team really took advantage of NIL when it was first introduced. And you both went on to make big runs in March. What are you seeing firsthand as the impact of NIL in college basketball?

COACH LARRAÑAGA: I look at more as the big impact of the transfer portal. Because he's guys probably wouldn't have been available if they hadn't put their name in the transfer portal. So when we're recruiting, we looked at our team last year. Made it to the Elite Eight and Charlie Moore and Sam Waardenburg were graduating. So we needed to replace them. We needed a point guard and we needed a big guy. And when those guys entered the portal, we went after them.

Why they chose Miami, I hope -- and I really do assume, and I'm pretty sure I know -- is because Nijel saw the opportunity he had with Charlie graduating. Norchad, on the other hand, went to Miami Prep. So it was just a natural thing to say, hey, if I can come back to Miami, I loved my year at Miami. My first language is Spanish. And city of Miami has a lot of Spanish-speaking people. So for him it was just a natural.

For Nijel, it's just a perfect fit.

Q. In 2011, when you joined the program, it wasn't nearly as basketball-oriented and some even questioned the decision. What convinced you to decide to take on the challenge of coaching at Miami?

COACH LARRAÑAGA: My decision to come to Miami?

Q. Yes, sir.

COACH LARRAÑAGA: Well, basically I'd say from very early on in my coaching career, I had the goal of coaching, being a head coach in the ACC. Then having spent seven years at Virginia, reaching two Final Fours, that became not only a goal but a dream. That was something I wanted to accomplish. And if I could ever have the opportunity, I was going to jump all over it.

So in 2011, after our George Mason team was in the NCAA Tournament, knocked off Villanova, lost to Ohio State in the next round, and Frank Haith left Miami to go to Missouri, I said that's my spot, I have to get that job. I called some friends in Miami, and they helped me get an interview, and the rest is history. I accepted the job and have loved every minute of it.

Q. As a coach and a player, both of you are respectively known for your energy and passion for the game throughout the country. What or maybe even who was it that helped you fall in love with the game of basketball in the first place?

NIJEL PACK: Well, I'm the youngest sibling in my family. I'm one of the youngest cousins in my family as well. So all my older cousins and my older brother played basketball. When I came up, watching them play, I always wanted to be like them and play.

My brother's nine years older than me. So he was playing, and I used to play against him all the time as a kid. My cousins are a few years older than me. So I used to want to play basketball with them as well. I wanted to follow their footsteps.

Basketball became a natural habit for me. I tried all the other sports, but none of them were as fun, and I didn't have the passion for it like I did with basketball. So basketball is the one I picked and I ran with it.

COACH LARRAÑAGA: For me, I have two older brothers. My brother Bob played at St. John's when they were in the top 20 in the country in 1960. I used to go to Madison Square Garden to watch them play. My oldest brother Greg, he also played in high school and loved the game. So those guys introduced me to the game.

But the guy who really lit my fire was my high school coach, Jack Kern. He became my mentor and inspiration for wanting to be a coach. And he actually asked me to coach my freshman team, a player coach as a freshman in high school at 14 years old. We went undefeated, won the city championship, and I thought, okay, I'm pretty good at this.

Q. I was wondering if you could talk about the relationship between Wooga and Bensley, I know they have a special relationship being of the same year, and I know they room together. And also if you could talk about the jump they've made from last year's tournament to this one?

COACH LARRAÑAGA: I think the jump from high school to college is huge. In your freshman year the first thing you have to learn is, hey, you actually have to defend.

Most guys, when they come into college, are terrific offensive players. And they have to learn about not only individual defense but team defense, which they never really had to play in high school. I know that sounds ridiculous, but I've had players tell me, oh, I always guarded the worst player so I wouldn't get in foul trouble.

They came in as freshmen. And the first thing that happened is Bensley Joseph made an immediate impact with the team with his presence, a freshman that can put pressure on the ball. So he became a key cog in our run to the Elite Eight.

Wooga, on the other hand, had a little further to go, but now is a tremendous defensive player. He's just gotten better and better. And both of them, as I said with Norchad, they had a very high ceiling. They're such good athletes that their skill level, once they really devote their time to the areas of the game that need the most attention, they're going to be dynamite next year.

Q. Coming off two drastically different games, one against Houston where you were 11 of 25 from deep, and a comeback against Texas, which you didn't hit a 3 in the second half, which type of battle do you see this upcoming game against UConn being?

COACH LARRAÑAGA: Whichever works. It's very simple. When we played Houston, these guys, they packed it in. These guys had to make some 3s. They did. They made 11. But against Texas they were out there strangling our 3-point shooters. So what did we do? We attacked the rim and got to the foul line. Made 28 free throws.

So I love when we have a balance in our offense. I love when Nijel's making 3s, Sai is making 3s and Wooga is making 3s, but Norchad is getting dunks and layups, and Jordan Miller the same thing, because to us, to play at your best, we need for or five guys in double figures. We've had that for most of the season. Hopefully we'll have that tomorrow.

Q. Coach, in 2006 you had the great run to the Final Four. So can you tell me what experiences you learned from that and just for finishing the job this time, what takeaways you got from that previous run that you can learn?

COACH LARRAÑAGA: I told the players, wait until you see the stadium you're playing in, because it's elevated. It's humongous, and how was it yesterday?

NIJEL PACK: Pretty good.

COACH LARRAÑAGA: They see for the first time, it's just a different environment. It's like you're playing outdoors. And back then, in '06, we had our tallest starter was 6'7". This year's team, the tallest starter is 6'7". Those five guys really shared the ball. These five, actually eight, nine guys, really share the ball extremely well.

That's the most consistent thing. That's where the similarities are. You're playing in a gigantic venue. You're not even going to be able to hear me. I whistle very loud. You're not even going to be able to hear that because it's such a large venue and the ceiling is so high. But the consistency is really with how well guys play together.

Q. Nijel, your official statement on the venue was pretty good?

NIJEL PACK: Yes.

Q. You make this big decision last year to transfer, come to Miami. Now you're here at the Final Four. What's it been like for you? What's been going through your head this past week just throughout this experience?

NIJEL PACK: Everybody has been telling me to soak it all in, enjoy the experience while you have it. It's been so much fun playing with this team. The things we've been able to complete and accomplish as a team has been great. But it doesn't even feel real yet. We've accomplished some great things. We're here to make it to the Final Four. But I just feel like the true energy and the true side of me won't show until we're holding up that national championship trophy.

Q. The adjustment from the CAA and to the ACC is obviously a tough one. What were the biggest things you've learned from those first few years with Miami that eventually allowed you to have this recent success?

COACH LARRAÑAGA: Well, the fact of the matter is I really didn't make any changes. My philosophy has always been the same. My relationship with the players have always been the same. Offense and defense just varies based on our personnel. We always just try to create a family atmosphere. We started doing that day one, in 2011, and it continues to this day.

It's really the people that we recruit. Like Nijel's such a great guy, such a great teammate, so passionate about basketball, and he's so skillful. So not only does he have skills to play it, but he has the right attitude and approach, the right commitment, and he's a great leader. Whether it's on the court or off the court, he's always speaking positively and being upbeat, and his teammates follow suit.