On Tuesday, veteran Miami head basketball coach Jim Larranaga met the press on ACC Media Day.
On his philosophy…
“My own personal philosophy is I’m here to just educate young men using basketball to do it. I’m an educator. I’m a teacher. I like to work with the players during practice. I like to get to know them, on the court and off the court. I like to prepare them for life when their no longer bouncing the basketball.
On meshing ten new players into a team…
“I think we’re going to find out how well its meshed together once we start the competition. What’s very challenging for players is to play against the same faces every single day. And what is very very different is we started working out as a team in July. So we had all of July, basically a couple of weeks in August, all of September and now all of October to really put the pieces together.”
“But because we have so many new players, ten new guys, we’ve made adjustments and their learning a whole new system so you actually need the time because you’re taking players from all different systems and trying to mesh them into one unit.”
“So, I’ll be excited to see how we are doing. We are going to have a scrimmage and a exhibition game before we open up the season and we’ll see how we are doing in those.”
On working with veteran players…
“I like working with players, whether they’re young or old. I think what you have is when a team is more experienced they have a better chance to succeed. Working with young players, they need experience before they can play up to their potential. Working with older players, they normally adapt quicker and can execute better under game conditions because they’ve done it for so many years…I think the balance of having youthful enthusiasm, talented young guys to join a veteran crew is the best case scenario.”
Miami opens their season on November 4th, hosting Fairleigh Dickinson at the Watsco Center. Tip-Off is set for 7:00 p.m. ET. Coverage will be provided by ESPN Plus.
GO CANES!
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