CORAL GABLES, Fla. — Jim Larrañaga is stepping down as Miami’s males’s basketball coach efficient instantly, an individual with data of the choice stated Thursday.
The 75-year-old Larrañaga shall be changed by affiliate head coach Invoice Courtney — one in all Larrañaga’s greatest mates for the previous three many years or so — for the rest of the season, the particular person stated.
The particular person spoke to The Related Press on situation of anonymity as a result of the college had not made any public announcement.
A press convention was deliberate for later Thursday.
The choice by Larrañaga ends a 14-year run as coach of the Hurricanes — and, presumably, a 41-year faculty head-coaching profession that noticed him win 744 video games at Miami, American Worldwide, George Mason and Bowling Inexperienced. He took Miami to the Closing 4 in 2023 and took George Mason to the Closing 4 in 2006.
The Hurricanes are 4-8 this season and solely 5-19 of their final 24 video games, a shocking freefall for a program that went to the Closing 4 simply two seasons in the past. Accidents and roster turnover have taken a transparent toll, and Larrañaga is one in all many coaches who has expressed some stage of frustration with the shortage of regulation and transparency that comes with the Title, Picture and Likeness period in faculty sports activities.
Larrañaga is the second distinguished coach to step down unexpectedly this season within the Atlantic Coast Convention. Tony Bennett did the identical at Virginia again in October, lower than three weeks earlier than the Cavaliers performed their season opener.
Bennett, when he stepped down, stated NIL has merely modified the sport for coaches and never in a great way.
“Faculty athletics is just not in a wholesome spot. It’s not,” Bennett stated in October. “And there must be change. It’s not going to return. I believe I used to be geared up to do the job right here the outdated manner — that’s who I’m and that’s the way it was.”
Larrañaga’s resolution to step apart makes him the newest big-name veteran coach to depart the ACC in latest seasons, following the departures of another giants throughout the sport — North Carolina’s Roy Williams in spring 2021, Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski a 12 months later and Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim to finish a 47-year tenure in 2023, and Bennett earlier this 12 months.
It’s additionally the second sudden retirement for Miami’s basketball applications in 2024: girls’s coach Katie Meier shocked many across the Hurricanes when she stepped away this previous spring after 19 seasons in Coral Gables. Meier has remained on the college as a particular advisor to athletic director Dan Radakovich and as a professor.
Formally, Larrañaga’s first teaching job was in 1977 at American Worldwide. Unofficially, it was when he was a freshman at Archbishop Malloy Excessive College in New York. Larrañaga was on an undefeated freshman crew there and the coach stop at Christmas — so Jack Curran, the varsity coach there, named Larrañaga one of many scholar coaches for the remainder of the season.
Greater than 60 years later, it was Larrañaga stepping down at Christmastime.
He performed faculty basketball at Windfall, has coached greater than two dozen faculty gamers who went on to the NBA, made 20 postseason appearances — 11 NCAA, eight NIT and one CIT berth — as a coach, was the AP nationwide coach of the 12 months in 2013 and was introduced earlier this month as a candidate once more for enshrinement within the Naismith Memorial Basketball Corridor of Fame.
