Miami Hurricanes basketball is off to the Final Four for the first time in school history, and it has a lot to do with their head coach.
For the first time in school history, the Miami Hurricanes are headed to the Final Four.
The Hurricanes have long been considered a football-first school, and for good reason. College Football was dominated by the Canes under Jimmy Johnson in the 1980s, a dynasty that continued to varying degrees into the early 2000s when the team returned to being national champions.
Everything about the Hurricanes identity — good, bad, and everything in between — has been filtered through a pigskin prism.
That changed in a historic way on Sunday when the Canes marched back from a double-digit deficit to beat Texas and reach the Final Four for the first time ever. Work still needs to be done for the basketball program to be talked about alongside the lore of the football program, but a giant leap forward was taken in Kansas City, one that brings them a step closer immortality.
Norchad Omier is the face of the Canes success, along with teammates Isaiah Wong, Jordan Miller and others, but there’s one man who deserves his flowers for once again taking a program to heights it had never reached before.
Who is the coach of Miami Hurricanes basketball?
It’s impossible to not connect the dots between Hurricanes football and what we’re seeing from the basketball team. Part of what made those football teams so legendary was the head coach leading the charge. Johnson is the most famous, but he’s joined in the annals by guys like Dennis Erickson, Butch Davis, Larry Cocker, and the iconic Howard Schnellenberger.
Those guys were as much the identity of the program as anything else when they were running things, and the same can be said now about the basketball program.
Jim Larrañaga is the head coach of Miami Hurricanes basketball, and it’s a job he’s probably going to continue having for a very long time.
It’s not his first trip to the Final Four, though. Larrañaga rose to elite prominence back in 2006 when he took George Mason to the Final Four as a No. 11 seed. That season ended in defeat, as the Patriots fell to the dynastic Florida Gators in the Final Four but it was a journey that led Larrañaga to Miami and back to where it all became for him with George Mason.
“You know last year we got to the Elite Eight, and then it comes to a crushing end,” Larrañaga said to Tracy Wolfson after the game. “So today all of the guys just kept talking about how we gotta go past the Elite Eight and get to the Final Four. was telling everybody what it was like last year … they were all saying it.”
Now the team is off to Houston, where the season continues further than it ever has for the Hurricanes on the hardwood and the school is two wins away from being National Champions.