How Jai Lucas hire to Miami impacts both Hurricanes and Duke

In something of an unprecedented move, the Miami Hurricanes are hiring Duke associate head coach Jai Lucas as their next head coach. Miami has had an opening since Jim Larranaga announced his retirement a few months ago and the search inevitably led to the lead assistant at one of their ACC rivals.

Lucas played collegiately as Florida and Texas and briefly played overseas, but he’s become far better known for his work as a recruiter and collegiate assistant than on the court. He joined his alma mater’s staff soon after his playing career ended, aiding both Rick Barnes and Shaka Smart for several years. More recently, Lucas spent a pair of seasons on John Calipari’s staff at Kentucky before joining Jon Scheyer as one of his assistants when he got the Duke job in 2022.

The rare outside with a major hand on Duke basketball, Lucas has become a paramount piece of the puzzle for the Blue Devils. He was heavily involved and a lead recruiter for several of Duke’s important players in recent years, including presumptive top pick Cooper Flagg, who’s really shined this season. Lucas has also played a major role in the recruitment of 5-stars Cameron and Cayden Boozer for next season for the Blue Devils.

He now transitions to South Beach, becoming a head coach for the first time in his career and inheriting an ACC program that sits at the bottom of the league standings. The Hurricanes were in the Final Four just a few seasons ago but hit rock bottom this season. However, the current nature of college basketball with recruiting and transfers makes it even quicker for Lucas to turn things around in Coral Gables.

What makes this move unprecedented is that Lucas will depart for Miami at the end of the regular season, leaving Durham after this weekend’s game at North Carolina. The Transfer Portal window opens before the NCAA Tournament is finished and Lucas has a lot of work ahead in building a competitive roster in Miami, though there’s still something unsatisfying about this decision.

Duke will almost certainly have a top-seed in the NCAA Tournament and be one of the top favorites to win the whole thing, but Lucas will already have moved on. Even after helping build, craft, and coach this team, he won’t be involved in their potential postseason runs, which begins an uncomfortable precedent. With how the Transfer Portal currently works, could we see more coaches leaving schools in the middle of seasons like this?

There’s no question that Lucas is a talented recruiter and this is a major win for the Hurricanes. How he manages as leader of a program will be interesting to see, though he should have the tools in Miami to build a competitive program. It’s fair to wonder if he’d try to lure any of Duke’s future recruits down south, though the Boozer twins spurring their dad’s alma mater to head to Miami doesn’t seem like a likely outcome.

Thus the biggest question for Duke is if this becomes a distraction or hindrance for the Blue Devils. Having one less assistant is never great, though this team still has the talent and drive for a deep run during March Madness. Scheyer loses a major piece of his staff but Duke won’t suffer long-term; elite recruits have come to Durham long before Lucas’s involvement and that’ll continue to be the story for this Blue Blood program.

By this time next week, Lucas will have moved on from Duke and be in the process of building his coaching staff and starting to piece through available freshmen and transfers to turn Miami back into a contending program. Can he become a young coaching star in his first head coaching gig?