Estimated read time: 6-7 minutes
CORAL GABLES, Fla. — Jim Larrañaga insists he still loves the University of Miami, still loves the game of basketball, still loves mentoring players, still loves coaching.
He doesn't love what college basketball has become. And with that, he's leaving.
The 75-year-old Larrañaga stepped down Thursday, effective immediately, and will be replaced by associate head coach Bill Courtney — one of his best friends for the past three decades — for the remainder of the season.
"I'm exhausted," Larrañaga said. "I've tried every which way to keep this going."
Larrañaga joins a long line of prominent college basketball coaches — Virginia's Tony Bennett and Villanova's Jay Wright among them — who have left their jobs in recent years citing the changes in the game and the challenge of coaching in the name, image and likeness era of college sports.
For Larrañaga, those changes began presenting themselves when he had eight players — all of whom said they were happy at Miami — enter the transfer portal after the Hurricanes went to the Final Four in 2023.
"The opportunity to make money someplace else created a situation that you have to begin to ask yourself as a coach what is this all about," Larrañaga said. "And the answer is it's become professional."
The decision by Larrañaga ends a 14-year run as coach of the Hurricanes — and, presumably, a 41-year college head-coaching career that saw him win 744 games at Miami, American International, George Mason and Bowling Green. He took Miami to the Final Four in 2023 and took George Mason to the Final Four in 2006.
"Jim Larrañaga is a tremendous man who has left a mark as not only the most accomplished coach in Miami basketball history, but as one of the premier coaches in ACC history," ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips said. "His coaching record speaks for itself with over 700 career wins, but he always has led his program with the utmost integrity and class."
The Hurricanes are 4-8 this season and only 5-19 in their last 24 games, a stunning freefall for a program that went to the Final Four just two seasons ago. Injuries and roster turnover have taken a clear toll, and Larrañaga is one of many coaches who has expressed some level of frustration with the lack of regulation and transparency that comes with NIL.
"They're a great group of kids," Larrañaga said. "It's not their problem. It's the system or the lack of a system. I didn't know how to navigate through this."
Larrañaga was under contract into 2027 and had some school officials try to get him to rethink the decision in recent days. Larrañaga said he came to the decision over the weekend, reconsidered at the school's request, and finalized the decision Monday.
"It seems clear to me that coaching in 2024 is a much different profession than it was just a few short years ago," Miami athletic director Dan Radakovich said.
Larrañaga is the second prominent coach to step down unexpectedly this season in the Atlantic Coast Conference. Bennett did the same at Virginia back in October, less than three weeks before the Cavaliers played their season-opener.
Bennett, when he stepped down, said NIL has simply changed the game for coaches and not in a good way.
"College athletics is not in a healthy spot. It's not," Bennett said in October. "And there needs to be change. It's not going to go back. I think I was equipped to do the job here the old way — that's who I am and that's how it was."
Larrañaga's decision to step aside makes him the latest big-name veteran coach to leave the ACC in recent seasons, following the departures of some other giants within the sport — North Carolina's Roy Williams in spring 2021, Duke's Mike Krzyzewski a year later and Syracuse's Jim Boeheim to end a 47-year tenure in 2023, and Bennett earlier this year.
"I owe my professional career to him," said George Washington coach Chris Caputo, a longtime Miami assistant under Larrañaga. "I learned so much and I certainly wouldn't be where I am without him and his family. As it relates to Miami, with all respect to the people there before him, he took what was essentially an irrelevant program and turned it into a Sweet 16, Elite Eight and Final Four program. At Miami, that was unheard of. He raised the bar for basketball at the University of Miami from here on out."
It's also the second sudden retirement for Miami's basketball programs in 2024: women's coach Katie Meier surprised many around the Hurricanes when she stepped away this past spring after 19 seasons in Coral Gables. Meier has remained at the school as a special advisor to Radakovich and as a professor.
Larrañaga will be offered a role within the university in the coming weeks, Radakovich said.
"It's still all about The U," Larrañaga said.
Officially, Larrañaga's first coaching job was in 1977 at American International. Unofficially, it was when he was a freshman at Archbishop Malloy High School in New York. Larrañaga was on an undefeated freshman team there and the coach quit at Christmas — so Jack Curran, the varsity coach there, named Larrañaga one of the student coaches for the rest of the season.
More than 60 years later, it was Larrañaga stepping down at Christmastime.
He played college basketball at Providence, has coached more than two dozen college players who went on to the NBA, made 20 postseason appearances — 11 NCAA, eight NIT and one CIT berth — as a coach, was the AP national coach of the year in 2013 and was announced earlier this month as a candidate again for enshrinement in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
"Coach Larrañaga is a friend of mine," Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said Thursday. "I think so highly of him. The way that he's able to build a program that has a sense of community and we all rallied around the basketball program. I live in Coral Gables, so I've been part of this movement. You could just feel it the last several years. It's been a lot of fun. He wins wherever he goes, but he does it in a way that it's a fun brand of basketball."
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