The Washington Post published a very nice, but somewhat dispiriting profile of Miami head coach, Jim Larranaga yesterday. I should probably rephrase that: the situation in Miami doesn’t seem great, but Larranaga seems up for the challenge. When the architect of George Mason’s miraculous Cinderella run accepted the job in Miami, he didn’t know the setbacks he was in for: a soon to explode NCAA bomb,  a knee injury to Reggie Johnson, and a torn ACL for Julian Gamble are just the highlights of what looks to be possibly the toughest head coaching gig in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

Miami opted to go the safe route with Larranaga (Credit: Nick Wass/Associated Press)

That said, Amy Shipley’s take has more than a few whiffs of optimism, mentioning the busy schedule of the coaching staff, the appeals to self-help culture (apparently, Miami will be living by The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People this season), and the somewhat mind-boggling revelation that the coaching staff was sending out a thousand emails a day, three to four days a week. Obviously, the profile is fairly interesting, painting Larranaga as a hard-working guy who is doing his best to help the Miami program turn the corner. The piece ends on an ambiguous note, suggesting that while Larranaga will persevere, it might not be enough to overcome all of Miami’s troubles.

Of course, somewhat serendipitously, we get the first hint of how this story will turn out: Larranaga landed the first commitment for his incoming 2012 class by securing the services of dynamic scoring/combo guard Melvin Johnson. This victory is particularly meaningful because Johnson was considering none other than Virginia Tech. The ability to come out ahead of Seth Greenberg and steal a talented New York prospect from Big East territory reflects well on Larranaga. The ACC conference schedule won’t start for months, but for Jim Larranaga, I think it’s safe to credit him with his first meaningful win, a recruiting victory over Greenberg. An auspicious start for the hardest working man in Miami.

KCarpenter (269 Posts)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 11th, 2011 at 10:00 am by KCarpenter and is filed under acc, microsites. Tagged: acc, jim larranaga, julian gamble, miami, reggie johnson, seth greenberg virginia tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.