CORAL GABLES, Fla. (AP) — Jim Larrañaga is stepping down as Miami’s men’s basketball coach effective immediately, a person with knowledge of the decision said Thursday.
The 75-year-old Larrañaga will be replaced by associate head coach Bill Courtney — one of Larrañaga’s best friends for the past three decades or so — for the remainder of the season, the person said.
The person spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the school had not made any public announcement. A press conference was planned for later Thursday.
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.
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 the Name, Image and Likeness era in college sports.
Larrañaga was under contract into 2027 and had some school officials try to get him to rethink the decision in recent days, the person said. Players were reconvening on campus to resume practice Thursday after the holiday break.
Larrañaga is the second prominent coach to step down unexpectedly this season in the Atlantic Coast Conference. Tony 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.
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 athletic director Dan Radakovich and as a professor.
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.
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