Postcards from Brooklyn
Day 5
Thursday, March 9, 2017
Miami’s five-day adventure in New York ended Thursday at the hands of top-seeded No. 6 North Carolina, who exacted revenge for the Hurricanes’ win in January with a 78-53 victory in the ACC Tournament quarterfinals.
Much was made of this first ACC postseason affair in the Big Apple. In the 63-year history of the event, North Carolina (either Charlotte, Greensboro and Raleigh) has hosted the tournament 52 times. But now that the league has expanded to 15 teams – and stretches from Boston to Miami – the ACC is looking to spread its premier postseason showcase around.
Hurricanes head coach Jim Larrañaga was an assistant coach at Virginia, so he remembers when the ACC added Georgia Tech as only its eighth member. He recognizes the league was great then – and great now – but that the landscape of college basketball has changed.
“First of all, I coached in the ACC in the early ’80s, from ’79 to ’86, and I thought it was the best basketball league in the country then,” Larrañaga said. “For a majority of my years there, we played it in Greensboro. I think one year we played it in Atlanta. Another year we played it in the Cap Centre in Washington, D.C. To me, the ACC Tournament, no matter where it’s played, is a tremendous event and deserves the recognition that it does get.
“But the fact of the matter is New York City is the capital of college basketball, starting back when CCNY and LIU were winning national titles, and kids were growing up in the city and becoming All-Americans and NBA players. So to bring the ACC, the best basketball conference in the country, to the mecca of college basketball and give it the exposure that it truly deserves, I think is a great thing. Not to disparage any other city or any other location, but New York is special.”
Senior forward Kamari Murphy is a Brooklyn native and enjoyed being able to play in his hometown in front of family and friends.
“It was amazing,” Murphy said. “Besides the family and friends that I got to see, it gave guys that have never been to New York the exposure. Like Anthony Lawrence has never been to New York City. We went to the World Trade and took that tour. So it gives guys that have never been around the world that exposure.
“Of course, I would love it to come back, but this is my last year. I think it was fun. I think they should continue to do it.”
The ACC Tournament will indeed return to Barclays Center next year. It’s then scheduled to return to Charlotte in 2019.
The Hurricanes flew back to Miami Thursday night and now prepare for Selection Sunday, when the NCAA Tournament bracket will be unveiled at 5:30 p.m. The team will hold a viewing party at the Rathskeller on campus.
The University of Miami offers more than 180 majors but none in Bracketology, so we’ll leave it to the experts to speculate where the Hurricanes might end up. But after posting 21 wins and 11 against conference teams (counting the ACC Tournament win over Syracuse), Miami appears to be in good shape. And despite the loss to North Carolina, Larrañaga feels good about his team heading into next week.
“I would look at Carolina and think they’re a real threat to win the National Championship, and yet we split with them,” he said. “I know we played badly today, but we’re very capable of playing a whole lot better than we did. At the offensive end, we’re not quite as consistent as we are defensively, and if we share the ball well and get some assists and don’t turn it over very much, we’ll be a tough team to beat.”
Day 4
Wednesday, March 8, 2017
BROOKLYN, N.Y. – For Miami, it was the perfect play at the perfect time.
Syracuse forward Andrew White had just hit a runner in the lane with 4:06 left in Wednesday’s ACC Tournament opener against the Hurricanes, and the building was the loudest it had been all afternoon.
Syracuse, the closest ACC campus to this year’s tournament site, had cut Miami’s lead to 53-52 and, make no mistake — this Barclays Center crowd was pro-Orange.
“I looked at it as Syracuse’s home game,” head coach Jim Larrañaga said. “They’re from New York. They played in the city a lot over the course of Coach (Jim) Boeheim’s decades of excellence at Syracuse. But we’ve been on the road before.”
And the Hurricanes didn’t panic, showing the poise on their next possession that has served them well over the latter part of this season.
Forward Anthony Lawrence, Jr., looked over the zone and lobbed a perfect pass to Brooklyn native Kamari Murphy, who slammed it home to push Miami’s lead back to three points. Syracuse never got closer than two points the rest of the way in the Hurricanes’ 62-57 victory.
The seeds for that crucial play were planted earlier this week in a high school gym built more for 180 people than 18,000 people. It was there, as Larrañaga watched from the top of the key, that the Hurricanes worked meticulously on the lob over the zone.
Over and over, Miami’s guards and forwards lofted balls towards the big men underneath the basket until Larrañaga was satisfied with the results. And in one of the season’s most critical possessions, Lawrence and Murphy executed it to perfection.
Right after the play, former Hurricane guard Angel Rodriguez tweeted “THANK YOU!!!! Lob has been open all game come on fellas. Let’s get it done!!”
The Hurricanes did get it done, playing tenacious defense down the stretch and hitting three of four free throws in the final seconds.
Next up? The top-seeded Tar Heels in tomorrow’s quarterfinals. Miami handed North Carolina its worst conference loss of the season, 77-62, in Coral Gables on Jan. 28.
The Tar Heels were wrapping up their shoot-around when the Hurricanes arrived at Barclays Center this morning, so they were resting while Miami was battling the Orange to the wire. But the Hurricanes will be ready nevertheless.
“We have a list of seven things we have to do against North Carolina, both defensively and offensively, and we’re going to review those seven things defensively and seven things offensively with our players tonight,” Larrañaga said. “There’s no practice. We’re not going anywhere and practicing this. So it’s more about mental preparation and relying on our skills that we’ve developed over a long period of time, both offensively and defensively.
“We have the utmost respect for Carolina. They won the regular season championship. A lot of people are picking them to win the national championship. So we know we’re the underdog, but we like that. We’ve moved on and we’re in the quarterfinals now.”
Survive and advance is the mantra of March. The Hurricanes have guaranteed themselves one more day in the Big Apple. Tomorrow they’ll shoot for another.
Day 3
Tuesday, March 7, 2017
NEW YORK — While the ACC Tournament tipped off Tuesday at ground level, Miami’s basketball squad soaked up a view of Brooklyn (and beyond) from 102 stories up.
The Hurricanes paid a visit to One World Trade Center, the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, rising 1,776 feet into the air. That makes it the sixth-tallest building worldwide.
Watch the video here – https://youtu.be/keIdYE_rdRA
On a clear day you can see for 80 miles, past the New York burroughs to Connecticut and even as far as the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania. It was cloudy on Tuesday, but associate head coach Chris Caputo could still look for his house in Queens; forward Kamari Murphy could glance down at his hometown of Brooklyn; and guard Davon Reed could gaze across the Hudson River towards his home in Ewing, N.J.
Prior to their climb up into the clouds, the Hurricanes conducted their final practice before Wednesday’s second-round tournament game against Syracuse at noon.
Syracuse dropped three of its last five regular season games, but is coming off a 90-61 win over Georgia Tech in which the Orange shot 54 percent — and made 15 treys. It was Syracuse’s highest scoring game since an overtime win at NC State on February 1. Miami head coach Jim Larrañaga knows his team needs to guard well for 40 minutes, or however long it takes, tomorrow for the Hurricanes to advance to the quarterfinals.
“We’re going to need all of them to play their best defense of the season against Syracuse because everyone they’re guarding is very capable of having a huge game,” Larrañaga said. “Our defense has got to be at its best and we have to stop them often enough where we can get some opportunities in the open court to score before the zone gets set.”
The Hurricanes will be looking to break a two-game losing streak after winning eight of their previous 10 games. Miami has also seen its share of speed bumps in the rugged ACC but the Hurricanes have persevered, improved throughout the season and put themselves in prime position for the postseason.
“This team has been very attentive and a lot of fun to coach,” Larrañaga said. “I think my staff has enjoyed it. I think we’ve overachieved with so many young guys. I think we’ve come a long way.
“Our young guys, our freshmen and our sophomores, have elevated their games and as a result, have put us in a position to compete with the ACC teams and then, hopefully, in the NCAA Tournament.”
The journey continues tomorrow in the first of what Hurricane fans hope is many games this week in Brooklyn.
Day 2
Monday, March 6, 2017
BROOKLYN, N.Y. – The Hurricanes got their first look at Barclays Center Monday as they held a late afternoon shootaround session in preparation for their second round ACC Tournament encounter with Syracuse.
This is the first ACC Tournament in New York, which means a homecoming for some Hurricanes and, for others, their first chance to soak in all the sights and sounds.
“We’re very excited,” head coach Jim Larrañaga said. “We have two young men from Brooklyn, Kamari Murphy and Rodney Miller, so they’ve come home. But a lot of the guys on the team have never been to New York before.
“For us, it’s exciting and I think for our fans and our alums in the New York area, it will be exciting for them to come cheer on the Hurricanes because when the tournament was held in Greensboro, it was a long distance for the New Yorkers to come.”
The Hurricanes were the sixth of eight teams on the floor today. Each team’s session lasted 55 minutes. The tournament tips off tomorrow with three first round games, starting with Clemson versus NC State at noon. Miami’s matchup with the Orange is Wednesday at noon on ESPN with Karl Ravech, LaPhonso Ellis and UM alum Allison Williams on the call.
The BIG EAST is also holding its conference tournament in the Big Apple this week at Madison Square Garden, just as it has done for the last 34 years. Now the ACC has an opportunity to showcase its teams in the city that never sleeps.
“We’ve got what we believe is the best basketball league in the country from top to bottom,” Larrañaga said. “The battles in the ACC were so hotly contested, such close games and always came down to the last minute of play. The games come down to who executes the best down the stretch and hopefully on Wednesday against Syracuse, that will be the Hurricanes.”
Speaking of the Orange, a matchup against Jim Boeheim’s club means preparing for Syracuse’s famed matchup zone. Earlier in the day, the Hurricanes held a 90-minute practice session at a high school a few blocks from their hotel, and executing against the zone was a major theme.
“We had a long talk with our team this morning about getting more assists against the zone,” Larrañaga said. “It’s very hard to dribble drive and get to the rim – there are five guys between you and the basket. It’s very different from man-to-man where we do a ton of ball screening and we try to dribble drive a lot. Against Syracuse we’re going to have to share the ball and move the ball – get it outside, get it inside – and shoot off the pass.
“When we lost to them earlier in the season we shot I believe 22 percent on our shots off the dribble and 44 percent on our shots off the pass. We need to know the name of the game is to find the open man and make the open shot, and not put the ball on the ground too much.”
Miami and Syracuse both finished 10-8 in conference play, but the Orange’s 70-55 win at the Carrier Dome on Jan. 4 gave them the eighth seed. Wednesday’s winner will face top-seeded North Carolina in the first quarterfinal game on Thursday.
Day 1
Sunday, March 5, 2017
NEW YORK – The Miami Hurricanes arrived in Manhattan Sunday afternoon to begin preparations for the first ACC Tournament in the Big Apple.
As the ninth seed, the Hurricanes will tip off at noon Wednesday at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center against eighth-seeded Syracuse. The winner of that game will face top-seeded North Carolina Thursday at noon in the quarterfinals.
The Hurricanes have been road warriors since their Senior Night win over No. 10 Duke on February 25. Miami flew to Blacksburg, Va., the following day but plane delays caused the team to miss its practice session. The Hurricanes then lost to the Hokies Monday night and didn’t get back to Coral Gables until 4 a.m. Tuesday.
Miami flew to Tallahassee Friday for yesterday’s game against the Seminoles and returned to campus around 9 p.m. Players, coaches and staff left the Watsco Center at noon today to head to the airport for the flight to JFK. On the tarmac, the Hurricanes caught up with LeBron James and former Hurricane standout James Jones, as they were preparing to board their charter flight out of Miami.
After arriving at their hotel in Manhattan, the Hurricanes headed to dinner followed by a team meeting. The team will practice Monday morning at a local high school and then hold a one-hour shootaround at Barclays Center later that afternoon.
Wednesday’s game against the Orange will be Miami’s second game at Barclays Center. The Hurricanes fell to Providence 76-62 in the Brooklyn Holiday Hoops Invitational on December 22, 2014. Miami returned to New York at the end of that season for the NIT Championship at Madison Square Garden, eventually losing to Stanford in overtime in the title game. That was the Hurricanes’ last trip to New York.
This trip is a homecoming of sorts for head coach Jim Larrañaga, who grew up in the Bronx, as well as associate head coach Chris Caputo, senior forward Kamari Murphy and freshman center Rodney Miller. Caputo is from Elmhurst and played at the same high school (Archbishop Molloy) as Larrañaga. Murphy is from Brooklyn and Miller is from Laurelton.
Larrañaga served as tour guide on the bus ride from the airport to the hotel, grabbing the mic and sharing some history and stories about his hometown.
