Veteran Group Looks to Set Tone for Canes

CORAL GABLES, Fla. – Nijel Pack concedes last season wasn’t anything like he hoped it would be.

He battled injuries. There were struggles on the floor. And more than once, that history-making run to the Final Four in 2023 – the one he and his teammates had wanted to build off so badly – seemed like an incredibly distant memory.

Now, with a new season set to begin, Pack is determined to do everything in his power to make sure his final season in orange and green is one he won’t forget – even if he hasn’t quite wrapped his mind around the fact that it actually is his final season in orange and green.

“Obviously, I know in my head this is my last year, but I’m trying to take advantage of every day, just living in each day, taking advantage of it and having as much fun as possible with it,” said Pack, who averaged 13.3 points, 2.6 rebounds, and 3.6 assists last season and was named a preseason All-ACC selection. “I’m not even trying to think ahead to the future and what’s going to happen next. I’m just trying to stay in the day … continue to just play hard every day, get better and keep working and then let the rest take care of the rest.”

Pack is hardly the only Hurricane with that mentality.

With four seniors and three graduate-level players now on the roster, Miami has an experienced, veteran core of players that are set to play their final seasons of college basketball.

Joining Pack in that experienced group are returning guard Matthew Cleveland, Idaho State transfer forward Kiree Huie, East Carolina transfer forward Brandon Johnson, Stetson transfer guard Jalen Blackmon, Yale transfer forward Yussif Basa-Ama and a relatively familiar face, center Lynn Kidd, who spent the last three seasons at Virginia Tech.

Each of them saw potential in the roster head coach Jim Larrañaga and his staff were building at Miami and each felt this was a place where they could excel in their final season of college basketball.

That individual motivation, combined with their experience, Larrañaga believes will help make a difference for Miami as it navigates another competitive ACC schedule and makes a push to return to the NCAA Tournament.

Adding a few talented freshmen, including 2024 McDonald’s All-American and consensus five-star prospect Jalil Bethea and four-star prospects Isaiah Johnson-Arigu and Austin Swartz, doesn’t hurt either.

“When a team is more experienced, they have a better chance to succeed,” said Larrañaga, who is embarking on his 14th season at Miami. “Working with young players, they need experience before they can really play up to their potential. Working with older players, they normally adapt quicker and can execute better under game conditions because they’ve done it for so many years.

“My first Miami team, we had a great freshman in Shane Larkin. But he was surrounded by juniors and seniors. And then that next year, with most of them coming back, we had a championship-caliber team. I think the balance of having youthful enthusiasm, talented young guys to join a veteran crew is the best-case scenario.”

That veteran crew, for its part, is ready to do its part to help their younger teammates develop, knowing – as Larrañaga does – that the key to Miami’s success this season will be finding ways for both veterans and freshmen to thrive.

And Miami’s success, they say, will help make their last seasons as college players all the more memorable.

“I think a lot of us have seen a lot of hoops and we know what we’re looking at and we understand like, ‘Oh, this is our last year. It’s make or break. This is our last chance at it,’” said Kidd, who started 33 games for the Hokies last season, averaged 13.2 points per game and led the ACC in field-goal percentage (66.8). “So, I think a lot of guys are desperate and they want to make a deep run into the tournament. That’s why they came here. That’s what I came to do.”

Added Cleveland, “We all have the same goal and it’s to win. We talk about it every day in the locker room, how a lot of us haven’t, in our college careers, gotten to the goals that we wanted to get to and how this is the last year that we have and how this is the year that we all just want to win.”

As much as Miami’s veterans – whether they’re new to the Hurricanes or not – want to win, though, they know it takes more than experience to be successful.

The group understands they have to play together, learn each other’s strengths and weaknesses and build chemistry.

To do that, they’ve tried to spend just about as much time together outside the gym as they have inside.

Video game marathons and dinners out were priorities during the offseason to help them all get to know each other and strengthen the bonds they know will make a difference the longer the season goes.

Learning how to communicate effectively was important, too.

“I think the key to it is just hanging out with each other, outside of basketball, getting to know each other outside basketball,” Kidd said. “I think a lot of successful teams are really close on and off the court. And I think we’ve been doing that. We always go get food or we play video games … I think that’s really important. I think we’ve been doing that really well so far.”

Said Cleveland, who averaged 13.7 points and 6.1 rebounds per game last season, “You’ve got to communicate with each other. That’s the biggest thing. You don’t know what other people are thinking if you don’t communicate. So, learning their games by communicating with them, watch film with them and just rally, I would say the big thing is just talking with them. That’s the easiest way to get to know somebody, on and off the floor.”

Now, it’s time for the new-look Hurricanes to put all of that bonding, communicating and practicing together.

They’ll open the season with a slate of 12 non-conference games before ACC play begins on New Year’s Day at Boston College.

After that, games against the likes of Duke, North Carolina, Florida State, Louisville and Syracuse await. There will also be a trip to the West Coast to face new ACC members Stanford and California.

And all of that, the older Hurricanes hope will prepare them for one last bit of March magic.

“We didn’t have the year we wanted to have last year, and we know that this could be a big year,” Cleveland said. “So, we’re just taking a no-nonsense mindset of just [doing] whatever it takes to win because we’re not going to deal with anything else.”