Running Start

There is still so, so very much to do. But for a moment in April, Jai Lucas caught his breath.

He’d already put together most of his staff. Built the framework of a roster. And, just as importantly, he and his family had just found a place to live – no small feat, given the chaos that can often come with the South Florida real estate market.

“It is no joke,” Lucas chuckled of his South Florida home-buying experience. “But it’s close, and that’s all I cared about.”

To say the last three months have been a whirlwind for Lucas would be an understatement.

In February, he was a part of Jon Scheyer’s staff at Duke, where the Blue Devils had their sights on competing for another ACC title and putting together another deep postseason run, a run that ultimately ended for them at the Final Four.

But Lucas wasn’t in San Antonio when the Blue Devils competed on college basketball’s biggest stage.

He’d already been in Coral Gables for a bit, starting the work of reshaping the men’s basketball program at Miami, which he’d just been entrusted to lead as its new head coach. And because the college basketball calendar has changed thanks in part to the advent of the transfer portal, there wasn’t really much time for goodbyes in Durham, or to savor the personal milestone of earning his first head coaching opportunity.

Lucas had to get moving and had to do so quickly.

“A lot of talking, I guess, is the best way to describe it,” Lucas said of his first weeks at Miami. “It’s interviews, it’s phone calls, it’s visits. And then it’s more phone calls, and more visits. There’s a lot going on, but it’s what you asked for. It’s been exciting. But that would be the biggest thing – it’s been a lot of talking.”

By all indications, the conversations have been plenty productive.

Five high-profile transfers quickly joined the Hurricanes after Lucas’ hire, including former Michigan guard Tre Donaldson and former Indiana forward Malik Reneau.

Five-star prospect Shelton Henderson – who attended Bellaire High School in Texas, which happens to be Lucas’ alma mater – also joined the Hurricanes in recent weeks.

And while the coach has gotten a warm welcome from the Hurricanes fans he’s encountered out in the community during his short time in Miami, excitement for what Lucas is building has extended even beyond Coral Gables.

He received congratulatory messages from the likes of LeBron James and Dwyane Wade after he was hired. Scheyer and Tennessee coach Rick Barnes – who offered Lucas his first coaching opportunity while he was at Texas – gave the new coach ringing endorsements.

Even renowned college basketball analyst Dick Vitale took note of the work Lucas was doing and praised the first-time head coach on the social media site, X.

But, as Lucas points out with a smile, his Hurricanes haven’t played a game yet and things are generally pretty rosy before a loss or two blemishes any team’s record.

Still, he’s encouraged by all the support he’s received and he’s hopeful that support will only continue to grow as the program looks to build on the success it had under former coach Jim Larrañaga, who led the Hurricanes to their first Final Four berth in 2023 and their first ACC Championship in 2013 before stepping away from the program in December as its winningest coach.

“That was the most attractive thing, that it wasn’t a program in disarray,” Lucas said of Miami. “They had a bad season, but there’s a lot of things that go into that. What Coach L was able to do over his time here, he built a strong foundation. And that was a big key for me, [going] somewhere that had a strong foundation, but also had an upward momentum and upward trajectory that you could go and make it kind of your own. … It wasn’t something that has already been kind of stamped as this blue-blood or something that has this great tradition and you’re just another name that’s part of it. It has something you can kind of create and make your own.”

And as he starts to put his imprint on the Miami program, Lucas can draw inspiration from plenty of savvy basketball minds around him, including his biggest influence: his father, former NBA star and coach, John Lucas II.

When his sons were young, “Big John” – as he is affectionately known by his family – would often sit Jai and his brother, John III, down, show them basketball plays and ask each how they’d run them.

Even then, Jai had concepts and ideas that seemed intriguing, especially since he was still in elementary school.

“John told me even then, ‘Jai is going to be an unbelievable coach,’” said Debbie Lucas, Jai’s mother. “He saw something, being a coach, that we knew would help Jai take off.”

Throughout his life, Jai Lucas has done his best to forge his own path in the basketball world. He played at Florida before transferring to Texas, where he eventually joined Barnes’ staff after brief stints playing in both Europe and with the NBA Development League.

After Texas, stops at Kentucky and Duke followed.

He did his best to soak up as much knowledge as he could from people like Barnes, Scheyer and Arkansas head coach John Calipari, whom he worked with at Kentucky.

But through the entirety of his basketball journey, Lucas has never shied away from seeking advice and guidance from the man who helped him fall in love with the game as a child.

He’s beyond grateful for every bit of counsel he’s gotten from his father, and he doesn’t expect his questions for John Lucas II will end any time soon.

“He’s one of the people I trust completely, so anything that comes up, any situation, anything I need to talk about, I go to him and talk to him about it,” Lucas said. “I have leaned on him for a lot and will continue to lean on him for a lot, too. He’s one of the smartest people I know when it comes to everything and just being able to have somebody like that in your corner is a big key.”

The best advice Lucas says his father has given him? To remain true to himself and his vision for what kind of program he wants the Hurricanes to be, not just now as he’s building his team, but in all the years that follow.

That’s part of the reason that as Lucas put his staff together, he looked for coaches that had personality traits and strengths similar to his own.

“It’s hard, when you think of yourself as a successful assistant coach, which I did. You always want to find somebody who’s like you,” Lucas said. “But I ended up just finding everybody who had a little bit of me in them. So, a guy like [assistant coach] Andrew Moran, I’ve always been big on player development and skill development and he’s one of the best in the country. A guy like [associate coach] Erik Pastrana, just having a certain type of temperament that you’re able to kind of navigate in any room, any situation, was a big key for me. And then hiring a guy like [associate coach] Charlton Young, just somebody who has a bigger personality and can kind of say things a certain way that people understand and gravitate towards was a big key to having.

“And then also somebody like [special assistant to the head coach] Riley Welch, who comes from a similar background as me. Being the son of a coach, understanding the dynamic of coaching and what it means to work, knowing there are no hours [because] you’ve seen your father do it, so you understand the responsibility that comes with the job. … Just having a bunch of people who were a little bit like me and also an extension of me was a big key.”

Moran, who earlier this spring was named the 2025 Naismith National High School Boys Basketball Coach of the Year after leading Miami’s Christopher Columbus High School to its fourth straight state title and the 2025 national championship, was more than intrigued by the opportunity to work with Lucas at Miami after getting to know the 36-year-old coach.

The two built a relationship while Lucas was recruiting some of the prospects Moran has coached and trained, and it didn’t take long for Moran to see the emphasis Lucas put on player development – or how effective he was when it came to helping players grow their game.

“Even before we had conversations, I knew what type of person he was, so that was exciting. But when he said the foundation of the team would be player development and then [the fact] he’s a defensive guy, that was just it for me,” Moran said. “Sometimes people don’t think you can have player development [in the transfer portal era], but I’m a firm believer that even if you have a couple of weeks, you have a month, you have two months, you have three months, you can really help players improve their game and really have them be ready for the season. … Hopefully, we’re going to get most of our guys [here] in June and we’ll have time to really focus in on the player development aspect and have them ready. But really, player development and him being a defensive guy got me very excited in terms of philosophy.”

Moran also has first-hand experience with another of Lucas’ coaching strengths: recruiting.

While at Duke, Lucas helped the Blue Devils secure the nation’s top recruiting classes in both 2024 and 2025. And during his two years at Kentucky, Lucas helped the Wildcats land five players who participated in either the McDonald’s All-American Game or the Jordan Brand Classic.

Every expectation is that he’ll bring that same recruiting prowess to Coral Gables and as a former high school coach himself, Moran is eager to see how Lucas continues working to build Miami’s roster.

“He just gets the job done. He goes in there and I think what he does best is create relationships with the guys,” Moran said. “Even the guys that maybe he hasn’t gotten in the past, he still has a relationship with them because he’s done such a great job. So, I mean, if you’re going up against him, good luck because he goes in, he’s relentless and he really makes sure that he is connected with those players. I think that’s why they feel comfortable when they decide to go where he is. So, I’m excited to see what he does here because obviously, he’s been one of the top recruiters in the country for the last three, last five, last 10 years, you know? And I’m excited because I think I can do a pretty good job myself as well and we’ve got other guys [on staff] that have recruited at a high level, so putting us all together helps us to, hopefully, bring in some high-level guys and have a lot of success.”

Being a top-notch recruiter and a coach can be time consuming, something Lucas – a husband and father of three – understands well. He relies on a color-coded calendar to help keep his day-to-day schedule on track as best he can.

But as he tries to balance all the responsibilities that come with his high-profile work and his family, Lucas knows he’s rarely – if ever – off the clock, even when he’s home with his wife, Kori, and their boys.

That’s one of the reasons he tries to make sure his 7-year-old son, Jaxin, is a regular fixture at practices or around his teams.

“It’s important to him. To say there’s a balance would mean equal parts get all of him and I would say there’s no real balance if you’re trying to be at the top of your game as a head coach in college,” Kori Lucas said. “But I will say that the way it works is that he includes [Jaxin], and he brings him with him. … He wants to be present at home, but he does work at home. And that is really the only way that it works. He cherishes and values his relationship with Jaxin and his family and everybody understands. Sometimes, Jaxin will see his phone ring and he’ll be like, ‘Oh, Dad has a phone call’ and he goes back to whatever he’s doing.

“But Jaxin also gets to see that with the hard work comes the reward. He sees his dad working hard and he gets to go up there and see it’s not just basketball, it’s not just fun all the time. He’s seeing somebody put in really hard work, so that’s also setting a good example.”

When there is the rare time to disconnect, Lucas – who grew up playing tennis along with basketball – will sometimes find himself back on a different kind of court, this time holding a racquet. He enjoys reading and he and Kori like exploring new restaurants and discovering new cuisines in their community.

There will, at some point, be time for all of that in Miami. But in the meantime, even if there are moments when he can take a breath, there’s still plenty of work to do and Lucas is embracing every bit of it.

And his hope is that next spring, when his first year at Miami is behind him, the Hurricanes will have been a team that used every second of the season to grow.

“I want to see us improve throughout the whole year, that we aren’t the same team in March that you saw in November; that we got better as you watched us play and you knew we were competing and fighting to win every possession that we could,” Lucas said. “And to that end, [I hope] we have the opportunity and the chance to make the NCAA Tournament and play for a national championship.

“That’s all you ask for every year, to have that opportunity to compete for a championship and be one of those 68 teams at the beginning of March. But the biggest thing for me is that as you watched us, you saw us grow and it made you want to watch us more by the way we played, the way we competed and the passion and the care that we showed.”