Miami Head Coach, Jim Larrañaga
Syracuse Men's Basketball
Syracuse vs. Miami
January 24, 2015
Carrier Dome, Syracuse, N.Y.
Can you comment on the game as a whole?
“Well playing here is, I think, a thrill for any college player especially since we have so many new guys. It’s the first time for Angel (Rodriguez), Sheldon (McClellan). Tonye (Jekiri) played here last year, Davon (Reed) did, Manu (Lecomte). Coming to play in front of 30,000 great fans of Syracuse, coaching against Jim Boeheim, second winningest coach all-time, it’s an exciting environment. We like the challenge.”
“We knew they were going to play zon. I don’t know if you knew that but we knew they were going to play zone. One of the things we did last night was we had a quiz about the zone. ‘How many shots are we going to have to make from three? How many shots are we going to have to make from two? How many free-throws will it take?’ The first question was how many threes are we going to have to make and somebody said 28, make 28. But if he had said shoot 28, that probably would have been closer to being correct but kids don’t really know numbers like that; coaches do. The statistics, the logistics, so we talked about that and we told them, we need great balance. So we told them the ideal would be 12 threes, 12 twos and then 12 free throws. That would be the ideal offensive performance. We make a couple of less threes; we got to make a couple of more twos or a couple more free throws. And that’s the game.”
“We did a little further quizzing on what we were going to do and what Syracuse would do and we explained to them, that the zone changes; it’s like an amoeba. It looks one way to begin the game and then it changes. So when we went to the high post early, they gave us that shot, we made it. Then the guy who made it they guarded him and left the other guy open to see if he could make it and he missed a couple. So they left him open the rest of the time and so we had to then change the offense.”
Syracuse vs. Miami
January 24, 2015
Carrier Dome, Syracuse, N.Y.
Can you comment on the game as a whole?
“Well playing here is, I think, a thrill for any college player especially since we have so many new guys. It’s the first time for Angel (Rodriguez), Sheldon (McClellan). Tonye (Jekiri) played here last year, Davon (Reed) did, Manu (Lecomte). Coming to play in front of 30,000 great fans of Syracuse, coaching against Jim Boeheim, second winningest coach all-time, it’s an exciting environment. We like the challenge.”
“We knew they were going to play zon. I don’t know if you knew that but we knew they were going to play zone. One of the things we did last night was we had a quiz about the zone. ‘How many shots are we going to have to make from three? How many shots are we going to have to make from two? How many free-throws will it take?’ The first question was how many threes are we going to have to make and somebody said 28, make 28. But if he had said shoot 28, that probably would have been closer to being correct but kids don’t really know numbers like that; coaches do. The statistics, the logistics, so we talked about that and we told them, we need great balance. So we told them the ideal would be 12 threes, 12 twos and then 12 free throws. That would be the ideal offensive performance. We make a couple of less threes; we got to make a couple of more twos or a couple more free throws. And that’s the game.”
“We did a little further quizzing on what we were going to do and what Syracuse would do and we explained to them, that the zone changes; it’s like an amoeba. It looks one way to begin the game and then it changes. So when we went to the high post early, they gave us that shot, we made it. Then the guy who made it they guarded him and left the other guy open to see if he could make it and he missed a couple. So they left him open the rest of the time and so we had to then change the offense.”
