Miami is a tough job and looking back, Jim Larranaga, who had been at George Mason, was a brilliant hire.
At Mason he could not recruit the same players the power conference schools went after, so he perfected a knack of finding guys who were just a little off, who for whatever reason, were passed over: too small, too heavy, maybe with a missing tool in their skillset that someone else on the team could compensate for.
Consistently at Mason, the whole was greater than the sum of the parts and Larranaga peaked there with a miraculous Final Four run in 2006 including a spectacular win over Jim Calhoun’s UConn.