How Miami is being affected by — and trying to solve — its never-ending depth issue
Practices have seldom be as difficult for Jim Larranaga as they have been of late in Coral Gables. The Miami Hurricanes are making due with only three healthy post players and one of those is playing through a knee injury. His guards are moonlighting from time to time as power forwards. Dejan Vasiljevic has played 40 minutes in back-to-back games.
It’s quickly turning this season into another frustrating one for Miami. The FBI investigation involving the Hurricanes is now more than two years in the past, but Miami is still feeling the effects in the form of seven-man rotations and complicated practice arrangements.
“I’m becoming very familiar with load management. You know, I’d never heard that term before. Now in the last couple years it’s all anyone talks about,” Larranaga said. “We’re finding out the logistical problems with load management.”
The Hurricanes’ perilous roster predicament has been obvious throughout the start of 2020 as Miami (10-6, 2-4 Atlantic Coast) has dropped three of four to start the new year, often wearing down in the second halves of games. It might be most obvious Saturday when the Florida State Seminoles come to the Watsco Center at 1 p.m. The Hurricanes haven’t had more than seven players log double-digit minutes since they resumed ACC play by beating the Clemson Tigers in overtime on New Year’s Eve. No. 9 Florida State is regularly using nine players and even went 10 deep in a 54-50 win against the Virginia Cavaliers on Wednesday.
Miami knows the Seminoles (15-2, 5-1) have an advantage there and the Hurricanes are ready for Florida State to try to take advantage.
“This team at Florida State, they don’t have as many 7-footers as they usually do, but they’ve got a lot more guys,” guard Chris Lykes said. “They play a real deep rotation, so guys are going to be subbing in every two minutes, and they’re probably just going to try to keep the pressure up and use that to their advantage.”
The issues are most prevalent inside for Miami. At the start of the season, forwards Keith Stone and Deng Gak were supposed to be fixtures in the rotation, but Gak was ruled out for the season last month and Stone hasn’t played since the Hurricanes’ loss to the then-No. 2 Duke Blue Devils on Jan. 4, although he has not been ruled out for the year. Rodney Miller starts at center and Sam Waardenburg, who’s dealing with a knee injury starts at power forward. When those two come off the court, though, it gets more complicated.
Miami has been forced to play more four-guard lineups than it would like this season and the North Carolina State Wolfpack punished the Hurricanes for it Wednesday as D.J. Funderburk scored 19 points to lead an 80-63 win. At one point, Lykes looked behind him and saw guard Harlond Beverly trying to check the 6-foot-10 forward.
“I think that it tests the knowledge of our players,” Miller said. “We go four guards, one big, but somebody has to play that power forward spot and they know the plays, they know the spots. Everybody knows where they’re supposed to be no matter what spots they’re in.”
It all stems back to the FBI investigation into illicit recruiting activities. The Hurricanes were part of the investigation, although Miami itself was never hit with any punishments by the NCAA. Still, the Hurricanes didn’t sign a single player in the Class of 2018 and Miami hasn’t been able to build its roster back up to full strength since.
Right now, the Hurricanes are playing with only 11 scholarship players, as opposed to the maximum of 13. With two injured and two others not ready to chip in on a regular basis because of current skill level, Miami is left managing around an unsolvable problem.
“We tried. We really tried,” Larranaga said when asked why the Hurricanes are still playing short of a full roster. “These last two years, our recruiting has been very seriously challenged under circumstances that were totally out of our control.”
This story was originally published January 17, 2020 at 4:56 PM.
