March Gladness: Miami Hurricanes basketball, coaches Larranaga and Meier enjoy resurgence | Opinion
It is a season of resurgence and redemption for Miami Hurricanes basketball, women and men.
Not everyone is paying attention. Associated Press Top 25 voters, for instance.
The UM women reached the ACC Championship Game for the first time ever Sunday. The team is 20-12 despite almost half of their games (14) being against nationally ranked opponents.
The Canes men, preparing for its ACC tournament opener Thursday in Brooklyn, is 22-9 and has the best road record (10-2) of any Power 5 conference team.
Here is where the two teams are ranked in the latest Top 25s: Nowhere. That includes zero mention even in the “others receiving votes” category.
This is the 60th season for UM men’s hoops and the 50th for the women’s program, and only the fifth time both have had a 20-win season and made the NCAA Tournament the same year. (The official invite to March Madness won’t come until Selection Sunday, but both are seen as certain to get in, each pegged a No. 10 seed in ESPN’s latest Bracketology projection).
It can be a long climb to respect.
Canes women’s coach Katie Meier sometimes favors her team with a Gandhi quote: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
“That’s where we’ve been,” she says.
There is some thought that the quote oft-attributed to Mahatma Gandhi, the Indian philosopher and non-violence advocate, might actually have been said first, in 1918, by a trade union activist named Nicholas Klein. Either way the message — respect is something you earn, something you win — applies to both UM teams.
It’s a tough sell even in their own backyard, in a Miami market so saturated with major sports that college basketball is closer to an afterthought than the all-consuming marquee attraction it is at Duke, North Carolina and elsewhere.
The Dolphins retooling with an embattled owner and a new coach, Derek Jeter quitting the Marlins, the Heat and Panthers in championship-contending form, David Beckham’s Inter Miami still struggling as Year 3 begins, the fire lit by Mario Cristobal’s hiring back in UM football — Canes basketball can get lost down here.
And the recent lull for both teams hasn’t helped.
Jim Larranaga’s men’s team has surged after three losing years in a row, with last season UM’s worst since 1994. Meier’s women’s squad has rallied from two consecutive .500 seasons including losing records in ACC play.
Call it the pandemic swoon. But don’t call it an excuse.
“Last year, everybody was suffering. It was not fair to cry in your soup, and I saw a lot of coaches do it,” Meier said. She was on the phone Sunday evening, on the bus ride to the airport after her team’s 60-47 ACC title-game loss to No. 3 North Carolina State in Greensboro, North Carolina. “Lots of people not getting a paycheck or feeding their families. The country was suffering. Excuses were really almost insulting. As a leader it was a really difficult time to lead, But it was necessary.”
The UM women on Sunday were playing their fourth game in four days. No excuses there, either.
“We were just spent. When your legs are gone ... fatigue makes a coward of us all, that’s a Churchill quote,” she said. “We could have been emotionally spent, too, after beating Duke and coming back to beat Louisville [and then Notre Dame].”
I suggested the ACC change its tournament format so no team has to play four times in four games and asked if she agreed.
“Absolutely not,” Meier said, adding that the way to avoid that was to have played better and earned a higher seed and a bye.
To reach the championship game the Canes women rallied from 16 down in the fourth quarter to beat No. 4-ranked Louisville 61-59 on a buzzer-beating basket by Destiny Harden, who scored Miami’s last 15 point in a row. UM coaches and reserved poured onto the court, arms raised in joy.
I asked Meier where that ranks on her Mount Rushmore of special moments the sport has given her.
“I don’t think there’s been a better, one I really don’t,” she said. “That’s got to be my No. 1.”
Harden missed a third of the season injured but her return as led the team’s surge to the NCAAs, along with the steady play of leading scorer Kelsey Marshall.
Larranaga’s Canes men have enjoyed what was missing the past few years: Good health. Leading scorers Kameron McGusty, Isaiah Wong and Charlie More have played in all 31 games. And the team’s ferocity on the road bodes well for a postseason run, with only road games left of the season.
UM’s men team earned the fourth seed in the ACC tourney, bringing the double bye the women didn’t have. The guys must win only two games to reach the conference championship game.
Larranaga calls looking forward to March Madness “invigorating for everybody.” At 72, “I’m not thinking about retirement,” he says.
The swoon of the previous three seasons, a combined 39-51 record, had some fans saying Larranaga’s time has passed. That has to make this season all the more satisfying, but there is no I-told-you-so gloat in him.
“I don’t read anything on social media, don’t follow what fans are saying. They’re all entitled to their own opinions,” he says. “’If you win you’re good, if you lose you’re bad.’ If I coached like that I’d drive myself crazy.”
It is easy to feel happy for Larranaga and Meier and the bounceback season for each. There are few major colleges in the country whose basketball programs enjoys such stability or coaching credential.
Meier, in her 17th season here, is UM’s winningest women’s coach (323-209) and is heading to her ninth NCAA Tournament invite. Larranaga, in his 11th year here, also is the school’s all-time winner in the sport (222-139) and heads to his fifth NCAA appearance at UM.
Both have won national AP Coach of the Year honors with the Canes.
If there is a knock on either or both it is the inability thus far to bring a national championship to Coral Gables. Larranaga has reached the Sweet 16 twice (2013 and ‘16). Meier has yet to go beyond the NCAA’s second round.
Both have had really good teams, and each has another one of those right now.
Might this be the year UM hoops breaks through and catapults to the next level?
Hey, Larranaga’s team won at Virginia Tech this season on a buzzer-beating half-court shot. Meier’s team is led by a player named Destiny.
Is anything not possible?
This story was originally published March 7, 2022 at 12:17 PM.
