The U Miami Hurricanes were ranked as high as #8 in the AP Poll early on, and started off the season 5-0 led by Norchad Omier, Matthew Cleveland, Nijel Pack, Wooga Poplar, Bensley Joseph, and Kyshawn George.
However, ever since getting blown out at Kentucky in their sixth game, things pretty much went downhill from there (this team clearly missed the leadership of Isaiah Wong & Jordan Miller).
Here’s Canes head coach Jim Larranaga on the two major factors that caused his group to go 15-17 this past year.
(via InsideTheU):
Reporter: “Looking back on the course of the season, what do you think went wrong?”
Larranaga: “Well, I’ve said this way, way too many times, but I think when we were 100%, we were a very good basketball team. It’s hard enough to be successful missing one of your key players, but it’s almost impossible to be successful when you have a different guy injured almost every game and you can’t develop the kind of chemistry and bond. That’s the first thing, the injuries impacted us in a huge way. Second, I thought our bench players were very inexperienced younger guys that hadn’t really been through the wars and weren’t able to help us overcome those injuries had the bench been a little bit more mature, a little older guys like last year’s Final Four team where Anthony Walker, Harlond Beverly, and even Bensley Joseph were experienced players, had been in the battles before… Then maybe you can make up for a key starter being out. But when you look at the injuries to Nijel Pack, and then to Wooga Poplar, and then Norchad [Omier] misses a game, and then Matt Cleveland misses several games, and then Kyshawn [George] misses a game… When there’s no continuity in practice or preparation, you lose a lot of close games, and we did.”
