Jim Larranaga uses getting stuck in an elevator as a way to teach players how to improve defensively

Miami is back in the Elite 8 for a second straight season thanks to a fairly dominant win over No. 1 seed Houston in the Sweet 16. The Hurricanes hung 89 points on one of the nation’s best defenses while their own defense kept the Cougars to just 75 total points. There’s really no other way to put it: once again, Miami is playing tremendous basketball at the perfect time. And this year, the ‘Canes are better, more experienced, and facing a much more wide open remaining tourney field than this time last season.

Miami has made these deep tournament runs the last couple years on the back of great guard play and their ability to fill up the cup — and that rung true against Houston, too. Except head coach Jim Larranaga was most pleased with the defensive performance from his group. He said after that game that the plan of attack beforehand for Miami was to pack in their defenders and force the Cougars to take outside jump shots.

Well, they did just that. To protect its smaller front line, Miami stayed disciplined and didn’t extend its defense out very far in an effort to coax Houston into shooting a bunch of threes. They took the bait and threw up 31 3-pointers, making just nine of them for a 29% clip.

According to head coach Jim Larranaga, that was the goal and the ‘Canes executed.

“Last night in our team meeting, we put a three-second lane in the video room, and then we packed everybody in it. I told them to beat Houston you’ve got to have five guys in the paint, everybody’s got to block out and everybody’s got to rebound.”

Larranaga also shared that he used an elevator incident during the week to illustrate his coaching point.

“Then the guys left the meeting and got on the elevator. They packed 12 guys into the elevator, and it got stuck, and it took a half hour for the firemen to get them out of there. And I just told them today at our shootaround, hey, our defense was too stretched out. You guys got to be in the paint like you were in the elevator yesterday. And they did that.”

Nice little story there from Larranaga that he was able to use the elevator snafu to explain how he wanted the team to play defense. Whether or not it was that example that really hammered home the point, credit Miami’s players for sticking to the concept.