CORAL GABLES, Fla. — Here’s how Jim Larrañaga prepares for the biggest game of his big life: He opens his office door as he’s in mid-discussion with his coaching staff and gives a come-on-in wave to the visitor standing outside.
Me?
“You’ll like this,” he says.
He points me to a place on the sofa beside him.
“We’re talking about how to defend [Connecticut center] Adama Sanogo‚” he said. “Do we play behind him? Do we front him? Do we double-team him? Would that leave a very good 3-point shooting team too open?”
He looks at assistants Bill Courtney, DJ Irving an Kotie Kimble.
“Where were we?” Larrañaga asks.
For the next several minutes, they discuss their options in what’s the marinating meat of this Final Four madness, the kind of strategy session that could decide the game Larrañaga knows might not come again, the one he’s waited nearly two decades just to come around a second time.
A staffer pokes his head in the door several minutes later and says, “Coach, they’re waiting ...”
CBS, ESPN and NBC Nightly News have camera crews on the court. He needs another minute to review the listed practice schedule that comes with a daily thought — Larrañaga always has a daily thought to discuss to his team — and this day’s is: “Success is not the key to happiness; happiness is the key to success.”
“Put in the Celtic drill,” he says of a warm-up passing and lay-up drill.
He moves out the door now, walks down a hallway and asks for some water for his voice that’s getting raspy from all the week’s demands.
“I’m exhausted,” he said. “If I’m not watching video, I’m giving interviews.”
He smiles. “But it’s an exciting exhaustion.”
This is the unseen side of Final Four week. Florida Atlantic coach Dusty May fell asleep in his bed Sunday night with his computer atop him running video of his opponent, San Diego State. Larrañaga, on his previous Final Four with George Mason University in 2006, fell asleep while giving an interview to Sports Illustrated.
The forgotten fact is Larrañga is 73, too. His energy hides that number, but he’d be the oldest coach to win this title. Connecticut’s Jim Calhoun won at 68. Larranaga gives a who-cares shrug at this.
“I wish I’d won when I was younger,” he says.
Still, like Marlins manager Jack McKeon winning the World Series at 71, there’s a different dynamic to Larrañaga’s run, this idea he’s doing his best work while much of his generation has moved to the sideline.
“I don’t play golf, I don’t fish, I don’t watch TV other than ACC basketball,” Larrañaga says. “I’m not a sports fan — not a fan of football or baseball or soccer. ACC basketball. Miami basketball. This is my only passion.”
By now, Larrañaga goes down as one of the handful of best hires in South Florida sports history. Don Shula with the Dolphins. Jimmy Johnson and Ron Frasier with the Hurricanes. Pat Riley and Erik Spoelstra with the Heat. McKeon with the Marlins
Now there’s Larrañaga, a perfect match of his talents to a program’s needs: a proven coach in an unproven program; a salesman in a college basketball market that needs selling. He’s delivered the goods in winning ACC titles, advancing to Sweet 16s and Elite Eights — and now a first-ever Final Four trip.
“When I took this job in 2011, I said the goal is to do what the football and baseball programs have done — win national championships,” he said. ‘That hasn’t changed.”
From NBC to ESPN to CBS, he throws out phrases for this weekend like, “fighting for basketball immortality” and “a win that lasts a lifetime.” He’s also reminded how difficult just reaching this moment is when asked about the 40th reunion of North Carolina State coach Jim Valvano’s title.
“When North Carolina State won, I was at home watching and crying because that should’ve been us,” he said. “I was an assistant on a Virginia team with Ralph Sampson that lost at the buzzer to North Carolina State to go to the Final Four.”
There’s the underlying message to this weekend, the one about achieving this far, even as he weathers other questions like how his whistling might help coaching in Houston’s 71,000-seat NRG Center.
He learned to whistle as a youth in the Bronx when his father put in a security system for their apartment at the Parkchester complex. He’d whistle so his mom would hear and disarm the system.
“I first did this,’' he says, giving a common, bird-style whistle. “But she couldn’t hear so I did this ...”
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Later, back in his office, he has an aide pull up a picture of Parkchester and talks of his father, who grew up in Key West before moving to New York as a young adult. Larrañaga notes it’s the reverse of most people, trading in a life of paradise for a subway ride to work.
He looks at his watch.
“Time to meet,” he says.
Miami players are gathering in a room near his office. The coaches will go over video of the Texas win last Sunday and give a first look at Connecticut.
Larrañaga holds the door open. The biggest game of his life awaits. The crown to his career shimmers ahead. The coach unlike any other asks me in this week what no coach has in any week:
“You coming in?”
