Nicole Auerbach

USA TODAY Sports

Two seasons ago, the Miami (Fla.) men's basketball team seemingly came out of nowhere to take the ACC — and nation — by storm.

The Hurricanes rose to No. 2 in the polls and reached the Sweet 16 … and then their entire veteran-laden group graduated. Last season, the 'Canes adjusted to their personnel, played primarily zone defense for the first time in coach Jim Larranaga's long career and pulled off a few shocking upsets in ACC play.

The lesson? Don't bet against what Larranaga is building in Coral Gables.

Yet some didn't seem to learn. This preseason, Miami was picked by media to finish in the bottom half of the ACC.

While it's still early, that prediction seems a bit off. The Hurricanes are 8-0, with wins at Florida and against Illinois at home. Transfers Angel Rodriguez and Sheldon McClellan (together averaging 30.5 ppg) lead a cast of newcomers that has come together seemingly ahead of schedule.

As it turns out, that special season two years ago may not be just an anomaly; this looks to be, simply, a marriage between a great coach and program on the rise.

Lesson learned this time. (Really.)

Larranaga spoke with USA TODAY Spots national college sports writer Nicole Auerbach this week about two transfers making a huge impact, a weird scheduling glitch and what it takes to win in the ACC.

Q: Your team has wins against opponents ranked at the time — then- No. 8 Florida, and now No. 24 Illinois (at home on Tuesday). How much can a team full of newcomers like yours gain confidence from wins like that?

A: You're always taking steps forwards or backwards. You're never really standing still. I told the team in our previous two games (before Illinois) we had really taken a step back with our defense, and that we needed to take a major step in the right direction with our defense against Illinois. I thought we did that. Our defensive attention was good. The scouting report was very accurate. Our guys were able to interpret it and use the information to defend them. Whenever you execute anything, that builds confidence. If you do what you plan to do, when you plan to do it and do it really well, your confidence is going to grow.

Q: It seems like you guys are now showing you can win games in different ways — with defense and controlling the game, or the Florida game, where Angel Rodriguez comes up with the huge shot.

A: In our two road victories — one at Florida, Angel Rodriguez really stepped up and made some huge shots for us, but our defense also picked up and we got a number of stops. That allowed us to get some baskets in transition. At UNC-Charlotte, in a game we led by 13, we lost momentum and they gained it playing great in the second half. We needed Sheldon McClellan to step up, and he scored 31 points. We've had different guys step up. (Against Illinois), it was Deandre Burnett. When you have a number of different weapons, hopefully at least a few of them are going to be shooting the ball well. We've shot the ball pretty consistently well through these first eight games.

Q: In the preseason, you were picked to finish 10th in the ACC's 15-team league. I feel like, in general, you were flying under the radar a bit because maybe people forgot you had two key transfers eligible in Angel (from Kansas State) and Sheldon (from Texas). Can you walk me through the year they sat out? What areas did they work on improving?

A: My assistant coaches deserve an awful lot of credit for helping them, first of all, make the transition to Miami, and second of all, learn our system and the things we expect from them. Coach (Chris) Caputo worked with those players individually in what we call Defense 101. It's basically a classroom, but it's on the court. We talk about the various things we want to do defensively. Sheldon really needed a lot of attention in that area. Angel was already very, very good at the defensive end of the floor. Offensively, we wanted Sheldon to really work on his three-pointer. He's a great driver. He can really get to the basket and make a lot of layups, but we felt to make him a complete player, he'd need to be able to make threes. He worked very, very hard at that. With Angel, it was more a matter of working with him on his layups. He's very good at beating his man and finding the open man, but sometimes he really has to finish at the rim. Those guys spent a whole year just working on their individual games, and it's really shown the way they've started this season.

Q: Does it also help, from a team chemistry standpoint, to have those guys around their teammates for a full year — practicing, off the court, etc. — starting to get them to gel?

A: We had so many new guys — nine guys had never worn a Miami uniform until this season. With that, last September we decided we needed to get them a chance to practice and play together as a unit. We had a number of freshmen that would be coming in. So, we scheduled a trip to Spain in August. We had 10 days of practice and four games in Spain in three different cities — Madrid, Valencia and Barcelona. We felt like that 10 days of practice and those four games really helped the team bond. They really got a chance to get to know each other socially. We roomed the seniors with freshmen, juniors with sophomores, guys that you might not spend as much time with you got a chance to spend a lot of quality time with during the month of August. I think having everybody together during that month has really helped with the start to the season. … It was important for guys to see other guys' games and how they could maybe help each other.

Q: Entering last season, you were coming off a Sweet 16 run with a very veteran team, who then all graduated and left. What was your approach to last season and the players who were suddenly thrust into bigger roles?

A: We wanted to give those players every opportunity to be in the game at the end of the game. So many games are won in the last minutes if you play a certain way. Last year, for the first time in my coaching career, we zoned. We never really did that in the past. We had zone in our defensive playbook but we only used it as a change of pace, never as a primary defense. Last year, in order to take advantage of the abilities that that group had and some of the limitations we had defensively, we switched to a zone. We were much more conservative on offense. We were able to stay in games that I think had we tried to run and shoot with our opponents, we'd have gotten blown out. We had some terrific wins, especially on the road — we beat North Carolina at Chapel Hill, we beat Florida State in Tallahassee, we beat Georgia Tech in Atlanta and we beat North Carolina State in Raleigh. Those are hard games to win, even if you have an ACC Championship-caliber team. We were playing, basically, with our eighth, ninth, 10th, 11th and 12th players from the year before. They were older guys, seniors, but very little playing time experience. Only Ryan Brown and Darius Adams had any true playing experience.

Q: Switching gears, I've got a random question for you related to a scheduling thing. You played Charlotte twice in three days last month. How strange was that?

A: It was very unusual. The reason that happened was the NCAA allows you to play in one exempt event each season. An exempt event allows you to play up to four games. The tournament, the ESPN event, only had three games, so you're allowed to call one of the members of the tournament — hopefully you're not going to play them in the tournament — and schedule a game with them. It's like an additional game you get. We were on opposite ends of the bracket from UNC-Charlotte. We had no idea we'd be playing them in the championship and then again two days later.

Q: I mentioned this earlier, that you were picked to finish 10th in the league in the preseason. Those are obviously just guesses and predictions and can be very off, but is that more of a testament to the strength of the teams in the top of the ACC or that you'd maybe be sneaking up on people this year?

A: Basically, preseason polls are based on information from the previous season. Who you have coming back, even who you have recruited, can be a major factor in where you're picked in the preseason poll. Our team had a lot of unknown quantities, a lot of players the media was unfamiliar with. I wasn't surprised by where we were picked. No one knows yet where we'll finish. We're off to a good start. I told our players we still have a lot of work ahead of us. We still have two guys who haven't played yet and could be major factors this season — Davon Reed and Ivan Uceda. Davon's an excellent defender and rebounder, which will help us. Ivan's an excellent rebounder and shooter. We'll have two new ingredients to blend with the ingredients we already have and have established.

Q: How is Davon progressing with his injury? I heard he's ahead of schedule.

A: Yeah, they said four or five months. He had surgery in September, and he's already practicing full go. He's not quite back in basketball shape yet, but I'd expect by the time final exams are over, he'll be ready to contribute.

Q: It's funny looking at some stats, and I know you're a big KenPom guy. Ken Pomeroy wrote something the other day about how we're on pace for the slowest season in college basketball history, but also that offenses are pretty efficient. Seems to match up with how you guys are playing so far.

A: This year's team is going to be better prepared to play at a faster tempo because we want as many possessions as we can get. The way tempo is created is, there's two possibilities. One is primary, and that's your defense. If you can put a lot of pressure on the opponent and get them to speed up, you can create the tempo you want if you want to play fast. If you want to play slow, it's also by defense. You can go back and sit in a zone, which takes a team longer to survey and pick apart in order to get the shots they're looking for. Teams like ours, we're not a full-court pressing team. We're not going to force the tempo, but we're going to be able to play fast when the opportunity occurs with teams that will run with us. We'll also be prepared to play against teams that slow the tempo down. You have to have that ability to adjust because in the ACC, you have a wide range of strategies and styles by the coaches. You have Louisville that presses and falls back zone. You have Duke that plays pressure man-to-man and runs on every opportunity. You have Syracuse that zones. You have Virginia that packs it, man-to-man and plays very conservatively on offense and utilizes the shot clock. When you're facing all of those different styles, your players have to make those adjustments from game to game. We're trying to train our players to do that.

Q: Last question: So, I know there's excitement building around the program this season and this 8-0 start. How different is that this season vs. two years ago when you guys were tearing through the ACC and kind of hitting a lot of new milestones for the Miami basketball program, having success like that for the first time? Now, it's maybe not as new and surprising?

A: There are certain signs that you see. (Tuesday) night, at 7 o'clock, the students were lined up outside our arena to get good seats. We set the student attendance record — in the history of the school. We had over 300 more students than ever before, more than 2,000 students at a school that only has 10,000. That is a tremendous turnout for this early in the year. Most of the basketball season kicks in second semester when we're in conference play, so it's a great sign that fans really turned out for us. The ACC-Big Ten Challenge is a part of that; it gets a lot of recognition. It's exciting to have quality teams play each other early, rather than what Dick Vitale calls, 'They just played another cupcake.'