College Hoops Top 50

Last Year: 15-17; 6-14, Fourteenth in the Atlantic Coast Conference, No Postseason

Head Coach: Jim Larrañaga (14th Year; 270-166 at Miami, with six NCAA Tournament appearances)

Projected Starting Lineup

PG Nijel Pack – 6’0″, 185 5th-year Senior

G Jalen Blackmon – 6’2″, 180 Senior

W Matthew Cleveland – 6’7″, 210 Senior

F Brandon Johnson – 6’8″, 223 Senior

C Lynn Kidd – 6’10”, 241 5th-year Senior

Experienced Reserves

G AJ Staton-McCray – 6’4″, 196 Junior

W Paul Djobet – 6’7″, 209 Sophomore

F Kiree Huie – 6’9″, 228 Senior

F/C Yussif Basa-Ama – 6’9″, 213 5th-year Senior

Freshmen

G Jalil Bethea – 6’5″, 190 / 5-star recruit

G Austin Swartz – 6’4″, 200 / 4-star recruit

F Isaiah Johnson-Arigu – 6’7″, 220

What goes up must come down, they say. Sometimes, they’re right. 

After back-to-back seasons which ended deep in the NCAA Tournament, Miami came down last winter. So far down that the Canes landed near the bottom of their league, going 6-14 in Atlantic Coast Conference play and 15-17 overall. It was a resounding thud following the most exhilarating stretch of ball in Hurricane history, and it came amid a storm of injuries as the season wore on. 

“I think when we were 100% healthy, we were a very good basketball team,” head coach Jim Larrañaga mused late in the season. “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.”

That was then, though. In the here and now, Miami has every right to expect that things are about to rise back up again. A couple of the best players from last year’s team have come back, and legendary coach Larrañaga has gone to work with the tremendous NIL resources that ‘the U’ has to play with. This will be a group studded with four-and-five year veterans, plus Larrañaga has landed a couple of kids who just about every school out there would have loved to have. With such a reserve of talent at his disposal, Larrañaga has accomplished wondrous things before. Can he pull it off again?

Helping to lead the reconfigured Canes will be Nijel Pack, a guy whose name you can remember how to spell because the ‘J’ is what he does best. A 1,620-point career scorer and one of the ACC’s tougher covers, Pack can absolutely light it up from long range. It’s not just that Pack is dangerous from the three-point arc – he’s dangerous well beyond it. With an average distance of 25 feet, 10 inches on his makes from 3, per Synergy Sports, Pack ranked fourth in America in the race for Steph Curry range.  His campaign was a definitive one last winter, marking a shift in how Pack plays the game. Following some key departures, one of the biggest question marks heading into last season was: how smoothly would the sharpshooter Nijel Pack transition into more of a point guard role? Well, to hear Larrañaga tell it, Pack was good enough to continue on as the man at the controls of this talented new group. 

Though he’s a fifth-year player now, Pack is still learning a bit of nuance as the top playmaker, and will continue this year as he tries to keep lots of scorers well-fed. He will also continue to rain triples. Over the course of his 113-game career, Pack has splashed 291 three-balls at a sparkling 40.5% rate. There are times – like his 28 points on seven hits from deep against Kansas State, his former team – when Pack virtually becomes the offense for Miami. At his best, Pack launches a devastating barrage from downtown while his court sense and vision take over and he slips quality feeds into the heart of a scrambling defense. His shooting percentages suffered across the board last winter, in part because of his need to focus on facilitating as much as scoring. Obviously, the lingering injury was an even bigger issue – when Pack was on the floor, he made some heroic shots to keep Miami in close games. Despite it all, Pack proved that he can handle his new role while remaining as dangerous a shooter as any in the league. This time around, Pack is ready to show that he’s healthy, strong, and that the transition to maestro is complete. 

Five Stats Which Tell The Tale (with national ranks)

73.6 – Opponent Points Per Game (211th)

36.1% – Team 3FG Percentage (52nd)

52.0% – Opponent 2FG Percentage (251st)

13.1 – Personal Fouls Per Game (3rd)

12.1 – Turnovers Per Game (209th)

After making the jump from Florida State to the U, Matthew Cleveland was enjoying a strong season until the end of January, when the injury bug took its turn on him. A hip injury knocked Cleveland out for a couple of weeks and hampered him the rest of the season. While he was sound, though, Cleveland showed off a quite complete game, and his return gives the Canes a full-court playmaker. A clever offensive player, Cleveland uses his blend of length, vision and power to great effect. At 6’7″, Cleveland can facilitate in the halfcourt on one possession, snag the rebound after forcing a hurried shot on the other end, and then come back down the floor into a quick post-up and score. While exactly what he does best is difficult to pin down, Cleveland simply helps things flow for his team. 

At times, Cleveland has played with an edge inside, and he gets out in transition well, making passes and finishing plays with equal efficacy. He’s also a physical mismatch for lots of wings, and if Cleveland can sprinkle in some more moves in the paint, he has the patience and agility to add new wrinkles for Miami with his back to the basket. With star forward Norchad Omier gone to Baylor and a more traditional post player arriving to take his place, Cleveland will get to play more on the wing than he did last year, and that is bad news to the rest of the ACC. Given his size and savvy in exploiting favorable situations, Miami’s attack up front could soon become fairly intimidating. Cleveland shot the ball well from the outside and posted a half dozen double-doubles as a junior while racking up the most steals of his career despite the missed time. With so many skills at his disposal, the signs point to Cleveland putting on his biggest show yet beginning this fall. 

There weren’t a great many people who saw his breakout coming last year, but Lynn Kidd quickly evolved into one of the ACC’s most reliable scoring bigs. The former Clemson and then Virginia Tech post is back in his home state of Florida now, and is ready to end his tour around the conference with a star shoeing for the Canes. Despite not having played a very large role in any of his first three seasons, Kidd tipped off by scoring in double figures six straight times to begin last season, and just…kept it up. He went off for 31 points on 14/15 shooting against American in December, and hit double digits in ACC play 13 times. By season’s end, Kidd – who had averaged 3.6 points over his first three seasons – was sitting on a 13.2 scoring average and his 66.8% rate from the field was the fourth-best in America. What can he do for an encore? 

It was clear last winter that Kidd had put in work during the offseason improving his hands and touch close to the basket,  but his ability to face up and make short jumpers was just as big a transformation. Kidd converted a perfect 50/50 dunk attempts and made an extraordinary 81.7% of his attempts near the rim last season, per Bart Torvik. What allowed him to become an every-game force, though, is that Kidd supported his dunks and layups with a strong 46.4% rate on 112 mid-range attempts. Despite his lack of great height, Omier was fantastic in the middle, exploiting the worry that Miami’s perimeter players caused. The ten feet or so around the basket should be owned in a similar way by Kidd, and if he can click with Pack and Cleveland early on, the Canes will have potent, established scorers at all three scoring levels. 

Kidd’s inter-conference transfer was far from the only star addition to this team. Two incoming guards – one new, one entering his senior season – are the co-headliners of this year’s recruiting efforts, and Hurricane fans can’t wait to see them put on a show. 

Last year at Stetson, Jalen Blackmon threw his hat into the race for top scorer in the nation. In two seasons in the Atlantic Sun Conference, Blackmon was two-for-two in being named first-team all-conference. Over that time he scored 1,222 points and ripped off 181 made triples while leading the Hatters to the first NCAA Tournament appearance in program history. Having accomplished so much, he’s made the trip south from DeLand to Coral Gables, where Blackmon is hoping to prove himself all over again – and make a return trip to the Big Dance. 

“Bethea proved to be one of the best scoring guards and shot-makers in the country this year. He’s a shooter who can make tough threes, both on the move and off the dribble.”

– Adam Finkelstein, 247 Sports

The skill which should translate most readily for Blackmon is his marksmanship. As a junior, he finished seventh in the country with 110 made triples. Now that Blackmon will be playing alongside Pack, he won’t be seeing the full force of defensive attention the other team can muster. Of course, it also means that Blackmon will be seeing the best individual defenders of his career, by and large, which means that Miami will need to see yet another level up from their newest shooting star. 

The crown jewel of a touted freshman class, Jalil Bethea will also be looking for his share of the shots this season. A 5-star prospect and consensus Top Ten recruit, Bethea was one of the most entertaining players on the EYBL circuit last season. The most noticeable thing about his game is that Bethea just flat-out gets buckets. He’s a confident, aggressive driver who shows no fear going straight at the biggest dudes on the floor, and Bethea has the elite quickness, slippery athleticism, and audacity to get his shot no matter the situation, and more often than not, the kid makes ’em. 

“Bethea proved to be one of the best scoring guards and shot-makers in the country this year. He’s a shooter who can make tough threes, both on the move and off the dribble. While he can occasionally hunt his looks and settle for contested ones, he still put up incredibly efficient numbers in the EYBL, knocking down 41% of his threes and 86% of his free-throws,” said 247 Sports Director of Scouting Adam Finkelstein.

There’s additional help arriving up front, too. Veteran transfers Brandon Johnson and Kiree Huie are coming off of productive seasons and will be looking to give Larrañaga proven, genuine depth in the post. That’s been a rare luxury in recent years, and it will be fascinating how having forward depth changes- or doesn’t change – the Canes this season. 

“Brandon is an excellent 3-point shooter, a terrific rebounder and has a high capacity for work,” Larrañaga enthused upon Johnson’s commitment. “The combination of his experience, size and positional versatility will add tremendous value to our program.” Over the last two years, Brandon Johnson came into his own as one of the better stretch-4’s outside of the major conferences. He’s a quality shooter who’s knocked down 112 triples since the start of 2022-23, and Johnson should have plenty of room to launch given Miami’s other floor-spacers. 

He went for 30 points against UTSA in February, and Johnson knows the feeling of being relied upon as a primary scorer. He gets to the free throw line and has converted 74.3% of his chances there, and Johnson knows how to handle the tough stuff inside. He leaves the American Athletic Conference ranked ninth all-time in defensive rebounds, and Johnson racked up 161 offensive boards over the last two campaigns, as well. With Kidd occupying the defense deep in the paint and Cleveland wreaking havoc around the elbow, Johnson should have great freedom to do what he does best, and should remain highly productive. 

Five Out-of-Conference Games to Keep an Eye on

N Tennessee – December 10

vs Arkansas – December 3

N Florida State/Oklahoma State – November 22

Charleston Shriner’s Classic third game – November 24

N Drake – November 21

It came in a less prestigious league and over a smaller sample there, but Kiree Huie showed enough last season at Idaho State to have caught the attention of Larrañaga’s staff. Now, he’s earned the ‘third big’ role in Coral Gables. The rangy Georgia native spent two years developing in junior college prior to his winter in Pocatello, ID, and that experience served Huie well. He played hungry on the glass, finishing third in the Big Sky in offensive rebounds, and Huie racked up 38 putback tries, converting 65.6% of them, per Hoop-Math. There is bounce to his game, and Huie uses it well at both ends of the court, blocking shots and denying passes in addition to his board work. It’s unlikely that he’ll play a particularly large role for the Canes; after all, Larrañaga has consistently made do with very small post arrangements by power conference standards. Still, Huie looks to have the size, energy, and willingness to battle that the ACC demands, and will give his new coach options. Yale transfer Yussif Basa-Ama never played a large role in the Ivy League, but he will add his experience and toughness near the basket to Miami’s interior defense. 

Samford transfer AJ Staton-McCray and Austin Swartz, Miami’s second highly-rated freshman, will play valuable minutes as the team’s top guards off the bench. A quality two-way player, Staton-McCray waa named All-Defense in the Southern Conference last year and has racked up 106 steals in his past 62 games. He brings more functional size to the Hurricanes’ backcourt, and Staton-McCray had been developing his all-around scoring skills for one of the more exciting offenses outside of the major conferences at Samford. While his rate from the land of trey had been under 30% coming into last season, Staton-McCray turned in a 41.3% mark from deep last winter and will hope to keep it up in Coral Gables. 

Swartz will bring some similar traits to Staton-McCray, as well as the high-end athleticism of a Top 50 recruit. Occasionally his shot selection has left something to be desired, but Swartz doesn’t let misses get him down and when he fights his way to the rim, good things happen. A strong, explosive off-guard who should be able to kick in buckets immediately, Swartz has the demeanor and offensive instincts to make his mark quickly. Forward Isaiah Johnson-Arigu is going to get a chance to play behind both Johnson and Cleveland. He’s got great defensive awareness for a young player and goes full-bore no matter how difficult a matchup he’s presented with. With his great energy and relentless approach on the glass, Johnson-Arigu should earn the minutes to develop the rest of his talents. French wing Paul Djobet got a bit of experience last season and will be looking to play more regularly this winter. 

A couple of tough matchups with SEC contenders Tennessee and Arkansas highlight the Hurricanes’ non-conference schedule, and will test this group’s depth early. With a larger range of foes coming up in ACC play as well, Miami will need to figure out who plays what role and for how many minutes before the new year. Larrañaga has relied heavily upon his starters/6th man lately. Will the new kids and imported veterans acclimate quickly and give the Canes better depth and allow him to use more of his roster?

Though the Canes have been top-heavy before, things have gone very well with just a few key contributions off the bench. The Canes will need to guard more effectively and also come up with turnovers more regularly in order to allow their strength in transition and on offense to truly shine. Miami could really score last year but shot selection and time management from the top guys were issues which added up to frustration. If Larrañaga’s stars can find their groove, the talent and potential are on this roster to party like it’s 2022-23.