Georgetown men’s basketball head coach Ed Cooley joined The Sports Junkies on Friday morning to talk about the Hoyas and their hot start to the season, but also to address Miami head coach Jim Larrañaga stepping down just one year after leading his Hurricanes to the Final Four.
Larrañaga cited NIL impact as to why he was leaving the program, saying he was “exhausted” from the new landscape of college basketball, a sentiment that other head coaching mainstays across the sport have cited themselves.
Cooley told The Junks that there needs to be adjustments made across the board, and a realization that this is the new reality of college hoops.
“It’s the landscape we’re in. it’s not perfect, and we have to find a solution for it,” Cooley said. “We have 14 new players on our roster this year. That’s what us head coaches, our ADs and school presidents have to deal with.
“We either lean into it, or we’re gonna get lost, because it’s not changing. How do we have the mindset to help our young men still understand the value of education, and money is a big part of the decision, but how do we keep the main thing the main thing?”
Larrañaga steps down as the winningest head coach in Miami basketball history, and Cooley believes his exit is another reason to take another look at the landscape of the sport amid the NIL wave, as Larrañaga lost eight players to transfer after reaching the Final Four in 2023.
“I see the frustration...Coach Larrañaga was, and is, one of the best people I’ve met in this business,” Cooley said. “The college basketball world lost a great coach.
“There has to be some guardrails around it...there has to be some sort of structure in place that attempts to control the wild west that this is, and bring back some normalcy to the sport.”