Jim Larranaga coached high school team to championship as a freshman

Miami Basketball Head Coach Jim Larranaga made his return to twitter Tuesday for the first time in over six months this week and told a story about coaching his high school team to a championship as a freshman.

Jim Larranaga has had a long path to get to the University of Miami Basketball program. It included stops at numerous different programs along the way. But one constant since Larrañaga was young has been his passion to coach.

One of Larrañaga’s tweets included an anecdote from his playing days at Archbishop Molloy High School in Queens, New York. The story goes that during his freshman year on the ninth-grade team, the school’s coach decided to quit mid-season.

Jim Larrañaga and a teammate picked up the slack and led their school to an undefeated 22-0 record and a city championship. Larrañaga didn’t wait long after his playing career to get into coaching full time.

Larranaga found success playing at Providence College, leading the team in scoring for two seasons, and even earning a draft selection from the Detroit Pistons in the 1971 NBA Draft. But he opted to become a coach instead immediately.

Larrañaga began as an assistant at Davidson College for the next five seasons before earning his first head coaching gig at American International College, a Division II school. Three years later in 1979, Coach L was reunited with the same coach he worked under at Davidson, Terry Holland.

Coach L took his first Division I coaching job at Bowling Green in 1986. Larranaga immediately turned around a struggling Falcons program. After a decade of sustained success, he left for George Mason, where he famously led the Patriots to the Final Four in 2006.

Larranaga may not have a Final Four appearance since his arrival in Coral Gables 2011, but there’s no questioning he’s made Miami an exponentially better program. ACC Regular Season and Tournament championships in 2013, to go with four NCAA Tournament Appearances stack up better than any coach in the program history.

But clearly, The U isn’t the first place Coach L has turned around. Larrañaga has had a long history of successful coaching, so it’s no surprise to see that his accomplishments accumulated sooner than most would’ve thought. It’s great to see Coach L back on Twitter.