A year ago, Miami Hurricanes basketball was at rock bottom. A 7-24 season. Dead last in the ACC at 3-17. A mid-season coaching retirement that left the program in the hands of an interim. Zero returning players. Today? The Hurricanes are coming off a 26-9 season, a third-place ACC finish, an NCAA tournament win, a top-20 preseason ranking — and a second-year head coach in Jai Lucas who has Coral Gables dreaming about championships again. It is one of the most stunning one-year turnarounds in Division I history, and it is only the beginning.
Start with the fall, because the rise means nothing without it. The 2024-25 season was the bleakest in modern program history: 7-24 overall, 3-17 in the ACC, the conference’s basement. Jim Larrañaga — the architect of everything good about Miami basketball, the 2023 Final Four, the 2013 ACC titles — retired mid-season, and Bill Courtney steadied the ship as interim. The roster emptied. The fan base braced for a long, painful rebuild.
Then Miami hired Jai Lucas. The son of former NBA star and coach John Lucas II, a decorated assistant at Duke and Kentucky, Lucas had never been a head coach — and he inherited a roster with literally no returning players. What he built in one offseason was remarkable: a completely new team, fused through the transfer portal and high school recruiting, that played with the cohesion of a veteran group from the opening tip.
The 2025-26 Hurricanes roared out of the gate: a 6-2 start built on a relentless, high-octane offense that poured in more than 92 points a game, shot over 52 percent from the field, and at one point led the entire country at 19.3 assists per game. Five early blowout wins at the Watsco Center, most by 30-plus points, announced that something real was happening in Coral Gables. Picked eighth in the ACC preseason poll, Miami finished third at 13-5 — a 19-win improvement and a double-bye into the ACC tournament quarterfinals.
The stars were transfers who became cornerstones. Senior forward Malik Reneau, arriving from Indiana, was the offensive engine: 19 points and 7 rebounds a night, First Team All-ACC, a matchup nightmare who carried the scoring load. Senior guard Tre Donaldson, the former Michigan Wolverine, authored one of the season’s best redemption stories — 16.4 points, 5.7 assists, 35.9 percent from three, Second Team All-ACC — after a difficult final year in Ann Arbor. “Coming to Miami, I had to build myself back up,” Donaldson said. “Coming into a coaching staff that was going to help me build myself back up… I enjoyed every moment of it, something I’ll never forget.” Senior center Ernest Udeh anchored the middle, with junior Tru Washington and freshman Shelton Henderson supplying depth and energy.
March brought the validation. Miami returned to the NCAA tournament for the first time since the 2023 Final Four run, earning a seed and an 80-66 first-round win over No. 10 seed Missouri in St. Louis. The season ended two days later with a 79-69 loss to second-seeded Purdue in the round of 32 — but the final record read 26-9, the program was ranked No. 24 in the AP poll and No. 22 by the coaches, and Lucas had his message ready: “It’s my job to keep it going and keep it rolling, where this time next year we’re talking about going to the Sweet 16, not just the season ending. That’s the goal, that’s the plan, until you win National Championships.”
The season even produced a controversy that told you how far the program had come: Lucas was widely considered snubbed for ACC Coach of the Year, which went to Duke’s Jon Scheyer. The case for Lucas was overwhelming — picked eighth, finished third, plus-19 wins, zero returning players — and the debate itself was a compliment. Miami basketball mattered again.
That matters because of what came before Lucas. Larrañaga’s fifteen seasons (2011-2025) were the golden age: the 2013 ACC regular-season and tournament championships behind Shane Larkin and a No. 2 NCAA seed; Sweet Sixteens in 2013 and 2016; the Elite Eight in 2022; and the magical 2023 run to the program’s first Final Four — surviving Drake and Indiana, stunning No. 1 Houston and No. 2 Texas (Jordan Miller’s perfect 7-for-7 masterpiece), before falling to eventual champion UConn in Houston. Before Larrañaga, the program had been dormant entirely from 1971 to 1985. The Hurricanes know how precious relevance is, because they have lived without it.
Now comes the encore, and it is a fascinating roster puzzle. Reneau, Donaldson and Udeh — three senior starters accounting for 42.2 points, 19.4 rebounds and 8.3 assists per game — are gone. The 2026-27 Hurricanes feature just three returners and eleven newcomers, and Lucas has been back in the portal hunting difference-makers, with names like Providence guard Stefan Vaak, Central Connecticut forward Darin Smith Jr. and Belmont guard Tyler Lundblade in the mix. It is the same formula that produced the miracle: identify talent, fuse it fast, play fast.
The expectations have arrived on schedule. Preseason practices opened in late September 2026 with EvanMiya ranking Miami No. 19 nationally — third among ACC teams behind only No. 2 Duke and No. 11 Louisville. Lucas is embracing it: “This is what you want. You want these expectations… competing for conference championships, and every three years for a national championship.” The Watsco Center, electric again last winter, is ready for the next act.
From 7-24 to 26-9 in twelve months. From no roster to a ranked team. The Jai Lucas era is one season old and already one of the best stories in college basketball. Year two is about proving the turnaround was not a lightning strike — it was a foundation.
