Miami Basketball lost its seventh straight game on Tuesday night as Tennessee defeated the Hurricanes 75-62 at Madison Square Garden.

Following the game, Miami head coach Jim Larranaga talked about the Hurricanes’ poor end to the first half, Chaz Lanier’s development from last season and more.

More from RTI: Everything Tennessee HC Rick Barnes said after Vols beat Miami

Opening speech

“In the first half we had a terrible last seven minutes. Get outscored by 14 points, giving them a 13 point lead. And then in the second half we found a combination that worked very well for us. We cut the lead to six. And I’m not sure how much time was left. We got the number down to six, then we made two really critical mistakes and the number immediately went back down to 10. This largely ruined our chances of winning the game.

“But you have to give Tennessee a lot of credit. Rick Barnes does a great job. His players played great. Zakai Ziegler is a great player. And Chaz Lanier, we actually played him last year (at North Florida) and he was great last year, but he’s really special with this group around him. So I thought it was a fun game.”

Whether the final eight minutes of the first half were about what Miami did wrong or what Tennessee did right

“Oh, we were terrible. It was like we had never practiced it before. As if we had just met for the last time. Because it didn’t look like our team.

And everyone scored with the rebound. There is no passing, no assists, poor shot selection. And when you do that, it’s really demoralizing because it’s hard to play good defense when everyone’s mad because we took such a bad shot.”

When Miami started to apply a little pressure when Tennessee started to increase their lead

“I don’t know if you know, we had three freshmen on the field at the time. I think they got a little excited and tried to rush to cut the lead even further. And in basketball too, the most important thing is control. You have to control yourself. You have to control the guy you’re protecting. And you have to be in control of what your other teammates are doing. Right? So in those special cases when you’re in a hurry, you’ve seen it. Everyone at Madison Square Garden saw it and said, ‘Oh, what’s he rushing for?’ But that’s exactly what happened.”

About how different Chaz Lanier is in Tennessee compared to last season in North Florida

“He was really good last year. But, you know, confidence grows. You’re young, you’re in high school, you play well. They are heavily recruited. Your confidence grows. Everyone tells you that you’re really good. You get to college and suddenly you don’t play quite as well. You don’t score quite as well. Suddenly you start wondering how good you are. The guys like Chaz keep working, getting better, getting stronger, getting smarter. And last year he was the most efficient player in the country. Now he’s going to a team where he’s surrounded by other great players, especially a guy like Zakai Zeigler who can find him every time he’s open so he can get the shots he wants. And he can either shoot it or pass it on. And tonight he won 8-15, but on another night he might have won 10-15. But he will be special.”

On Miami freshman guard Divine Ugochukwu

“Well, I said we got a little too scared. We had three freshmen in the game and we were in a hurry. But to go back last May and tell you how crazy recruiting is, we had basically finished our high school recruiting when Hakeen Olajuwon called me. Hakeem is friends with my son Jay. And he said to my son Jay, ask your dad if he needs a point guard because I have a kid that plays with my sons in high school. They were 32-1 and I think this kid is going to be a really good guard. My son told me I spoke to Akeem and told him we really weren’t looking for another security guard. But after he convinced me that you could take him and redshirt him, I said, “Okay, we’ll redshirt him.” Then a player who’s actually in your program sits out because you Now you don’t even know if you’ll have boys again. But okay, we’ll get this guy back. We have a year to work with him. And instead, over the summer, after watching him practice for about three weeks, I said, “Oh, we’re not going to redshirt this kid.” But he still has a lot to learn. Today he played very, very well. And he has already experienced games like this. But we’re trying to take him with us. He’s kind of Nigel Pack’s understudy. In the end I should have brought Nigel back sooner so they could have played together more. And I have the future in the back of my mind.”

Some of his rookies struggled at times throughout the game

“As far as I can tell, I don’t think it has anything to do with the building. But if you go back to when we started practice and every time we had a scrimmage, the final score of the scrimmage was like 96-92. We just picked each other’s brains out. And the coaches kept telling the players it wasn’t real. We have to improve our defense and our rebounding. Against the type of competition we’re going against, we’re not going to score 90 points a game, okay? But as players, until you really show them, so we open the season, the first game we scored 113, the next game we scored 96, and now the players are saying, “Coach, I told you, we really can score.” ‘ Then we go to a tournament where we play against higher-class competitors. Now we’re struggling to score and we’re not defending very well. So in the last game we played Arkansas on December 1st, and now it’s December 10th. Over the last 12 days, two weeks, the attention to detail in training has been felt by the players, not the coaches, the coaches have done the same. The players suddenly realized that this is what we have to do to improve as a team. And they have a chance to win. We did a better job tonight. You still know, if you look at the stats, they shot 40% from three and 48% overall, 83% from the foul line. So we still have a long way to go. We didn’t out-rebound, but we kept them out of there. They are a great offensive rebounding team. They only have five offensive rebounds. So our rebounding is getting better. Our defense is getting better. And at some point, and I told the team this afterwards, victory will follow. You have to follow the process. You know, you’re not good at something, get better at it.”

On the performance of freshman forward Isaiah Johnson-Arigu

“Isaiah is one of those laid-back kids, very quiet, very humble. And so in July, August, September, October he’s a little bit behind some of the other guys, and now in the last few weeks of training he’s started to pick it up again. He was more aggressive. He defends better and rebounds better. So we had to give Brandon Johnson some rest in the second half. I never intended to just let Isaiah stay inside the whole time, but he went in and helped us. If he can continue to improve, he will earn playing time. And that’s what I told the team afterwards. We haven’t decided on a set rotation yet as there is too much disagreement from players. If you’re inconsistent on defense, if you’re inconsistent on rebounding, if you’re inconsistent on offense, you’re not going to earn consistent playing time.”