With the Friars in search of their 17th head coach in program history we at The Providence Crier will take a look at the candidates who have been linked to the job.
Jay Larrañaga should be a familiar name in Friartown. He is the son of Friar alumn Jim Larrañaga and those PC fans who also root for the Boston Celtics will also know he was an assistant with the NBA franchise from 2012-2021.
His father was a long time head coach at George Mason, leading the Patriots to a trip to the Final Four in 2006. He himself has been linked to the Providence job and PC even offered him the job on two separate occasions. In 2008 Providence offered Jim what he called his “dream job”. He decided to turn it down and stay at Mason where he planned to finish his career with, the Friars would turn to Keno Davis. Just three years later Providence was once again looking for a head coach. They offered him again but this time instead of returning to George Mason he took the job at the University of Miami, where he would lead them to a Final Four trip in 2023.
We definitely aren’t bitter about it or anything.
Back to his son Jay, he’s been with the Los Angeles Clippers for the past five years on Tyrone Lue’s staff. Prior to his 14 years as a NBA assistant he was the head coach of of the Erie BayHawks of the D-League. He compiled a record of 60-40 in two seasons, making the postseason both years and coached Jeremy Lin in his last season. He also was the head coach of Ireland’s national team, where he was a player coach.
As a player, he played collegiately at Bowling Green and had a 12-year pro career overseas with multiple stops.
It also wouldn’t be the first time Jay Larrañaga thought about making the transition to the college game. He was a finalist for the Georgia Tech and George Mason jobs before ultimately deciding to return to the Celtics
His profile as a coach is a guy who is a good talent developer and has been apart of basketball teams that run a more modern, pro style offense and have been known for being good defensively as well.
Fit and Why It Could Work?
Despite the family name he has ties to the region. He’s lived in the Boston area for sometime and is probably very familiar with the New England sports fan. Let’s face it for the majority Friar fanbase is either a New England or New York sports fan. He can kinda know what he’s getting into from an expectation perspective. Also he’s highly respected by likes of Brad Stevens and Lawrence Frank, two great NBA executives who were both former college coaches themselves.
You also have to look at the a newer trend of trying to hire NBA assistants. BYU hired Kevin Young off the Jazz’s bench two years ago and he’s had success at there having won 70% of his games. We saw University of Utah do this last year with Alex Jensen although he had a rough season in year one with the Utes. So it’s a risk but certainly could work.
Causes for Concern
Obviously the elephant in the room with Jay is he has zero collegiate coaching experience. And the list isn’t long of where that has been successful before. He also has minimal head coaching experience with only two seasons in the NBA’s developmental league and two seasons with Ireland’s national team. And while there is the example of Kevin Young outside of him the examples of it being successful have been hard to come by. Eric Musselman comes to mind as someone who successfully transition and Juwan Howard had success early at Michigan but for those success stories there’s a case of Avery Johnson and Patrick Ewing. So there is certainly risk.
Summary
If Jay Larrañaga becomes the next head coach of the Friars it won’t likely be received well with the fan base, even if he is the son of alum. Coming off parting ways with Kim English after three seasons, a coach that didn’t have a ton of college head coaching experience, it’s understandable why fans would be against it.
There would also be legitimate questions in recruiting. Certainly being a guy who has plenty of NBA connections is marketable to a college basketball player. However it’s much different identifying and recruiting talent at the high school level. With the portal the way it is now it might be an easier transition for a NBA assistant than in years past. It could work but it’s also certainly possible it wouldn’t work out and the Friars program kind of need to get this one right.