How Jai Lucas Engineered One of College Basketball’s Fastest Turnarounds

Jai Lucas was in the final moments of preparation for one of Duke’s biggest games of the 2045–25 season when the news started to trickle out.

As associate head coach for the nation’s best team, Lucas seemed primed to make the jump to his own program soon. And a job like Miami, a place that had been to the Final Four just two years before and where he could recruit at an elite level, would be impossible not to be excited about. But reports leaking out that Lucas was likely headed for Coral Gables, Fla., with his current team already on the Madison Square Garden floor warming up to play Illinois? That was less than ideal. Reporters scrambled to chase down Lucas’s agent (who was at the game) for more details; Duke head coach Jon Scheyer didn’t speak to specifics but endorsed Lucas’s candidacy for head coaching jobs postgame.

An official announcement was held off until the first week of March, a few days before the Blue Devils’ regular-season finale against North Carolina. Chief among the details that had to get hashed out: Could Lucas stick with Duke through a championship run that could easily push into early April? With the rebuild he was staring down in Miami and the amount of work it would take to recruit transfers while Duke was still likely to be playing, it became clear that there was only one choice. Lucas would leave for Miami following the end of the regular season to start his new chapter, missing out on what he called a “dream” of taking a team to the Final Four.

“[Lucas] would be behind with the way the transfer portal was set up … so there’s decisions that have to be made now for him and for his program moving forward,” Scheyer said in March. “Not to mention hiring the staff and all that. So yeah, this is one of the things where I think we can look at this and say it doesn’t make sense.”

Ten months later, that brutal decision to walk away from a championship-caliber Duke team has paid off for the 37-year-old Lucas, who has Miami sitting at 15–2 for its best start to a season since 2010. After the program won three of its last 30 ACC games before Lucas’s arrival, the Hurricanes are 4–0 in league play after winning at Notre Dame on Tuesday and look primed for a trip to the NCAA tournament. And the groundwork for what increasingly looks like a special season was laid in part during that agonizing month Lucas missed being with his former team for.

“It was the only thing that was necessary,” Lucas says. “I don’t feel that this team would be able to be in the position that we’re in, being able to build this team, if I didn’t leave early.”

The main focus was on overhauling the roster, and for good reason: Miami didn’t have a single minute of returning production, so Lucas needed to act quickly to lay the foundation of a team that could win now. But the time he had to settle into the role (about two weeks from the time he left Duke to the day the transfer portal officially opened) also helped Lucas make more informed decisions for some of the most crucial moments of his early tenure. One thing he says he quickly discovered by being in Miami full time instead of recruiting the portal from a hotel meeting room with Duke was the hunger the area had for local talent on the roster. Miami’s 2024–25 team had just two players from the state of Florida. So while Lucas had been known mostly for his deep recruiting ties in Texas, he brought in three assistants with ties to the state, and those local products have become the backbone of Miami’s strong start.

The first target was a big fish: Miami native Malik Reneau, a transfer from Indiana who had scored more than 1,000 points in three years with the Hoosiers. Reneau says he didn’t need much selling on a return to the city, but the basketball fit was an open question. Miami quite literally didn’t have a roster to sell him on. But Lucas could sell opportunity: the chance to be the leading scorer, an opportunity to play with more freedom than he had in Bloomington, Ind., and most importantly a chance to continue to expand his game and develop.

Hurricanes forward Malik Reneau shoots the basketball against Notre Dame. — Hurricanes forward Malik Reneau transferred back home from Indiana to join Jai Lucas’s team. | Michael Caterina-Imagn Images

“I’m not 65 years old. I don’t have 200 wins. I’m not a Hall of Famer or anything like that,” Lucas says. “I had to be able to explain why coming here was important for him and how I can help him get to where he wants to get to in basketball.”

The pitch resonated with Reneau. He committed in early April, before Duke’s season had even come to a close. Lucas was euphoric; Reneau recalls at least one curse word from his new coach in the celebration. The rebuild was on.

“That’s when everything started to come together,” Reneau says.

One of Reneau’s best friends is Tre Donaldson, a Tallahassee native who started at point guard on Michigan’s Sweet 16 team in 2025. The two played AAU basketball together growing up and dreamed about teaming up one day in college; Donaldson says he even discussed Reneau potentially considering a move to Michigan once it became obvious he would leave Indiana after the Hoosiers parted with coach Mike Woodson. But things change quickly in 2025 college basketball, and Donaldson was in the portal again and ready for something new. With Reneau committed to the Canes, Donaldson had his decision.

“It was a no-brainer,” Donaldson says. “We knew we were going to do it together … we wanted to do something special for the state we’re from.”

The two have absolutely shined in their new home.

Hurricanes guard Tre Donaldson celebrates during a recent game. | Petre Thomas-Imagn Images

Reneau is having a career year, averaging over 20 points per game and tallying 15-plus in 10 straight games. He’s shooting it better from three, drawing more fouls and playing the most efficient basketball of his career. He also loves being back in his hometown, thriving away from the fishbowl that is Bloomington.

“Indiana, it’s just so different,” Reneau says. “[There’s] a lot of pressure from the media, the fans to just be perfect every single time on the court. Here in Miami, I can be so free on the court. I can make mistakes. I know my team’s going to trust me to make another play and they’re not going to be down on me or against me in the media and stuff like that.”

Meanwhile, Donaldson is second in the ACC in assists and 10th in scoring. And his play has raised to a different level in conference action, averaging 22.5 points and six assists per game in his first four ACC contests.

Fellow Florida natives Ernest Udeh Jr. (the team’s starting center) and Dante Allen (a freshman wing from Miami) have also been critical pieces, while a fifth Florida native in Marcus Allen was playing key minutes until being diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma in December. Add in physical guards Shelton Henderson (who Lucas initially recruited to Duke) and Tru Washington (a transfer from New Mexico whose cousin TyTy Washington was one of Lucas’s recruits at Kentucky), and the Canes have a formidable nucleus. They’re lacking from a depth standpoint, which Lucas attributed in part to wanting players to have a clear understanding of their roles and in part to the team’s budget getting eaten up quickly by signing high-profile portal players like Reneau and Donaldson.

And while the Canes have certainly benefited from a soft schedule early in league play, KenPom currently projects them to finish 24–7 overall and 13–5 in the ACC. If that comes true, it would represent one of the most stark turnarounds of any team in the country from a year ago and set up the Canes for a strong seed on Selection Sunday.

Who knows, maybe Lucas won’t have to wait long to finally make those childhood Final Four dreams a reality … this time in the head coach’s chair.

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