Duke associate head coach Jai Lucas is reportedly taking over Miami men’s basketball next season. According to the Associated Press, contract negotiations have not yet been finalized, but Lucas is expected to join the Hurricanes as their next head coach.
CanesInSight was the first to report this news.
The 36-year-old Lucas will step in to be the youngest head coach in the ACC and is one of the most coveted assistant coaches in all of college basketball. After playing college ball at Florida and Texas, Lucas had a brief stint with the NBA G League, formerly the NBA D-League, before moving on to the coaching world.
His first job was with his alma mater, Texas, where he worked his way up to an assistant coach after staying on the staff when the Longhorns transitioned from Rick Barnes to Shaka Smart in 2016. He then served with Kentucky as a recruiting coordinator and an assistant coach. He made his way to Duke in 2023, where he climbed the ranks to be Jon Scheyer’s right-hand man as associate head coach and one of the most valuable coaching prospects in the nation.
“Absolutely, he’s a head coach,” Scheyer said when asked by reporters about Lucas’ name coming up in the Miami coaching search. “No question about it. It’s part of why I hired him, you know, and the job he’s done for us has been incredible. Any report or anything that’s out there, you know, I’m just getting wind of it now, so we’ll cross that bridge and figure it out.”
Despite his youth, Lucas, having worked with Barnes, John Calipari and currently with Scheyer, has a lot of experience and knowledge he can bring. Where he’s made his mark in all these places is in his ability to recruit and develop players.
With Texas, Lucas helped put together three highly touted classes and made the most out of the players he brought in. Jarrett Allen, Mo Bamba, and Jaxon Hayes all ended up as first-round picks. Bamba and Hayes went in the lottery back-to-back years, and Kentucky and Duke were the only other teams to accomplish that feat in those years.
Then with Kentucky, Lucas helped bring in five McDonald’s All Americans, including Shaedon Sharpe and TyTy Washington, who also both made the NBA. Since arriving at Duke, he’s been responsible for some of their biggest commits over the past couple of years. From Duke’s stacked class of 2024, headlined by the number one player in the country, Cooper Flagg, or their class of 2025, which has brought in the Boozer twins, he’s held a primary role in all of it. The hope for Miami is that he can make something similar happen with the ’Canes.
When Jim Larrañaga stepped down in December, it was partly due to a struggle adapting and relating to players in this new world of NIL. Miami going after Lucas attacks the need to get someone younger and newer into the space, setting them up for success both now and in the future.