Miami's Interim Coach Bill Courtney "Focused on our Job" Amidst New Coach Reports

The Miami Hurricanes basketball team has heard the biggest distraction of the season.

The Hurricanes only have four games remaining in this nightmare season. Now they prepare to face No. 3 Duke at home. Bill Courtney is preparing the team to stay focused despite the newest rumors and reports that Duke associate coach Jai Lucas will be the next head coach of the Miami Hurricanes.

"We didn't talk about it as a staff or as a team with the players," Courtney said. "I'm sure they're hearing all the stuff. It's impossible not to but we got to focus on our job at hand. We've talked to the group about the kids about staying focused and that's the kind of mentality we took a while ago is just again we go day by day game by game."

He also knows that even with the distractions, the goal for many of his players is to still play basketball at a higher level.

All these guys want to play basketball in the future whether it's freshman and sophomores playing here or somewhere else or upperclassmen who are going on to play overseas or maybe in the NBA so we have a job to do and we'll continue to focus on doing our job and try again, Courtney said.. "There's always outside noise, so we got to continue to try to block that out and be as focused and prepared as best we possibly can."

Still, Courtney has to navigate through the rumors. He can only control what he can control but it will be in the back of his mind as the season concludes.

"I think everything right now is still conjecture rumors," Courtney said. "I'm not sure that there's been anything definitive. I don't think that you know anyone is happy with the timing of this leak or whatever it is but you know again it's unfortunate but again in our business, there are always rumors. They're all stuff circulating and so uh you can't control the time and again all we can control is what we can control."

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Justice Sandle is a graduate of Mississippi State University and is the site lead for Miami Hurricanes on SI. He can be reached at justice.sandle111@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter@Justice_News5.