Philadelphia native Ja’Quan Newton starting to grow at Miami – NBC Sports Philadelphia

MIAMI — Ja’Quan Newton admits he was frustrated by the rumors he heard when he returned home to Philadelphia this past summer.

“I was hearing, ‘Oh, he’s going to leave.’ … I’m like, ‘What? I’m not going anywhere,’” said Newton, a 6-foot-2 sophomore point guard for the Miami Hurricanes.

“Why would I leave? I play for a great coach (Jim Larranaga). We’ve got a great coaching staff. … I was hearing things that weren’t coming from my mouth. It was kind of frustrating.”

Newton, who graduated from Neumann-Goretti High School as the leading scorer in Catholic League history, averaged 4.0 points as a Miami freshman but has improved greatly as a sophomore.

He is fourth on the team in scoring (12.0) and second in assists (2.7) despite getting just 21.4 minutes per game for the Hurricanes, who won their first five games before falling to Northeastern at the buzzer on Friday.

“Ja’Quan’s been very consistent,” Larranaga said of the 20-year-old Newton. “He’s not a surprise to the coaches or his teammates. We knew his progression was going to come.”

Newton, who plays behind senior Angel Rodriguez, seems destined to be the Hurricanes’ starting point guard next season.

However, Larranaga, who has two scholarships available for next season, had a revealing comment about how he views Newton.

“We have four guards, four forwards and two centers,” Larranaga said of next season’s projected roster. “That’s great balance.

“But we don’t have a prototypical point guard. Even Ja’Quan is not just a pure point guard. He is a scorer as well. It would also be nice to have an Angel Rodriguez or a Shane Larkin (former Hurricane now in the NBA) in the program.”

There’s no question Newton is a scorer — few high school basketball fans in Philadelphia will forget the 33-point performance he put up in leading Neumann-Goretti to the state title as a senior. But there’s also a growing confidence in Newton that he can be a leader at point guard, running a high-level college team.

Rodriguez, who turns 23 next month and is one of Miami’s savvy veterans, has seen the growth in Newton.

“I knew the talent was there, but I didn’t know when it was going to show,” Rodriguez said. “For some people, it may take two years. For him, it took just that one year. The improvement has been mental and a year of experience.”

Newton views Rodriguez as a big brother, and there is mutual respect between the two, but that doesn’t stop them from going at each other in practice.

“We always go head to head, and it’s very physical,” Newton said. “If we had refs, we’d probably both foul out. [But] we make each other better. When we get into a game, it’s kind of easy.”

Rodriguez said Newton was probably taken aback last year when he found out how he was being guarded in practice.

“I don’t know if he didn’t appreciate it or he didn’t like it because he was probably not used to that in high school,” Rodriguez said. “But now he knows what it takes.

“There’s no free lunch with me. There are times when he will [penetrate the lane], but even if he makes it, he’s going to get fouled. … We make each other work.”

Rodriguez said last season was “devastating” to him and his teammates. The Hurricanes won 25 games, had a winning record (10-8) in the rugged ACC, beat Duke at Cameron Indoor Stadium and advanced to the NIT championship game.

Even so, getting bypassed for the NCAA Tournament stung the Hurricanes.

This season, Miami got off to a fast start, knocking off No. 16 Utah and No. 22 Butler to win the Puerto Rico Tipoff championship. Rodriguez, who was named the tournament MVP, scored 19 points in the title game against Butler, and Newton added a career-high 17.

Including the Mississippi State matchup in the opener, Miami won all three of its games in Puerto Rico by at least 10 points. The combined margin of victory for the Hurricanes was 60 points.

Still, the 'Canes are wary of their fast start because it is very similar to what happened last season before things went south.

The Hurricanes won an early-season tournament — last year it was the Gildan Charleston Classic in South Carolina — and came home undefeated and ranked No. 15, just like this season.

But rather than running with that momentum, Miami slipped, losing at home to a pair of relative lightweights — Green Bay on Dec. 6 and Eastern Kentucky on Dec. 19. The latter loss was especially humiliating — Eastern Kentucky won by 28 points — and the NCAA selection committee no doubt took those defeats into consideration when passing on the 'Canes.

Rodriguez and Newton are determined to not slip up again, but they did just that Friday losing at home by one point on a buzzer-beating shot by Northeastern.

“This is a different team [than last season],” Rodriguez insists.

Newton believes that, too, and after winning the title in Puerto Rico, he told his teammates that there is much more left to accomplish.

“I just wanted everybody to know that we’re not done,” Newton said. “We’re celebrating right now, but we still have work to do. As soon I said it, Angel looked at me and said, ‘You’re learning.’ And I said: ‘I get it from you.’"

Added Rodriguez: “When I heard it from him — from a sophomore — I know we have a chance to be special.”