Every team’s season is unique, but I’d venture to say that no one has ever had a DI college basketball season like this team has had.
All the wins are the thing that makes the season unique.
Only citing the source. He’s a Miami grad and does a ton of sports work around Cleveland. Hope @REFLOG1 will be at the MAC Championships next week
SVP and Stanford Steve were among the first advocates for Miami with the “Rank 'em!” segment after the CMU win.
REMEMBER THE JOB IS NOT FINISHED!
There’s no way to say it that doesn’t sound like a backhanded compliment, but I actually mean it as a glowing compliment: the most impressive part of this team is that we aren’t that much better than the teams we’ve played. This isn’t a team that steps on the court 9 out of 10 times and is just totally athletically superior and more gifted than their opponent. This isn’t a team who’s 10+ point favorites and 90% to win each game. We don’t have 3 future NBA players like the undefeated Wichita State team that blew through the MVC. We aren’t a total physical mismatch like the undefeated Gonzaga team in the WCC with 7 future NBA players. By all objective analytics, this team and this season makes no sense. And yet, its all happened.
There’s literally no historical precedent for a team like this winning 30 games, and yet, here we are.
I was pretty upset about the OOC schedule before the season started, but it ended up being the greatest gift we could have received. Had we played 1 or 2 games against the likes of Michigan, Purdue, Indiana, etc in November, there is a 99% chance we lose one of those games and none of this media attention happens. No one would care about us if we were 29-1 right now and we wouldn’t be ranked. We wouldn’t have sold out 4 games in a row.
So THANK YOU to all the top 20 teams who were too scared to play us on your home court. We are excited to play some of you on a NEUTRAL court in a few weeks.
The funny thing is that a decade ago a team like us (25 game winner with a lot of returning talent) probably would’ve been able to schedule 2-3 high major buy games and a good mid-major MTE, lost 2-4 in OOC, and wouldn’t get any attention outside of the MAC because most people wouldn’t care about a 27-4 Miami team. Yet the Frankenstein system we’re in that curses teams like ours ended up letting us shine, it’s baffling in the most amazing way.
LaTulip made this exact point on Field of 68 After Dark last night. For whatever our low KenPom and Torvik ratings are worth for us (I’m not actually sure), the fact that we aren’t head and shoulders above the rest of the MAC makes what we are doing MORE impressive, not less.
“Thirty and OH…that’s the only metric that matters….Love & Honor!” got to love Wally.
No attituded that I’ve been there and done that…six years in the NBA, we were really a better team back in our day sort of vibe. He’s genuinely happy with and proud of our success and glad to tell the world about it. Gotta’ love him.
Hey Wally—Love & Honor!
Just saw this graph posted and it really illustrates my point above pretty well. The farther to the right, the better your roster grade was preseason. The farther up towards the top, the better your “resume” this year. This is put out by EvanMiya on X so based on his efficiency metrics (similar to kenpom or torvik).
No one to the left is higher than us, so no one did more with less than us in the entire nation.
The whole discussion on how a team like Miami would do in the Big East ignores the elephant in the room of millions of dollars in budget and NIL. Our coach makes 300k and our entire basketball budget is under $3m. There are a few individual players in the big conferences getting more NIL than our entire program budget.
What this team has done is truly historic.
I think he played a decade? I’d have to check but I feel like it must have been as he played for like 4 teams.
And an NBA All star player as well in his 3rd season when he averaged 18.7 PPG. Later on he averaged 20.1 PPG one season. His career FG % of .485 is impressive as well as he took a lot of outside shots.
And MVP of the NBA Rising Stars (Rookies vs Sophomores) game.