The Miami (OH) RedHawks‘ surreal season continued on Saturday with its most wild win in a season filled with them.
Miami (19-0, 7-0 in MAC) remained undefeated with a 105-102 comeback win over the Buffalo Bulls (13-5, 3-3 in MAC), needing a buzzer-beating three on the finish of regulation to tie the sport and one other deep make with 1.5 seconds left in additional time to seal the inconceivable victory.
Per ESPN Analytics, the RedHawks’ win chance dipped as little as 2.1 % when senior guard Peter Suder missed a three-pointer with three seconds left.
Sophomore 6-foot-8 guard Brant Byers tapped out the offensive rebound to junior guard Eian Elmer, who drained a 26-footer to ship the sport to additional time.
Suder, who scored a game-high 37 factors on 13-of-22 taking pictures, together with 7-of-10 from past the arc, bought redemption throughout the additional interval with the profitable shot.
Wild win continues unbelievable Miami season
The win continues one of the best begin in program historical past and ties one of the best begin in MAC historical past. Head coach Travis Steele has performed a outstanding job at a spot with out a wealthy basketball custom.
He arrived at Miami (OH) in 2022 after 4 seasons at Xavier, the place he went 70-50 and was fired during the team’s 2022 NIT title run. He inherited a Miami program with one profitable report — 12-11 within the condensed 2020-21 season — since 2009-10 and went 27-37 in his first two seasons.
Steele led the RedHawks to a program-record 25 wins a season in the past, which led to heartbreak with a 76-74 loss to Akron within the MAC championship sport. Miami led by as many as 18 however misplaced on guard Nate Johnson’s floater with 2.3 seconds remaining.
Coming into Saturday, Miami ranked fifth within the nation in scoring (93.3 factors per sport) on the heels of outstanding taking pictures. The RedHawks rank first in total subject objective share and three-point share, with these charges growing after taking pictures 38-of-66 (57.5 %), together with 13-of-29 (44.8 %) from deep, in opposition to Buffalo.
Whilst one in all D-I’s highest-scoring groups, Miami might want to proceed racking up wins to even be thought of for an at-large bid. Per KenPom, Miami ranks No. 353 out of 365 groups in opponents’ internet ranking — a strength-of-schedule metric. However to its credit score, the 12 groups under it common 7.5 losses, exhibiting that a straightforward schedule does not mechanically translate to wins.
Miami, No. 47 in NET rankings, is the one crew within the prime 50 with out a Quad 1 sport. Its best wins got here in Quad 2 at Wright State (83-76) and Bowling Inexperienced (93-83) and at house in opposition to Akron (76-73).
Steele spoke concerning the battle of adjusting the skin notion of this system after the crew’s 100-61 win over Central Michigan on Tuesday.
“I believe we’ve a chip on our shoulder, for certain,” Steele mentioned, then including, “You’ll be able to’t management it. We simply gotta proceed to make a press release each time we step on that ground” (h/t FOX19’s Jeremy Rauch)
The RedHawks must keep away from any extra shut calls. Their solely remaining regular-season video games are in opposition to Quad 3 or Quad 4 opponents, making it crucial they’re on their A-game each evening.
Likelihood is, the RedHawks will as soon as once more enter their convention match needing to win it to go dancing. However in contrast to final season, primarily based on Saturday’s win, destiny could also be on their aspect.
