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 capturing, together with 7-of-10 from past the arc, received redemption throughout the additional interval with the successful shot.
Wild win continues unimaginable Miami season
The win continues the most effective begin in program historical past and ties the most effective begin in MAC historical past. Head coach Travis Steele has performed a exceptional job at a spot with no 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 successful 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.
Getting into Saturday, Miami ranked fifth within the nation in scoring (93.3 factors per sport) on the heels of remarkable capturing. The RedHawks rank first in general area objective proportion and three-point proportion, with these charges rising after capturing 38-of-66 (57.5 %), together with 13-of-29 (44.8 %) from deep, in opposition to Buffalo.
At the same time as certainly one of D-I’s highest-scoring groups, Miami might want to proceed racking up wins to even be thought-about for an at-large bid. Per KenPom, Miami ranks No. 353 out of 365 groups in opponents’ web score — a strength-of-schedule metric. However to its credit score, the 12 groups under it common 7.5 losses, exhibiting that a simple schedule does not robotically translate to wins.
Miami, No. 47 in NET rankings, is the one group within the prime 50 with no Quad 1 sport. Its best wins got here in Quad 2 at Wright State (83-76) and Bowling Inexperienced (93-83) and at residence in opposition to Akron (76-73).
Steele spoke in regards to the wrestle of adjusting the skin notion of this system after the group’s 100-61 win over Central Michigan on Tuesday.
“I feel we now have a chip on our shoulder, for positive,” Steele stated, then including, “You may’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 should 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 night time.
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.
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