by Kevin Burton
My underdog heart beat just a little bit faster Wednesday, thanks to Miami of Ohio winning a play-in game.
I would love the RedHawks to have a nice long run in March Madness, beginning with their 3:25 p.m. matchup with Tennessee today, but I’m happy with what they have done already.
Their 89-79 win over SMU at University of Dayton arena was satisfying on more than one level.
March Madness hasn’t quickened my pulse this year as before. But the Miami of Ohio story intrigued me. They won the Mid-American Conference regular season, going undefeated no less.
But as they piled up the wins, a narrative began to surface among the East Coast elites and basketball talking heads. Miami’s strength of schedule was less than impressive, toward the bottom of Division 1 basketball, because the other teams in the MAC aren’t very good.
Did the RedHawks even deserve an invitation to the dance? They hadn’t faced a team in the top tier of teams and only two in the second tier.
To make things worse, they lost to 8-seed Massachusetts in the first round of the MAC post-season tournament. At 31-1, Miami of Ohio was on the bubble.
You have to play the other teams in your league, but schools have a choice of who to play in the other 15 or so games in the regular season.
You can’t just schedule cupcakes and expect to be taken seriously. But as Yahoo Sports senior writer Jeff Eisenberg explains, Miami tried and tried to play the big boys, but the big boys said “no.”
“Three months after he started trying to assemble a non-league schedule that would challenge his battle-tested roster, Miami (Ohio) associate head coach Jonathan Holmes recognized that the RedHawks had a problem,” Eisenberg wrote.
“No one wanted to play a sneaky-good mid-major that won 25 games the previous season and retained six of its top nine players.”
“Holmes spread word last spring that Miami was willing to travel to two or more power-conference opponents with no expectation of a future return game in Oxford. Coaches who responded to Holmes’ messages told him they wanted only marquee matchups against top-tier opponents or low-risk games against small-conference pushovers ranked 275th or worse.”
“The feedback was similar when Holmes lowered his sights and began targeting elite teams from the Atlantic 10, Mountain West and other top mid-major leagues. Some coaches saw no benefit in scheduling Miami. Others didn’t have open dates available. The few who initially expressed interest got cold feet when Holmes sent contracts for them to sign.”
“By the end of the summer, Holmes became desperate enough to call some of his best friends in the business and beg them, “C’mon, man! Do me a solid! Help us out!” They each apologetically told Holmes that they couldn’t help him because Miami was exactly the type of opponent they sought to avoid, projected to finish outside the top 100 nationally yet plenty dangerous enough to dish out a damaging loss.”
“Miami intentionally kept slots open on its schedule into the fall, hoping in vain that some name-brand team would have a game fall through and would call in a panic,” Eisenberg wrote. “Only in early October did the RedHawks finally give up and unveil a non-league schedule featuring three NAIA opponents and an array of matchups against the dregs of Division I.”
“‘I was told no by probably 75 to 90 teams, from obviously all your power conferences, to your A-10s, to your Mountain Wests,’ Holmes said. ‘I guess you could say we were in scheduling no man’s land. We didn’t fit the profile of what anyone was looking for.’”
Of course we now know that the tournament committee welcomed Miami – sort of. Forcing them into a play-in game was an insult for a team with 56 wins over the past two seasons. But at least they got in.
SMU, with 13 losses was much less worthy of a bid than was Miami. Fortunately the RedHawks proved that on the court.
My sports joy was helped along of course, by the fact that the disrespected team was from Ohio, where I grew up.
As the final horn sounded Wednesday, I shot my left fist in the air, index finger extended in the universal sign of “we’re number 1.”
Now Miami is not number 1. This might be proven on court today by Tennessee, before you even read this.
But nobody ever said Miami was number 1. What we said is they were plenty good enough to be given a chance.
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