Undefeated Miami (Ohio) hasn’t played anyone good? Don’t blame the RedHawks — they tried and were turned away by more than 75 teams

Three months after he began making an attempt to assemble a non-league schedule that will problem his battle-tested roster, Miami (Ohio) affiliate head coach Jonathan Holmes acknowledged that the RedHawks had an issue.

No one wished to play a sneaky-good mid-major that gained 25 video games the earlier season and retained six of his high 9 gamers.

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Holmes unfold phrase final spring that Miami was prepared to journey to 2 or more power-conference opponents with no expectation of a future return sport in Oxford. Coaches who responded to Holmes’ messages informed him they wished solely marquee matchups towards top-tier opponents or low-risk video games towards small-conference pushovers ranked 275th or worse.

The suggestions was comparable when Holmes lowered his sights and started focusing on elite teams from the Atlantic 10, Mountain West and different high mid-major leagues. Some coaches noticed no profit in scheduling Miami. Others did not have open dates obtainable. The few who initially expressed curiosity obtained chilly ft when Holmes despatched contracts for them to signal.

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By the finish of the summer time, Holmes grew to become determined sufficient to name a few of his greatest buddies in the enterprise and beg them, “C’mon, man! Do me a solid! Help us out!” They every apologetically informed Holmes that they could not assist him as a result of Miami was precisely the sort of opponent they sought to keep away from, projected to complete exterior the high 100 nationally but lots harmful sufficient to dish out a harmful loss.

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Miami deliberately stored slots open on its schedule into the fall, hoping in useless that some name-brand crew would have a sport fall by and would name in a panic. Only in early October did the RedHawks lastly give up and unveil a non-league schedule that includes three NAIA opponents and an array of matchups towards 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 informed Yahoo Sports. “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.”

The unwillingness of high teams to schedule Miami has taken on larger significance this winter as the unbeaten RedHawks have emerged as faculty basketball’s most compelling story. Miami is one win away from an undefeated common season, but there is still spirited debate whether the RedHawks could miss the NCAA tournament if they lose Friday evening at Ohio and then fail once more throughout their convention event.

Glance at Miami’s gaudy 30-0 document, and you may assume this crew can be ranked increased than nineteenth in the newest AP Top 25. The RedHawks are considered one of eight teams in the final 50 years to begin 30-0, becoming a member of 1976 Indiana, 1976 Rutgers, 1979 Indiana State, 1991 UNLV, 2014 Wichita State, 2015 Kentucky and 2021 Gonzaga.

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And but scan the underwhelming listing of teams Miami has crushed, and you may marvel why this crew cracked the Top 25 in any respect. Half the RedHawks’ 30 wins this season have come towards non-DI opponents or teams ranked 250th or beneath in the NET. Their lone top-100 victory is a three-point house win over Akron. Their next-most spectacular result’s an early-season highway win at a Wright State crew ranked 137th.

Complicating the NCAA event choice committee’s analysis of Miami is the incontrovertible fact that the RedHawks didn’t play the 364th-ranked non-conference schedule by selection. Their Charmin-soft schedule is a byproduct of a system rigged towards small-conference teams making an attempt to punch above their weight class.

“When they’re looking at our profile, I hope they take that into consideration,” Holmes stated. “We held out until October to try to build the best schedule we could build. It’s part of our story. You can only play the teams that would agree to play you.”

Finding the proper coach

Before Miami grew to become the greatest story of this school basketball season, the RedHawks’ glory days were in the distant previous. They final gained an NCAA event sport in 1999 when Wally Szczerbiak dragged them to the Sweet 16. They final made the NCAA event in 2007. They went 11 straight years with no profitable season from 2009-2020.

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The turnaround started when Miami athletic director David Sayler put his religion in a coach who was more of a reclamation undertaking than a rising star. In March 2022, Travis Steele had simply been fired by Xavier for failing to maintain that program buzzing at the stage he had been below his predecessor Chris Mack. The Musketeers went 70-54 below Steele however toughened their longest stretch with out an NCAA event look since the early Nineteen Eighties.

When Sayler first contacted Steele about the Miami opening, the coach was vacationing in Naples, Florida, making an attempt to decompress and spend some high quality time together with his spouse and children. Sayler requested Steele if he supposed to take a 12 months away earlier than getting again into teaching. Steele scoffed that he could not bear to be with no crew that lengthy.

“Man, I’m getting bored,” Sayler stated.

Once Steele confirmed his curiosity in the job, Sayler moved rapidly. Sayler was already acquainted with Steele from interviewing him again in 2018. He favored that Steele was a tireless employee, that he had longstanding relationships with highschool and grassroots coaches throughout Ohio and neighboring states and that he appeared to have discovered so much from his bumpier-than-expected tenure at Xavier.

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“I think at Xavier, because he was there so long as an assistant and he took over from someone else, I don’t think he was ever able to fully change things to how he wanted it,” Sayler stated. “He was always doing things within a structure that was already in place. I thought Miami was the first chance he had to really just do it the way he wanted to do it and 100% put his stamp on it.”

At a time when many coaches are valuing confirmed transfers over highschool prospects, Steele selected to regularly construct Miami the old school approach. He discovered neglected youngsters and developed them right into a cohesive crew, going from 12-20 in his debut season to 15-17 in Year 2 to final season’s 25-9 breakthrough.

Only days after Miami’s 2024-25 season ended with an agonizing two-point loss to Akron in the MAC title sport, the teaching workers held particular person conferences with gamers to evaluate who supposed to switch, who supposed to return and who was on the fence. Right away, first-team all-MAC guard Peter Suder set the tone by telling Steele and his workers with out prompting, “Hey, I’m not sure what this meeting is about, but I just want you guys to know I’m coming back.”

That was an enormous enhance for Miami in an period when one-bid leagues typically served as a farm system for high-majors. Of the six 2024-25 first- and second-team all-MAC gamers with eligibility remaining, Suder and Akron’s Tavari Johnson were the solely ones to not go away for greater NIL paydays at power-conference packages.

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“Arguably, the best player in the league is like, ‘Hey, I love it here. I just had the best year of my basketball career. I love my teammates. I’m getting better. Why would I leave?” Holmes stated. “I think he felt like there was this idea of ​​unfinished business. We got to the doorstep of the NCAA tournament and he wanted to come back and try to get us there.”

Once a foundational piece like Suder pledged to return to Miami, his determination had an immediate trickle-down impact. Reigning MAC freshman of the 12 months Brant Byers got here again. So did returning starters Eian Elmer and Antwone Woolfolk, in addition to key reserves Evan Ipsaro and Luke Skaljac.

That was a powerful sufficient returning core to cement Miami a preseason MAC contender… and to show Holmes’ offseason process of assembling the RedHawks’ non-conference schedule right into a six-month nightmare.

College basketball’s risk-management drawback

Believe it or not, none of the Miami coaches blame all the name-brand teams that refused to play the RedHawks this season. They every would do the similar factor if they were teaching at the power-conference stage.

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“Those coaches are just doing their jobs,” Holmes stated. “They’re trying to put their teams in the best possible position come March.”

The NCAA’s quadrant system types a crew’s wins and losses into 4 classes based mostly on the opponent’s NET rating and the sport’s location. High-upside Quad 1 matchups towards top-tier opponents supply teams the greatest likelihood to spice up their NCAA event seeding or their probabilities of getting chosen.

Since losses towards Quad 3 and Quad 4 teams are thought-about damaging to a potential NCAA event crew’s résumé, high-major packages have sought to play their assured video games towards the lowest-ranked Division I teams they can discover. Those low-risk matchups permit power-conference teams to pad their win totals. Massive margins of victory additionally assist these high-majors enhance their standing in the NET, KenPom and different predictive metrics used by the choice committee.

Left with scant choices are mid-majors who do not match neatly into both a type of buckets, teams like Miami, High Point, Belmont or Liberty. Power-conference teams understand these sorts of harmful matchups as having loads of draw back and little reward.

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“It’s very challenging if you’re not Quad 1 or Quad 4,” Sayler stated. “Nobody wants to play you if you’re Quad 2 or Quad 3 because you can do nothing but damage them if you beat them or if the game is closer than people think it should have been.

“I think we all need to be honest about what non-conference scheduling has become in college basketball. It’s not competition. It’s really risk management. The current system incentivizes avoiding risk rather than rewarding competitive courage.”

That system is part of the reason that Miami will be one of the most challenging evaluations that the NCAA tournament selection committee has faced in years. Is this a really good team that didn’t get enough chances to show it against name-brand competition? Or is this a top-tier MAC team that benefited from playing an atrocious non-league schedule?

Result-based metrics are impressed by Miami’s 30-0 record, sub-par competition or not. The RedHawks rank No. 30 in Wins Above Bubbleahead of the likes of projected NCAA tournament teams like Clemson, UCLA, Iowa and TCU.

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Predictive metrics are far more skeptical. Part of the reason the RedHawks are still languishing in the 80s at KenPom and Torvik is that eight of their victories have either gone to overtime or been decided by three or fewer points — including a two-point win over Toledo on Tuesday.

The NCAA tournament selection committee would have to break with historical precedent to leave the RedHawks out even if they lose at Ohio on Friday night and again in the MAC tournament (thus not securing the automatic bid). Since the NCAA tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985, an eligible team with two or fewer losses has never been snubbed. You have to go all the way back to 2004 Utah State to even find a three-loss team that missed out.

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Bracketologists don’t seem quite as confident that the RedHawks are safe if they suffer a loss in conference tournament play and fail to secure the MAC’s automatic bid. ESPN currently projects Miami as a No. 11 seed. CBS has the RedHawks as a No. 12.

All that Holmes can ask is that Miami’s non-conference scheduling challenges are part of the committee’s evaluation.

“I can’t force someone to play us if they don’t want to play,” he stated. “I can’t make somebody sign a contract and send it back. I would love it if they would take that into consideration.”