Saturday at BUC: Football and Basketball, the Tale of Two Very Different Teams

Tough day at the "U" today as both major sports were playing at the same time. Miami is a Football school of course, but Basketball seems to be the better team on campus these days. As a loyal fan of both, I tried my best to take in both today, highly unsuccessfully. I started the day at Titanic a few blocks from the Bank United Center and caught the entire first quarter of the Miami game. Even though BC looked nervous and disinterested in the game, the Hurricanes looked simply like a bad football team. I hate to say it but Miami has the feel of fresh roadkill these days, like Indiana and Minnesota used to have as the sacrificial lambs that ESPN would show on their Noon Big Ten telecasts. Miami now seems like that weak ACC team that everyone likes to beat up on in front of a national cable audience. Simply put, even though Miami was ranked as high as #3 in the nation just two years ago those days seem far removed and I will venture to say I don't believe they will ever come back. Miami was a phenomena of the 1980s that spilled over into the 1990s. In the early 2000s, Miami had the type of run any major conference team is capable of if they have a degree history and play a weak schedule. But don't kid yourself: The Miami teams of the early 2000s don't belong in the same sentence as the trend setting, game changing Hurricane teams of the 1980s. They hardly had the same feeling and had the 2001 Hurricanes faced the schedule lets say the 1988 Hurricanes that did not win the national title did, I venture to say they would have lost 2 or 3 games. You see in the 1980s Miami had about three or four games tougher on their schedule every season than Virginia Tech or the circa 2001-2007 version Florida State. Miami in the 1980s played the toughest schedule around whereas the early 2000s edition depended on a weak Big East and an even weaker Florida State and Florida to pretend they were world beaters.

Miami is a small private school that is trying to compete in a conference and in a sport now dominated by large state Universities. My thinking is Miami, like many urban football programs before it has seen its best days come and go, and the best UM can really hope for in the future is a second tier bowl bid and perhaps once in every five years compete for a conference title. While that sounds like condemning a program to purgatory it is not- perfectly well respected programs nationally like Auburn, Penn State and Texas A&M these days only compete for conference titles once every three or four years.

At the end of the first quarter of the football game, I headed to the Bank United Center for Miami's game with Morgan State, a team that last week took U Conn to the brink at Gampel Pavillion. The Canes were without leading scorer, all-ACC guard Jack McClinton and Adrian Thomas who has torn his ACL and is out for the year for this one. These injuries unfortunately had a horrible effect on the Canes as Eddie Rios was forced to start and he played offensively like a Freshman. Rios' decision making was poor, he turned the ball over often and took bad shots. His defense also ultimately won Miami the game, something his predecessor the departed Denis Clemente could never claim.

The Hurricanes were lackluster today in their finishing even though they did not lack intensity during the game. I counted five missed layups, two missed dunks and probably less than 30% free throw shooting. Miami was also out rebounded by a wide margin after dominating the boards in each of its first four games. Anthony King in particular seemed to have a hard time corralling loose balls today, something that didn't seem to be an issue in the first four games of the season. Ray Hicks who is usually strong and plays bigger than his 6'7'' frame looked unusually timid today, and Dwayne Collins showed why he is still in the "project" folder and not yet a finished article.

However as good teams usually do, the Canes found a way to dig deep and win on an off night, a night where arguably the teams best player was wearing a red t-shirt on the bench. The Hurricanes are a good team unlike their counterparts that play football and represent the same school they can take a turnover filled lackluster performance and fight at the end to get a "W."

Miami is far from a Basketball school but I feel an energy building around this program that Miami has never had, even in the glory years of the 1990s when Miami won the Big East once and finished twice in the league two other times. Perhaps the recent national championships by the Florida Gators have gotten Florida college students interested in Basketball, or perhaps it is because the Hurricane Men's Hoops team is the only halfway decent team in the South Florida CMSA.

With the Canes finally in control inside of :30 seconds left in the game, the scoreboard flashed Miami 14, BC 14 and the crowd erupted. But then after the basketball game had ended and the big screen on the scoreboard was put on ESPN, BC was up 21 to 14 and by the time I walked out of the gym it was 28 to 14. I walked back to Titanic to catch the end of the UM Football season and how fitting that despite his gutsy play Kyle Wright's last ever play as a Hurricane resulted in sack. Miami, thankfully for the integrity of College Football is not going to a bowl. But sadly other pathetic teams such as South Carolina, Northwestern, Michigan State and Florida State are bowl eligible. Such is the current foolish bowl system in College Football.

On my way back to the car I ran into James Dews and Lance Hurdle leaving the arena. I was thinking if these were Football players leaving the stadium or simply walking on campus after a win they'd be mobbed. Instead they seemed genuinely shocked that I knew who they were and even more surprised that I wanted to congratulate them on a fine effort. Hurdle for his part I feel can improve his defense and perhaps earn more playing time, because he seems like a very capable offensive player, but I didn't mention that to him. I thanked both of them for the victory and told Dews that I am so impressed by how much he'd improved his game since last season. Dews is an interesting case- he was highly rated by Rivals and Scout but I saw some clips of him in High School and was shocked Frank Haith was recruiting someone who didn't play defense. But Dews seems to have improved his game and his shot dramatically since he first walked on campus in direct contrast to the Football players highly touted by Rivals and Scout who seem to regress every year they are on the Miami campus.

It was a complicated day and since I have yet to watch the majority of the UM-BC Football game I'll wait to comment on that until later when I watch it from my DVR.