Travis Steele was confident his Miami University squad would be a contender in the Mid-American Conference going into the season.<\/p>\n
The 25th-ranked RedHawks have not only proven their coach right but also gotten off to a historic start and are making national headlines.<\/p>\n
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Besides breaking into the AP Top 25<\/a> for the first time in 27 years, Miami is off to the best start in conference history. At 20-0, it is one of three unbeaten Division I teams.<\/p>\n It is also the first time since 2019, when Buffalo got as high as 14th, that a MAC program has been ranked.<\/p>\n This national recognition is especially meaningful for Wally Szczerbiak, who led Miami to the Sweet 16 in 1999 before a decade-long NBA career.<\/p>\n \u201cMiami is playing as good as any team in the country. They weren\u2019t able to get a tough schedule, because they tried. Nobody would play them. So you can only play the games that your schedule allows you to play,\u201d said Szczerbiak, who is a commentator for CBS Sports Network. \u201cTo win 20 straight games in a row, that is very hard. To bring it at that level every single night, it\u2019s really impressive to the culture, the routine that Travis Steele has built there within that locker room.\u201d<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Steele\u2019s squad featured 10 returning players from last season, a team that set a program record with 25 wins and reached the MAC Tournament final. Heading into this year, Miami was ranked second in the MAC preseason poll, just behind defending champion Akron.<\/p>\n Key returnees include senior Peter Suder, Miami\u2019s first first-team All-MAC selection since 2012, and MAC Freshman of the Year Brant Byers.<\/p>\n Byers leads the team with 15.3 points per game, while Suder is averaging 14.1 points.<\/p>\n \u201cWe only had one guy in the transfer portal, which I think probably speaks to the confidence level of the guys that I had returning,\u201d Steele said. \u201cSome guys were in lesser roles last year when they were freshmen, but I knew that they could take a huge jump.\u201d<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Junior Eian Elmer is one of two players to start all 20 games and has averaged 11 points, while point guard Evan Ipsaro was scoring 13.9 per game before being sidelined by a shoulder injury.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m still holding on to the little bit of the old model of development. Development matters,\u201d said Steele, who is in his fourth season at Miami. \u201cYou look at a guy like Elmer, who\u2019s continued to get better throughout his college career. All of these guys have continued to get better.\u201d<\/p>\n The RedHawks have served notice in January that their start isn\u2019t a fluke. They began the month with a 76-73 win over Akron and followed with consecutive overtime victories over Buffalo and Kent State \u2014 rallying from at least four points down in the final minute of regulation in both games.<\/p>\n \u201cThe accolades and attention we\u2019re getting are all given just through our preparation and work every single day. But we still got more to prove for sure,\u201d Suder said.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Miami leads the nation in effective field goal percentage (63.4%) and field goal percentage (54.1%), while also ranking second in scoring (94.6 points per game) and 3-point percentage (41.2%).<\/p>\n The RedHawks showed their versatility over the last two games. They relied on 3-point shooting, making 13 of 29 beyond the arc, in their win over Buffalo, then had to rely on their inside game in the victory at Kent State after struggling from long range. They were 29 of 39 on 2-point shots after going 9 of 31 from beyond the arc.<\/p>\n Miami\u2019s resurgence also marks a comeback for Steele, who joined the program after four years at Xavier. Although he produced two top-20 recruiting classes with the Musketeers, the team made the postseason only twice after faltering late.<\/p>\n Steele\u2019s career as an assistant and head coach has been spent in Indiana and Ohio, giving him a recruiting edge in the Midwest and Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n \u201cI think his approach is great and that\u2019s the way to get Miami back on track. I remember back in college how crucial it was to be developed by an elite coaching staff,\u201d Szczerbiak said. \u201cI love what he\u2019s done with each individual player. It shows how much he and his staff care about the development and the character. They get to know the guys off the floor. That\u2019s a big part of coaching a guy in between the lines, is learning what makes them tick in life.\u201d<\/p>\n Miami\u2019s next game isn\u2019t until Tuesday, providing an opportunity to reset for the season\u2019s final six weeks. The RedHawks host UMass before playing Northern Illinois on Jan. 31, after which five of their next seven games are on the road.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s any pressure for us personally. We\u2019re going to get everybody\u2019s best shot, and that\u2019s what\u2019s been happening. So it\u2019s on us to just remain level-headed, just do our job,\u201d Elmer said. \u201cWe\u2019re a team that\u2019s built to win. We don\u2019t panic under pressure. We just know we got to go out there and do our jobs in those moments.\u201d<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here<\/a>. AP college basketball: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/ap-top-25-college-basketball-poll<\/a> and https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/college-basketball<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Travis Steele was confident his Miami University squad would be a contender in the Mid-American Conference going into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129973,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[22036,123,125,124,20476,41644,7602,61114,33743,56708,63741],"class_list":{"0":"post-129972","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-miami","8":"tag-ap-top-25","9":"tag-miami","10":"tag-miami-headlines","11":"tag-miami-news","12":"tag-miami-university","13":"tag-mid-american-conference","14":"tag-pennsylvania","15":"tag-peter-suder","16":"tag-redhawks","17":"tag-travis-steele","18":"tag-wally-szczerbiak"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}