CLEVELAND (AP) \u2014 Travis Steele went 31 games and 363 days before addressing a losing locker room.<\/p>\n
Now, the Miami (Ohio) coach and his squad must wait an excruciating three days before finding out if they’ve made the NCAA Tournament.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
The 20th-ranked<\/a> RedHawks became the last men\u2019s Division I program to fall from the unbeaten ranks on Thursday as UMass rallied in the second half<\/a> for an 87-83 victory in the Mid-American Conference Tournament quarterfinals.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a little bit of shell shock. We hate to lose, and our guys put a lot into it. So does UMass,\u201d Steele said. \u201cNot a lot was said. I think sometimes you\u2019ve got to get the emotion out of you first before directing your team. So we\u2019ll do that when we get back to the hotel.\u201d<\/p>\n Miami was the fifth team this century to go undefeated<\/a> in the regular season and the first since Gonzaga in 2020-21. The RedHawks join Saint Joseph\u2019s \u2014 which lost to Xavier in the 2004 Atlantic 10 quarterfinals \u2014 as teams whose unbeaten run ended in their conference tournament.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n That Saint Joe’s team didn\u2019t have to worry about its March Madness fate. Led by Jameer Nelson and Delonte West, the Hawks were the top-ranked team in the country at the end of the regular season and earned a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.<\/p>\n Miami\u2019s road is more precarious. Its strength of schedule ranks 344th out of 365 Division I teams, according to the NCAA Evaluation Tool.<\/p>\n The RedHawks faced no Tier 1 teams and were 2-0 against Tier 2 squads.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n \u201cUndefeated means something, and so my hope is that they would make it,\u201d said Grant Hill, who will call the NCAA Tournament and the Final Four for CBS and TNT Sports. \u201cThey\u2019ve got a chip on their shoulder. I think to see them get into the tournament, they want to prove themselves against some of the bigger teams.\u201d<\/p>\n The last time the MAC got two bids was 1999. Miami got the at-large bid that year after losing to Kent State in the tournament final and advanced to the Sweet 16.<\/p>\n UMass coach Frank Martin \u2014 who led South Carolina to the Final Four in 2017 \u2014 echoed many in saying that Miami deserves a tournament bid.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019d be an embarrassment. A complete embarrassment if this league doesn\u2019t get two teams in,\u201d Martin said.<\/p>\n Steele, who was still reeling from the loss, wasn\u2019t in the mood to hear about the MAC possibly having two teams in the field.<\/p>\n \u201cI couldn\u2019t care less about the MAC getting multi bids, just to be quite frank. I know the MAC probably wanted that,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s more about just putting ourselves in the best position, which I think we\u2019ve done. Our guys have earned the right, in my opinion, to play the NCAA Tournament.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not letting anybody take (over) my mind. I\u2019m not going to waste one second. When you\u2019ve been fired before (at Xavier), you don\u2019t care anymore. You don\u2019t care what people think. You don\u2019t have to be politically correct all that stuff, guys. I\u2019m just telling you, I\u2019m going to live life the way I live it unapologetically.\u201d<\/p>\n Miami senior Peter Suder, the MAC Player of the Year, said his team\u2019s resume speaks for itself.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we proved during the regular season that we earned a spot, but I can just control what I can control,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to still get better every day and stay consistent with what we do. So we\u2019re going to learn from this and face the next challenge in whatever\u2019s in front of us.\u201d<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n The last team to go through the regular season unbeaten and not make the NCAA Tournament was Alcorn State in 1978-79. That was because the Southwest Athletic Conference was in a transition period to Division I and did not have an automatic bid.<\/p>\n Even after Thursday\u2019s loss, many bracketologists still have the RedHawks in the field. ESPN\u2019s Joe Lunardi has Miami supplanting Auburn, while Fox Sports\u2019 Mike DeCourcy also has them in.<\/p>\n Neither project the RedHawks going to Dayton for the First Four.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a legendary accomplishment and one game today doesn\u2019t change that in my mind,\u201d Miami athletic director David Sayler said. \u201cI believe the committee will get it, and certainly anyone who played the game and knows what the grind of a season is like, going undefeated in league play, they get it as well.\u201d<\/p>\n The win over Miami was UMass\u2019 first in the MAC Tournament. The Minutemen are in their first season in the conference after 43 years in the Atlantic 10.<\/p>\n Eian Elmer\u2019s 3-pointer gave Miami a 69-58 advantage with 8:33 remaining, but the Minutemen rallied and tied it at 71-all with 5:33 remaining.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n The key to UMass\u2019 victory was controlling the boards. The Minutemen outrebounded the RedHawks 41-24 and had 23 second-chance points off 17 offensive boards.<\/p>\n Martin said he was more nervous coming into Thursday\u2019s game than at any point during his 20 years as a head coach. He hopes UMass can match Xavier\u2019s run. After beating Saint Joseph\u2019s, the Musketeers went on to win the tournament.<\/p>\n Martin was emotional reflecting on the game, and said after a long pause, \u201cI feel bad for Miami, but I\u2019m happy for our guys.\u201d<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n ___<\/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":"CLEVELAND (AP) \u2014 Travis Steele went 31 games and 363 days before addressing a losing locker room. Now,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189347,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[88566,123,125,124,11474,33743,45059],"class_list":["post-189346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-frank-martin","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news","tag-ncaa-tournament","tag-redhawks","tag-umass"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189346","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=189346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}