{"id":200241,"date":"2026-03-21T09:11:16","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T09:11:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/200241\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T09:11:16","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T09:11:16","slug":"miami-ohios-ncaa-tournament-run-ends-in-blowout-loss-to-tennessee-in-first-round","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/200241\/","title":{"rendered":"Miami (Ohio)’s NCAA tournament run ends in blowout loss to Tennessee in first round"},"content":{"rendered":"

An 11th-seeded SMU team that snuck into the NCAA tournament<\/a> in the First Four was one thing for Miami (Ohio).<\/p>\n

No. 6 Tennessee on Friday proved another altogether. No. 11 Miami failed to build off the success of its First Four win over SMU<\/a> in a 78-56 loss to Tennessee<\/a> in the first round.<\/p>\n

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The blowout did little to settle whether Miami belonged in the tournament field to begin with.<\/p>\n

Tennessee takes control, doesn\u2019t let go<\/p>\n

The runaway was on at halftime as the Volunteers raced out to a 51-32 lead behind 22 first-half points from senior guard Ja’Kobi Gillespie (29 points, 9 assists, 3 steals for the game). They built the lead and controlled the game despite star freshman Nate Ament failing to crack the scoreboard (0 points, 3 rebounds, 3 turnovers, 0 for 3 from the field).<\/p>\n

There was no miracle rally for the Redhawks, whose worthiness for the NCAA tournament was a hot topic of debate after they failed to win a game in their conference tournament and didn\u2019t secure the MAC\u2019s automatic bid.<\/p>\n

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Miami scored just one point and didn\u2019t hit its first field goal of the second half until 4:30 ran off the clock. Miami mounted a 7-0 run midway through the second half, but that just cut Tennessee\u2019s lead to 17 points.<\/p>\n

The hot 3-point shooting that powered Miami\u2019s First Four win was not present on Friday (7 of 29, 24%). The Volunteers never let the Redhawks back into the game.<\/p>\n

And Miami\u2019s NCAA tournament concludes without a clear answer regarding its worthiness to make the field in the first place.<\/p>\n

Tennessee, meanwhile, advances to the second round with confidence for a matchup against No. 3 seed Virginia.<\/p>\n

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Should Miami have made field as an at-large team?<\/p>\n

Before its first-round loss in the MAC tournament, Miami went 31-0 as the last unbeaten team in college basketball. But its schedule was one of the weakest in the country and featured no games against power conference opponents.<\/p>\n

This was in large part no fault of its own as power conference schools are hesitant to schedule games against mid-majors. Associate head coach Jonathan Holmes previously told Yahoo Sports\u2019 Jeff Eisenberg<\/a> the program \u201cwas told no by probably 75 to 90 teams\u201d that it tried to put on its schedule.<\/p>\n

But Miami\u2019s schedule was its schedule, and its tournament r\u00e9sum\u00e9 (No. 87 in KenPom<\/a>, No. 64 NET<\/a>, No. 37 WAB<\/a>, 0 Quad 1 wins) didn\u2019t make the strongest case for at-large consideration. But ultimately, the selection committee leaned on the WAB rankings that favored Miami above other metrics and rewarded the Redhawks for their 31-1 season with a berth in the First Four.<\/p>\n

The Redhawks leave the NCAA tournament with an exciting First Four win. But against the larger tournament field, they didn\u2019t compete.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An 11th-seeded SMU team that snuck into the NCAA tournament in the First Four was one thing for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":200242,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[92600,123,125,124,88731,142,10154,10195,9574],"class_list":["post-200241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-ja39kobi-gillespie","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news","tag-nate-ament","tag-ncaa","tag-ohio","tag-tennessee","tag-virginia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200241","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=200241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200241\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}