OPINION: Once their offense and defense both went haywire at the Final Four, the Miami Hurricanes were only left with their memories
HOUSTON – There is nothing worse than getting to the pinnacle moment in your sport and having your game, the very thing that landed you here on college basketball’s ultimate stage in the first place, fall into such an unrecognizable state of disarray.
Running into the best teams in the country at the end of the season can have something to do with that, which is what happened to the Miami Hurricanes Saturday night at the Final Four against Connecticut with the result being a 20-point hole early in the second half that suffocated their dream season.
UConn will likely win the national title Monday night against San Diego State and there is no embarrassment in losing at the Final Four to anybody, just like losing to eventual champ Kansas at the Elite 8 last year was no walk of shame.
But this one will be tough to swallow for a while just because of how the strength of Miami’s game, its ability to score, just went so sideways as the Hurricanes lost 72-59 and finished 20-points below their season average.
“We were never in sync offensively,” Coach Jim Larranaga said. “We struggled. Guys were playing hard, trying their best. But it wasn’t the script we were looking for. And some of that credit goes to Connecticut and the defense they played. And some of it probably just goes because of the venue.
“Being in the Final Four for the first time in the school’s history, the guys being a little bit anxious, we really never were able to just relax and play our game. We were pretty much out of character the whole night. But these guys are great, great guys, great players. We’ve had a sensational season. And they’ll have memories that will last a lifetime, and so will I.”
Miami made a living all season by having players driving to the basket off ball screens and either scoring themselves or dishing to the open man. But UConn was sending two guys at the driver, making every shot difficult Saturday night. And then the open men were not making their shots. Miami shot 25 percent in the first half including a 0 for 5 night from forward Wooga Poplar that resulted in Larranaga having to remove him from the game because he clearly was out of sorts.
“I’d just say UConn, they’re a very good team, a tall team,” guard Isaiah Wong said. “They have length on their side. And we struggled a little bit. We beat ourselves up.”
Miami also had just three assists into the early stages of the second half because there was too much one-on-one offense going on and not enough ball movement.
“We didn’t really play our game and pass the ball and get the ball moving,” Wong said. “And we just kept it and we took a lot of tough shots. But if we played our game, it would have been a different story.”
Maybe, maybe not. UConn is good, will be a huge national title favorite Monday night over San Diego State.
The Huskies will almost certainly be the last team standing from a 2023 Final Four that will be known for its unique collection of teams.
Florida Atlantic, Miami and San Diego State were all playing in their first Final Four games Saturday, the first time since Jacksonville, New Mexico State and St. Bonaventure made it in 1970 that three first-timers reached college basketball’s ultimate stage.
But these basketball seasons are long beasts. U Conn had a few bad few weeks in the middle of the season, where it lost to St. John’s at home and had four losses to good Big East teams on the road. Miami went 3-4 in January and blew a 25-point lead in its only home loss of the season to Florida State.
But the facts are that UConn and Miami were clearly two of the best teams in college basketball this year and always had a chance to make it this far.
UConn won its first two games of March Madness by an average scoring margin of 19.5 points, before demolishing No. 3 seed Gonzaga by 28 points in the Elite Eight. That was the biggest winning margin in the Elite Eight in the past 31 years.
Miami also won its first three games by a combined winning margin of 37 points then put together a 37-17 run in the last 13 minutes against the Texas to secure an 88-81 victory and punch a ticket to Houston.
So there was a week of hype and a lot of talking, followed by the pre-game pageantry in a sold out domed football stadium. It was a lot. In the end, it became about playing basketball, guarding, rebounding, nailing shots. And U Conn just did it all better than Miami on this particular night.
The Huskies were the calmer team in the first half and it showed all over the place, particularly in shooting percentages, sharing the basketball and offensive execution. All of the above and more allowed them to open a 37-24 halftime lead.
Miami made just nine of 36 shots in the half (25%) while UConn made 14 of 28 (50 percent). Think about this. The Hurricanes came into the game averaging 79.6 points. So a half with just 24 on the board was obviously an aberration at the wrong time.
Jordan Hawkins, the Huskies second-leading scorer and a likely 2023 NBA first-round draft pick, had nailed a three-pointer on the game’s opening possession. Then center Adama Sanogo drifted out to the three-point stripe and hit two consecutive shots to stunningly put Miami in a 9-0 hole.
“That is something that I worked on all summer, especially shooting,” Sanogo said. “Guys, they don’t expect my shots. So as soon as I saw him N orchadOmier) like dropping, and I wait a second to see if he’s going to close out, and he didn’t close out, all right, this is my shot. I took my time, and I shoot it.”
But a Miller drive to basket got Miami on the board and two Isaiah Wong free throws made it 9-4 and stabilized things. Miami hung in there and started making plays, particularly on the defensive side of the floor that led to easy baskets. A Nijel Pack three-pointer at the 8:13 mark made it 19-19. The Hurricanes had weathered the storm. Or so it seemed.
“We needed to put more pressure on the paint,” UConn Coach Dan Hurley said. “I thought we had a little bit of fool’s gold to start the game. No matter what Kimani Young and Luke Murray tell you, it was not their idea to have Adama make two 3s to start the game. In a stadium.
“So I just thought that we were shooting a little bit maybe — it was fool’s gold. We weren’t doing enough at the paint, but we were guarding, but then we were losing our defensive intensity. We needed to do more at the paint get our defensive edge back. And they were all over the offensive glass, which usually doesn’t happen to us.”
Omier getting in foul trouble covering the athletic and beefy Sanogo inside was a danger zone that the Hurricanes knew they faced even before they arrived in Houston. So there was a lot of attention to detail on that. Omier exited the half with just one foul. The problem was Sanogo was doing whatever he wanted, finishing the half with 13 points. A pair of Sanogo layups ignited a UConn 8-0 run for a 27-19 lead that was extended to 37-24 at the half as Alex Karaban nailed a three-pointer.
“Obviously what we tried to do not only didn’t work, I couldn’t even recognize it.” Larranaga said. “I think, again, offensively we were out of sync but defensively we were too. Everybody was playing so hard to guard their man, there was no help like we intended.
“So they threw it over the top. He got a layup. They ran a ball screen. He rolled. He scored in that situation. He got offensive rebounds. He was blocking us out.
“He’s a terrific player. I think he earned all of his points. But I think we could have done a significantly better job on him if we could have executed our game plan. Some of it may have had to do with them making three straight 3s to start the game, that the guys are like, wait a minute, these guys are on fire. So we stretched our defense out, which opened up things for him.”
The UConn lead reached 20 by early in the second half.
“In our team meeting last night, I tried to get the guys to understand that the expression mental is to physical as four is to one, that the mental preparation, mental and emotional, has to be consistent with the way we’ve prepared for every game,” Larranaga said. “And I think they listened, but you could really tell that mentally and emotionally we were not together.
“All season long we’ve been so well-connected, offensively, sharing the ball, being one of the most efficient offensive teams in the country. What did we score today? 59. Is that our low for the season? We were just out of character. And I think the stage that we were playing on was so huge that every guy wanted to play so hard that they forgot how we play, which is really smart. And we didn’t execute what we planned to do at either end of the floor. And Connecticut deserves a lot of credit for that. They were terrific. Three straight 3s. Got Sanogo involved early, often. He had like 13 at the half. So we’re trying to figure out at every timeout what to do.”
At halftime, someone in the Miami locker room wrote the following on a grease board.
“Share the ball.”
“Because that’s been our message all season long,” Larranaga said. “Then we went out, start the second half, we dribbled one out of bounds. We took a quick shot. It was like — very, very hard.”
But the Hurricanes had never quit all season and they had no intention of starting then. A 7-0 run in a span of 49 seconds cut the UConn lead to 12. Bensley Joseph hit a three-pointer and a pair of forced turnovers led to layups.
A Wong three-pointer cut it to eight but then U Conn went on a 7-0 run to get the lead back to 15 with 8:26 to play. A 5-0 run cut it to 10 at the 6:13 mark. But Miami never could get any closer.
“It all starts with the defense, on the defensive end we’ve been very elite, taking away matchups, rebounding the ball, getting out in transition,” UConn guard Jordan Hawkins said. “Playing to our strengths. So I think that’s the biggest difference we’ve been doing from other teams.”
The Miami dream ended so suddenly that players were having a tough time getting a handle on their emotions.
“We just tried to build what every Miami basketball team should try to reach each season,” Miller said. “I think we did a good job of laying down that foundation. Obviously it didn’t end out the way we wanted it to, but regardless, at the end of the day, if you make history, school history, you’re a winner in some shape or form.”
“I would just say for our last year and this year I feel like we started something big for the University of Miami,” Wong said. “For all the kids that’s coming out of high school, coming, just coming — they might come to Miami and try to just think of a winning attitude and have University of Miami as a winning school and just be in the March Madness every year.”
Larranaga gave all his players hugs as he took them out of the game with a minute left.
“I don’t know the exact words,” the coach said. “But they got the message that I was so proud of them, that I loved them, that I really just been on a magic carpet ride with these young men. They’re so much fun to be around, on the court, off the court.
“They each have very unique personalities. And they’re going to be very successful in basketball for a very long time because all these guys are really good players. We didn’t play that well today. And what I told the guys afterwards was simply that I used to watch a show growing up called “Wide World of Sports.” And the theme going into the show was the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat. I said we experienced both.
“Now, last weekend it was the thrill of victory and accomplishing something that Miami had never done. Even last year, we got to the Elite Eight. We were not able to move forward. This year we did. But today was the agony of defeat. The guys — this will last a long time. They’ll have great memories, though, of the entire season, some of the great wins we have had. I told them all along these memories last a lifetime. You’ll be telling your grandchildren about it one day.”
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