This Week in Miami Hurricanes Basketball: 3/6 Edition

What a Saturday in sports. The Canes won the ACC in basketball, Miami baseball came back to beat the Gators, and Jon Jones beat his opponent in the first round of a UFC match. It was like it was 2013 all over again, and I loved it!

We’re back for another week of Miami Hurricanes Men’s and Women’s Basketball. The guys are the 2022-23 ACC Regular Season Champions! As a topper, it was Coach L’s 250th win at Miami. That it happened in front of a crazy home crowd at the Watsco Center against their former Big East rival Pittsburgh makes it sweeter.

The ladies cruised past Boston College on Thursday, then got crushed by Virginia Tech in the quarterfinals of the ACC Women’s Tournament on Friday night.

Last week:

I recapped Miami’s ACC title-clinching victory over Pitt. It was an intense, close contest for all forty minutes. As the late-game execution errors showed up again for the Canes, I thought the Panthers were really going to come into the Watsco Center and win the ACC. Pitt’s Blake Hinson was hot, but he jacked up a 35-footer with enough time left on the clock to get a better look. Good thing. Miami’s home crowd’s reaction was awesome, as seen in the above tweet.

Also, if you have thirteen minutes to kill today, please check out Coach L’s postgame press conference. It’s easy to see why he has been so successful as a leader of young men. I love Coach L!

Okay, I will take the opportunity in this article to complain about the officiating, since I left it alone in the recap. To be clear, I think the officiating in the ACC stinks as a whole, not just for the Canes. As I have harped on for most of the season, it’s the lack of consistency that is so frustrating to watch. The refs change their minds on how they are going to officiate from game to game and sometimes from possession to possession.

Ted Valentine was a referee for this game. He started officiating in 1981. That’s before I was born, and I’m 40 years old! Can we get some fresh blood with college basketball refs?! Valentine was the ref that caused former Indiana coach Bobby Knight to throw his chair across the court during a timeout. That seems like it happened 100 years ago (it was 1985). Valentine also loves making calls with emphatic body language, because that’s definitely what basketball fans want to see. His late-game offensive foul call on Nijel Pack against Jamarius Burton was absurd. Burton has five inches and twenty pounds on Pack, and he was the one shoving to gain space. Give me a break.

Moving on from the bad calls and no-calls, the Canes couldn’t get a replay late in the game, and refs LOVE going to the replay screen and staring at it for minutes on end, completely disrupting the flow of the game. Confounding to say the least. The scenario: Hinson hit a three-pointer with under twenty seconds to play. It was CLEARLY a two-pointer. I could see his foot on the line in real time and easily on the first replay. Yet somehow, someway, despite there being so little time left in the game, the play was not reviewed. Um, what? How is that possible? A few possessions prior, the officials reviewed if Norchad Omier touched the ball that he threw off of a Pitt player (I don’t remember who). It was clearly Miami’s ball. That play gets reviewed, but a three-pointer with less than twenty seconds to play that shrinks the home team’s lead from three points to two, doesn’t? Lame.

It would be incredible if the higher-ups at the ACC would look into their officiating’s lack of consistency, etc. Let’s be real though, that’s not going to happen. I expect college basketball to be just as frustrating to watch next season as it was this season. Yay.

I wrote a short recap of the Lady Canes’ victory over BC, their first game of the 2023 ACC Women’s Basketball Tournament. The ladies of Miami overwhelmed the Eagles in the second half. It was a balanced team win, as I mentioned. The real challenge for Miami was their matchup the following night.

I also wrote a quick recap of Miami’s blowout loss to VT. The Hokies dominated the game from the opening tip. Not much else to say for this contest. The Canes could not disrupt the chalk semifinals matchups. Let’s hope Coach Meier gets her team considerably more fired up for the first round of the NCAAs.

This week:

The guys will begin their ACC Tournament journey on Thursday at 12:00 PM EST against the winner of Wednesday’s matchup between #8 seed Syracuse and #9 seed Wake Forest. The game will be televised on either ESPN or ESPN2. The Canes beat both the Orange and the Demon Deacons once this season, with both games being played in Miami at the Watsco Center.

The ladies await their seeding and matchup for the 2023 NCAA Women’s Tournament. According to ESPN’s latest Bracketology, Miami is a #9 seed and one of the “last four byes”.

GO CANES!