Hurricanes seeking more consistency

CORAL GABLES — There were promising drives that ended with field goals, not touchdowns. Missed tackles. Dropped passes. And chance after chance for the eighth-ranked Hurricanes to give themselves breathing room against a Syracuse team looking to knock off its second top-10 opponent in as many weeks.

Instead, for the third cnsecutive week, the Hurricanes found themselves playing in a nail-biter, a late 33-yard touchdown run from Travis Homer with 2:48 left and one last defensive stand finally securing Miami’s 27-19 win over the Orange on Saturday afternoon at Hard Rock Stadium.

And while there was celebrating after the wins against Florida State and Georgia Tech, after this one there was more relief than anything else.

Why? Because the Hurricanes understand they can’t afford to play as inconsistently as they did against Syracuse if they want to continue to control their own fate in the race for the Coastal Division crown and continue extending the nation’s second-longest win streak that now stands at 11 games.

“We, for some reason, can’t find a way to play really good on both sides at the same time — we kind of take turns. It’d be nice to be more consistent. You become consistent offensively when you throw and catch like you should. You become consistent when you can convert third downs a little bit better than we have been,” Hurricanes coach Mark Richt said. “We just have not been very good at all. We’ve just got to continue to work.”

Added linebacker Michael Pinckney, “We’ve got to be consistent all four quarters. On my end, I probably didn’t do everything I could’ve done, tried as hard as I could. Just as a whole [for the whole] four quarters, we have to be consistent more. It was going back and forth.

“The offense was really good and the defense was slacking a little bit. Then, vice versa. I just feel like, as a team, if we can do it together, we could be unstoppable.”