Hurricanes rally for overtime victory
CORAL GABLES — For the Hurricanes, it hasn’t been the best of starts in conference play.
Miami, which entered the season with sky-high expectations and a talented young roster, came into its game against Louisville on Wednesday night having lost three of its last four.
That stretch had knocked the Hurricanes out of the AP Top 25 and prompted sophomore Dewan Huell to call a playersonly team meeting last week in which the Hurricanes tried to sift through some of the issues that have plagued them throughout the month of January.
Since that eye-opening conversation, Miami has won two straight, including a 78-75 overtime thriller over the Cardinals that has now pushed Miami’s record above .500 in conference play.
And it was Huell and one of Miami’s young stars — freshman Lonnie Walker IV — that carried the Hurricanes.
Walker finished with a team-high 25 points, his layup with 4.8 seconds left in regulation tying the game at 69 and putting Miami (15-4, 4-3) in position to get the win in overtime.
And it was his block on a Louisville 3-pointer with two seconds left that secured the win for the Hurricanes, who now head into their weekend matchup against instate rival Florida State with some momentum.
Huell, meanwhile, finished with 18 points and 12 rebounds, notching his fourth double-double of the season. His dunk with 41 seconds left in overtime gave the Hurricanes a 73-71 lead.
Miami would not trail again.
Before that, though, Louisville and Miami — two teams mired in the FBI’s probe into college basketball — played evenly, trading run after run throughout regulation.
And early, Miami — which has struggled offensively, including against the Blue Devils in a heartbreaking loss at the Watsco Center last week — struggled again to shoot the ball.
The Hurricanes opened the game 2-of-12 from the field, while Louisville — who came in having won four straight and five of its last six — went on a 9-2 run in the opening minutes.
It would be a precursor of how much of the game would go.
After the Cardinals built an early 11-6 lead, Miami answered with a 15-4 run of its own, one in which Hurricanes coach Jim Larrañaga tinkered with the Miami, inserting 6-foot-10 redshirt freshman Sam Waardenburg into the game early in an effort to try and neutralize some of Louisville’s size.
Waardenburg, who entered the game having played in just seven games and went six games without seeing any minutes before getting in against N.C. State on Sunday, went scoreless in the first half, but finished with four rebounds in six minutes.
Walker, his fellow freshmen, meanwhile, impressed, set the tone in the first half.
Walker led all the Hurricanes with 13 points at the half and carried that into the second half, bailing Miami out of some tough possessions.
It was one of his four 3-pointers that tied the game at 51 and his layup with 6:16 left in the second half that gave Miami a 58-57 lead.
Walker, who played in 40 of the game’s 45 minutes, gave Miami the lead yet again with another 3-pointer at the four-minute mark.