Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Regular-season champion ’Canes eye ACC tourney crown
Just a few days after cutting down the nets at the Watsco Center to celebrate winning a share of the ACC regular-season title, the Hurricanes have to refocus and gear up for the sprint of postseason play.
Miami (24-6, 15-5 ACC) clinched its first regular-season conference championship since 2013, and now UM will look to repeat the 2013 team’s next feat: go to Greensboro, North Carolina, and win the conference tournament.
“I told my players that’s a memory that will last a lifetime,” Miami coach Jim Larrañaga said. “You don’t get to experience that every year. It’s very seldom. You might win a championship, but maybe it’s on the road. It took us 10 years to do that again. Hope it doesn’t take us another 10.
“But we’re very excited, where we are, but as everybody knows — and I’ve told the players — the ACC tournament now is a sprint. Everybody’s got the same record. We’re all 0-0. The message is: win and advance, lose and go home. We’ve got to be at our best every single day.”
The Hurricanes, who have the top seed in this year’s ACC tournament, fell to Duke in last year’s conference tournament before going on a run in the NCAA tournament that took Miami to its first-ever Elite Eight. Last year’s team was underrated, never earning a spot in the Associated Press poll before its postseason success.
This season, national pundits and college basketball fans knew what the Hurricanes were capable of accomplishing. Miami has been ranked for most of the season, earning spots as high as No. 12 in the AP poll. The Hurricanes ended the regular season ranked 14th in the nation.
“I feel like Miami basketball is definitely still going up in the rankings,” guard Nijel Pack said. “There’s still a lot of things they don’t appreciate about Miami basketball . ... Some people don’t believe yet. Some people think this and that. But what they think doesn’t really matter. It’s what the guys inside our circle think about each other, about ourselves and how great we can be.
“As long as we believe that we can beat the best team in the country, I feel like we can do that.”
Led by newly crowned ACC Player of the Year Isaiah Wong, Miami will face ninth-seeded Wake Forest in the conference tournament quarterfinals at noon on Thursday.
The Hurricanes needed to wait to find out who their opponent would be. Wake Forest beat Syracuse on Wednesday, sending the Demon Deacons through to face the Hurricanes. In order to stay prepared, Larrañaga said the team went through a normal practice before leaving for North Carolina on Tuesday and then planned to practice after learning who their opponent would be.
Although the Hurricanes had only one day to get ready for their first ACC tournament opponent, the team feels ready for whatever the next few days have in store for them.
“That’s the first part of the season,” Miami guard Harlond Beverly said. “We’ve got a lot of games left. We understand that it’s a long season. This is the grind part right here. So I feel like we’re ready.”