Last season, the Miami Hurricanes men’s basketball team wasn’t flustered by a close loss to Duke in the Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament semifinal.
They took the NCAA Tournament by storm, making it to the Elite Eight for the first time in school history.
The conditions are right for the Hurricanes (25-7, 15-5 ACC) to repeat their March Madness success: Duke beat them in the ACC semifinals again this season, 85-78.
No. 5 Miami starts March Madness this season with a Midwest Region game against No. 12 Drake at 7:15 p.m. Friday at MVP Arena.
“Our guys are very focused on taking it one game at a time. So we’ve already put that Duke game behind us and are just focused on Drake, and we’ve had two good practices so far,” Miami coach Jim Larrañaga said.
Larrañaga has kept his team moving on from games — win or lose — all season.
“I tell the players all the time, hey, we win, OK, you can celebrate that day. But the next day, we got to get ready for the next one. If we lose, you got to put that game behind us as quickly as possible and get ready for the next one,” he said. “When you spend too much time thinking about the wins and losses, you can be distracted from your next responsibility, which is being very well prepared to execute the game plan in the next game.”
Seven players from last year’s team, including Atlantic Coast Conference Player of the Year Isaiah Wong, returned this season.
Wong, a junior guard, leads Miami with 16.2 points and 3.4 assists per game. He was named an All-America honorable mention by the Associated Press Tuesday afternoon and is a finalist for the Jerry West Award, given to the best shooting guard in the country.
The Hurricanes haven’t lost two games in a row all season, putting together a seven-game win streak before losing two of their last…
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