Miami (OH) basketball inches closer to immortality as undefeated season rolls on

OXFORD, Ohio — It’s Friday night at Miami, where they’re still living the college basketball dream.

Twenty-four times the Miami RedHawks had taken the court this season with an unbeaten record. We’re here Friday night because the 25th time is also the first they’re doing it with the nation’s only unbeaten record, the product of Arizona’s loss at Kansas last Monday. Not that carrying such a mantle seems to have fazed them much. “I can’t say it’s changed a whole lot,” forward Brant Byers would later say of the mindset. “Being the only unbeaten team is pretty insane. We were all tuned into that game obviously.”

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Friday would suggest there is no end in sight. The record clicks to 25-0 with a 90-74 dispatching of Ohio in front of a packed house and national TV audience. To understand the stunning supernova suddenly flashing across the southwestern Ohio sky, consider a few items.

The only perfect record in the land belongs to a program that has not seen the NCAA Tournament in 19 years. A program that before last March had finished with one winning season since 2009.

The 12-0 record in the Mid-American Conference is something they have not seen here since 1958.

Friday’s crowd of 10,640 was larger than the average attendance at Miami games the past five non-Covid years combined.

The polls and metrics assure us there are better teams than the RedHawks out there in 2025-26. ESPN has them as an 11-seed in the NCAA Tournament bracket. But there might not be a better story. Goodness, the No. 23 ranked men own the nation’s longest winning streak and they’re barely the hottest team in town. The women took a 20-4 record, 11-0 Mid-American Conference ledger and 13-game winning streak to Massachusetts Saturday.

“It’s like Disney World around here. You don’t have bad days,” men’s coach Travis Steele will say at the end of the night.

Let us then spend a day on the campus that is home to the perfect record that absolutely no one saw coming. It’s Friday and the tour bus is leaving . . .

THE STATUES

They don’t call this place the Cradle of Coaches for nothing. Eleven statues at the south end of the football stadium remind us why. All Miami products, all significant names in football coaching history.

John Harbaugh is there with his fist raised in the air. A defensive back here, later coach of the Super Bowl champion Baltimore Ravens, now the designated rebuilder for the New York Giants. Not far away with his right hand to his chin is Sean McVay, once a Miami receiver, now a Super Bowl champion coach with the Los Angeles Rams. Bo Schembechler is there with headphones, Paul Brown in an overcoat, Ara Parseghian crouching down. Nearly everyone remembers Joe Namath’s famous Super Bowl guarantee for the New York Jets but few remember it was Weeb Ewbank who coached him. Ewbank – a three-sport man at Miami — is in a coat, tie and hat. The man who coached three national champions and three Heisman winners at Army? Earl “Red” Blaik. That’s him with his hands on his hips.

Eleven giants standing silently in the snow. Just up the hill, Millett Hall, the basketball arena, is already starting to buzz.

THE HOCKEY RINK

Fridays are apparently big for youth teams at Goggin Ice Center, and kids are walking into the building with roller bags and hockey sticks. This is the home of Miami hockey and hanging from the rafters are 12 banners commemorating a dozen trips to the NCAA Tournament. The banner in the middle says simply Finalist 2008-09. Red letters on a white background. It doesn’t say how that Is the closest Miami has ever come to a national championship in anything, and how there may be no more excruciating near-miss for any school in any sport. Ever.

One minute remained in the 2009 title game between the RedHawks and Boston University. Miami led 3-1 and it was hard to imagine a surer thing. The RedHawks had allowed only five goals in 239 minutes of NCAA Tournament play. Lose a two-goal lead in one minute? No chance.

Boston University scored twice in 42 seconds. Overtime. The Terriers eventually won 4-3. The trophy that was close enough for Miami to touch had simply . . . vanished.

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THE PITCHER

Buddy Schultz has been following Miami’s golden season from his home in Arizona. He’s not only an alum but the proud owner of quite possibly the greatest individual performance in the history of RedHawks athletics. No, not in basketball, or football, or hockey. On April 3, 1971, the lefthander took the mound against Wright State. He kept pitching and the Raiders kept missing. It ended 6-0. It also ended with 26 Schultz strikeouts. The only Wright State out that wasn’t a whiff came when the batter popped up trying to bunt.

More than a half-century later, that day is still in the NCAA record book for most strikeouts in a game. Schultz, who went on to a major league career and has done extensive fund raising for Miami, really wants this team to finish off an unbeaten regular season. That would be historic, and he understands a little about history and how it can accompany a man through the decades.

“Come April 3 it is 55 years since the 26 strikeouts. That’s my goal for them because I know what it’s like,” he says over the phone. “I’m here 55 years later and I hold that record and it doesn’t go away. To me it’s about the kids, not just for today, I’m thinking in 55 years. Although they don’t think about it now, I’m in that exact position to know how they will feel in 55 years if they go undefeated.

“It will last them a lifetime.”

THE CAMPUS

Miami was born in 1809. Elliott Hall still is in operation and has a sign out front that gives its age – 1825. John Quincy Adams was U.S. president. It is brick, of course. Nearly all the buildings on campus are brick. So is High Street, the main drag through downtown Oxford. Ohio University, founded in 1804 and the only school in the state older than Miami, also has a lot of brick buildings. Which is why the Miami-Ohio game this night and every night is called the Battle of the Bricks.

MILLETT HALL

Miami opened this season with an 87-72 win over Old Dominion. The attendance was 2,131. The averages for the past five non-Covid years hardly evoke the image of raring crowds: 2,656 . . . 2,278 . . . 1,847 . . . 1,494 . . . 1,507.

So it’s a different world Friday night when students are lined up at the door 2 ½ hours before tip and go running for the best seats when the gates open. The upper decks quickly fill as the overhead scoreboard shows the Miami hockey game going on in North Dakota. There are seats up there which probably hadn’t seen a basketball fan in decades until the past month. What used to arguably be the quietest arena in the MAC has transformed into a teeming hotbox for visitors. The RedHawks begin Friday’s play having won 28 home games in a row.

“To see the amount people that are here before our warmups start is insane,” Byers says later after throwing 21 points at Ohio. “Because we weren’t even getting that amount of people to our games.”

Up in the rafters, the banners honor slightly worn history. The big moments came last century. There was the Wally Szczerbiak-led Cinderella story that went to the Sweet 16 in 1999. The flash of glory in 1978 when Miami took out defending national champion Marquette in overtime in the first round. The man who coached that team, Darrell Hedric, is 92 years old and in the house this very night. There has been the legacy of the RedHawks being a tough out if they can get to March. Virginia, Iowa State and Maryland all needed overtime to shake Miami, Oregon escaped by two points, North Carolina by five. But all that trouble-making was a long time ago. Lots of bad seasons and sparse audiences since.

Now old RedHawks have returned to hop on the bandwagon. Szczerbiak was here this week. Ron Harper, who went from Miami to five-time champion in the NBA, and stopped by here to be honored recently, too. You can tell by all the Harper shirts in the stands, past triumphs melting into the present.

It’s all happened so quickly, and the players have had to adapt on the fly, going from way back in the shadows to an awfully big spotlight. “I’d be lying if I said we all didn’t think about it,” Byers says. “Obviously seeing that 23 next to our name is something that probably none of us expected to happen when we first came here. But at the same time we know that if we don’t take it one game at a time, if we have one bad game, most likely it’s gone.”

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THE GAME

Friday’s Miami mission is to keep the winning going against its traditional rival and look good doing it, seeing as ESPN had slid the game into a 9 p.m. national slot. An uncommon event here.

But then this was an unusual team from the start. Miami returned 10 letter winners. How many do that in the transfer portal age? The experienced cast has become an offensive beast, taking the floor Friday with the nation’s highest scoring average (92.6) and best field goal shooting (53.6 percent). Eight different RedHawks have scored 20 points in a game. But it’s been no easy task keeping the record clean. Miami has had to go overtime in three games and survived three others were decided by one possession.

“We’re a mature group, we’ve been together, we know each other, we love each other we can have those honest conversations with each other without somebody being sensitive,” Steele says. “Our guys don’t collect stats. Our guys play for one another.”

Not much anxiety this night. It begins with thousands of cell phone lights illuminating the introduction of the starting lineup and ends with a typical Miami box score – 90 points, 51.7 percent shooting, five players in double figures. It all looks so natural, with no stress about being up to the moment, as the moments grow ever bigger. The players credit Steele for keeping things loose.

“It allows us to enjoy the ride,” Byers says. “ I know that not all places are like that. He keeps us focused without overdoing it.”

All by design, Steele says.

“Everybody wants to take fun out of stuff. You only live life once. We’ve got a great group and they’re doing extraordinary things. We want to have fun. When you have fun and you do it for others you don’t feel the pressure. That’s how you get better. When you stop having fun and you’re not excited about going to practice, you’re not excited to lift, you’re not excited to watch film, then all of a sudden you’re just going to flatline. Our group has fun and I don’t ever want to take that away from our guys.”

Look at the fairy tale it has produced, as a program rises like a rush-job construction project. “There’s nothing better, they say, than building your own house,” Steele says. The RedHawks have done this by scoring in bunches and Steele has a warning for the future.

“If our defense can take the next step, which I think it has over the last four games, the runs that we can go on are going to be massive.”

Six games to go to run the regular season table, four of them on the road. On paper, the most dangerous is the trip to Massachusetts Tuesday. The RedHawks edged the Minutemen by two points in Oxford. A return date with Ohio at the end could be tricky, too. But so far Miami always finds a way. “Our guys have the ultimate belief, which is so powerful, that we’re going to win every game,” Steele says.

With No. 25 in the books, the big crowd heads home Friday night. Hedric stays to the end, well after 11 p.m. and makes it fine up the stairs to the exit at the age of 92. Nobody is missing this Miami magic. Even the statues down the hill at the football stadium seem to be cheering.