The Real Miami May Never Lose In College Basketball This Season Despite Everything

They had Wally’s World, when Wally Szczerbiak shot, passed and willed his Miami (Ohio) University basketball team into the Sweet Sixteen of the NCAA Tournament during the spring of 1999.

Eleven years before that, defending national champion Marquette returned four starters, including the consensus player of the year. Those Warriors faced a Miami (Ohio) team that was such an underdog in the first round of March Madness that famed CBS prognosticator Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder didn’t bother posting odds on Miami (Ohio)’s chances of capturing the 1978 national championship.

Marquette didn’t win.

Neither did North Carolina in February 1973, when Miami (Ohio) was the first non-conference team to defeat the Tar Heels at Carmichael Auditorium since Dean Smith became their legendary coach a dozen years earlier.

There were other such moments for Miami (Ohio), not only in basketball, but in football, and that’s a fairy tale for another day.

As for the latest basketball miracle for the real Miami (as opposed to the Florida one that wasn’t established until 130 years after George Washington signed the charter for the birth of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio), well, this miracle is as striking as the difference between $8,500,000 and $2,300,000.

That’s $6,200,000.

According to NIL-NCAA.com, that is the 72% money gap in average NIL and revenue sharing payments per team between the the Big Ten, where 19-0 Nebraska resides, and the Mid-American Conference, home of the 20-0 Miami RedHawks.

Twenty and oh?

Wow.

Arizona (19-0) joins Miami (Ohio) and Nebraska as the only other undefeated team among the 365 in Division I, and since Arizona dribbles in the Big 12, let’s see. NIL-NCAA.com says the average NIL and revenue sharing per team in that conference is $100,000 more than the Big Ten.

Let’s reflect on that $100,000 figure.

Throughout much of Travis Steele’s four seasons leading Miami (Ohio) from nowhere to 25-9 last season and then to its basketball miracle in progress, the RedHawks’ NIL and revenue sharing numbers have been lower than $100,000.

Much lower.

How much lower?

“I don’t want to embarrass ourselves,” Steele told me laughing, relaxing before a recent practice in his office at Millett Hall, where Miami (Ohio) has won 26 consecutive home games. Only the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota has a longer streak at 27, but the Tommies are a national afterthought at 16-5.

In contrast, Miami (Ohio) is a national curiousity as the other Miami.

The RedHawks have been brutal for most of this century. Prior to their last two seasons of goodness, they had 14 straight losing seasons (if you exclude the pandemic-shortened one of 2020-21), and during the 27 years since Wally’s World, they’ve managed only seven winning seasons beyond the COVID-19 one.

Now there is this: Since six players average double-digit points per game, the RedHawks score like crazy with old-fashioned ball movement for easy layups combined with new-fangled bombs from the other side of the farthest black hole.

After Miami (Ohio) won the second of its consecutive overtime games with a 107-101 victory at Kent State earlier this week, it was the RedHawks’ 20th straight time scoring at least 75 points. Over the last 40 years, they’re just the fourth team to accomplish such a thing.

They’re doing all this with “student-athletes” who mostly get rewarded by making good grades in classes during an era when Brigham Young’s AJ Dybantsa’s NIL valuation by On3.com is $4.4 million. That’s almost a quarter of Miami (Ohio)’s budget in recent years for men’s sports.

“What we have to spend is not much,” Steele said, and then the 44-year-old native of Danville, Indiana remembered his college days just 20 miles to the east at Butler University in Indianapolis. Back then, during the early 2000s, the Bulldogs were a mid-major program in the Horizon League, but they evolved into such a consistent basketball force that they now play in the Big East.

Xavier is Butler in so many ways.

Both schools are in the Big East, and like Butler, the Musketeers were a high mid-major basketball program after they went from independent status to the Midwestern Collegiate Conference from 1979 to 1995, and then to the Atlantic 10 from 1995 to 2013, and then to the Big East.

Before Miami (Ohio), Steele spent 13 years coaching at Xavier, and he was its head guy for his last four seasons. He couldn’t move the NCAA-tournament-minded Musketeers beyond NIT berths, and with former Xavier head coach Sean Miller available again in the spring of 2022 after his seven trips in 12 years at Arizona to the Big Dance (including four Elite Eight finishes), Steele was fired on March 9, 2022.

Miami (Ohio) snatched him up 22 days later. Which was a splendid thing for the RedHawks, members of the MAC since 1947.

Which makes you wonder: Could Miami (Ohio) become another Butler and Xavier by joining a bigger conference sooner rather than later?

“I think there’s a lot of upside here. That’s why I took the job here,” said Steele, with a smile always moments away. “When you think Miami, just the brand itself is large. I knew it was big, but it’s bigger than I expected. When you walk around this campus, it’s just unbelievable. From an athletic department standpoint, we are on the brink of really growing into something special. It’s an elite school, and just overall, we’ve got things that other shools just don’t have.”

I know. I graduated from Miami (Ohio) in 1978, and I was a visiting professor of journalism on campus for seven years into the 2020s.

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Robert Frost said Miami (Ohio) possesses “the most beautiful campus that ever there was.” It consistently ranks among the top 15 public universities for producing CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Its graduates include everybody from the inventor of Gumby (Art Clokey) to former National Lampoon editor and humorist P.J. O’Rourke to double Super Bowl-winning quarterback Ben Roethlisberger to Ginger (Tina Louise) of Gilligan’s Island to President Benjamin Harrison.

Then there is Miami Ohio’s Cradle of Coaches.

The list is massive. It includes Sean McVay, trying to reach his third Super Bowl with the Los Angeles Rams during this NFL postseason, and he is seeking his second Lombardi Trophy. There also is John Harbaugh, a future Pro Football Hall of Famer who just signed a $100 million contract with the New York Giants after 18 years with the Baltimore Ravens that included a world championship.

But back to Miami (Ohio) sports these days. The RedHawks won the most recent Reese Trophy for the top men’s athletics program in the MAC, and they grabbed the Jacoby Trophy for the conference’s best women’s program.

Look for more of the same this spring.

Among other things, the football team under exceptional coach Chuck Martin reached a bowl game after last season for the ninth time in 10 years, and the women’s basketball team is tied for the MAC lead at 7-0 and 15-4 overall. Then you have the men’s basketball team threatening to remain perfect through maybe St. Patrick’s Day, which comes the day after the championship game of the MAC tournament.

Anything is possible for these RedHawks.

When you combine Steele’s motivational skills (exemplified by his highly spirited practices) with his X’s and O’s and at least seven key rotational players from last year’s “almost” March Madness team (despite great roster turnover everywhere in the sport through the transfer portal), Miami (Ohio) is 25th in the Associated Press poll to become only the third MAC school with an AP ranking in 18 years.

You had Buffalo in 2018-19 and Kent State in 2007-08, but those teams didn’t have Miami (Ohio)’s legacy and everything else.

And the RedHawks are doing this without Evan Ipsaro, among the college game’s premier point guards before he tore his ACL in late December.

But when you’re a miracle team, these things happen.

A miracle team with talent and coaching.