With the basketball season right around the corner, the University of Miami men’s basketball team has released its conference schedule. The Hurricanes ended last season on a 10-game losing streak, all in conference, so no game can be taken lightly.
That being said, outside of the ACC opener against a Clemson team that made the Elite Eight last year, Miami won’t even play a team that even made the NCAA tournament until midway through January when it heads to Duke.
The Hurricanes’ schedule eases up from there as they take on the ACC’s new teams – SMU, Stanford and California – in a three-game stretch. Of these three, only SMU was over .500 last season, and none of these teams made it to March Madness. Stanford held one of the worst defenses in college basketball in 2023-24, ranked No. 304 out of 362 teams. Miami will take on Stanford and California on the road in back-to-back games.
After that West Coast road trip at the halfway point of the season, Miami will take on Virginia, which finished third in the ACC last year. The next six games after they’ll face teams with an average win percentage of 44%, including Notre Dame and Louisville, which surrounded Miami as the 13th and 15th ranked teams in the ACC, respectively.
Miami’s hardest stretch is within its last four regular-season games. Three of the final four games are against Duke, North Carolina and North Carolina State – the conference’s strongest teams last year. NC State struggled in ACC play last year but came alive to end its season strong, winning the ACC and losing in the Final Four of the NCAA Tournament. Duke and North Carolina will likely remain strong, but NC State lost DJ Burns Jr., who was the engine of their Cinderella run.
Miami’s struggles late in the season, especially in conference, killed a team that started the season 11-2.
In response to this, the Hurricanes went through an offseason of changes.
New faces like freshman Jalil Bethea and transfers Jalen Blackmon, Lynn Kidd, and Brandon Johnson are expected to be instant contributors. Head coach Jim Larrañaga will need time to find the right lineups and there will be growing pains. This light beginning of conference play overall gives Miami a chance to build some momentum, work out the kinks and be ready to attack the back stretch of the season.
If the Hurricanes can brave any early season woes that come with the roster changes, it could prime them for a bounceback year. Miami’s season starts in just over a month on November 4 with a matchup against Fairleigh Dickinson.
