ST. LOUIS — Friday felt, Jai Lucas said, tinged with the same “anxious excitement” he felt the first time he played in the NCAA Tournament.
The butterflies, the nervous energy. Miami’s first-year coach felt it all again, just through a different lens.
“Same type of feeling,” he said. “It was a neutral (site) but it really was a road game, so it made it even more exciting.
“It’s something that we’ve thrived in all year.”
Thrived. An appropriate word. It’s what Miami’s been doing since Lucas took over as head coach last spring and — after affecting what was essentially a total program rebuild — began the most dramatic turnaround in college basketball this season.
Friday’s nightcap 80-66 win against No. 10-seeded Missouri moved the Hurricanes to 26-8, tying a Division I record for the largest single-season swing in win-loss differential. Miami now has won 19 more games than it did a season ago, and the credit, its players say proudly, starts with their head coach.
“We’ve got,” leading scorer Malik Reneau said, “the utmost trust for coach.”
Centered on the Sunshine State
It was not lost on Ernest Udeh, the 6-foot-11 TCU transfer from Orlando, that as Lucas pulled together his first roster in Coral Gables, he started with Florida players.
A Texas native, Lucas came to Miami from Jon Scheyer’s staff at Duke. He started his own roster build with in-state players who spoke and walked with pride at the idea of representing their home state.
“It’s no secret that most of us (are) from Florida,” Udeh said of the veteran core underpinning the Hurricanes’ success this season. “Everybody else that came in, we kind of built a culture around just letting other guys feel welcome, understanding that they are welcome.
“They play for Miami. This is their home now.”
Shoulder to shoulder with Udeh are fellow Sunshine State natives Reneau (Miami) and Tre Donaldson (Tallahassee), veterans who wear Lucas’ call for toughness as team identity proudly.
They finished Friday night with their influence all over No. 7 Miami’s first-round win.
FIRST ROUND WINNERS AND LOSERS: Key wins for Nebraska and Kentucky, disaster for UNC
Veterans reinforce Miami’s identity
Udeh and Reneau form one of the most versatile frontcourts in the country, one an elite rim protector finisher and the other more versatile offensively than at any other point in his career.
It showed up in the form of 10 rebounds from Udeh — on a night when Miami’s 19-2 advantage in second-chance points made a tremendous difference — and 19 second-half points from Reneau, the Indiana transfer delivering many of the game’s biggest buckets down the stretch in front of a rowdy pro-Missouri crowd.
“Just calming down,” Reneau said, when asked what turned his evening on. “Everybody telling me to be patient and letting the game come to you.”
The Tigers (20-13) rode their hot hand when they found out, Jayden Stone’s 21 points his most in a single game in roughly six weeks
And Miami had to make peace with Mark Mitchell’s 19.
Lucas helped recruit Mitchell at Duke and coached the Kansas City native there. He knew there was no shutting down Mitchell, just making life as difficult as possible.
“The way Stone started shooting the ball made it tougher,” Lucas said. “But we never wanted (Mitchell) to be able to take more than two dribbles and not see somebody.”
For all that individual success, no number told the story of Friday’s game like the nearly 34 minutes Miami led — even through a turgid offensive first half and some spotty free-throw shooting, the Hurricanes were always Friday’s likely winner.
They got there in the end, thanks to contributions from freshmen Shelton Henderson (15 points, six rebounds, four assists) and Dante Allen (nine points off the bench).
But it was fitting that those veterans around which Lucas fashioned his first roster at Miami finished the evening off.
Seniors send Missouri home
Donaldson scored 17 points to complement Reneau’s game-high 24. During the winning minutes inside the second half’s final media timeout, across a stretch that decided the game, that pair combined to score 16 of their team’s 18 points.
None bigger than Donaldson’s end-of-clock 3-pointer just inside 90 seconds to go, a back breaker that put Miami up 12. As he watched his last make fall, Donaldson turned in celebration, throwing three fingers synonymous with the kind of shot he’d just made.
And the bench that Lucas assembled and turned into an instant winner erupted one more time, while a mob of black and gold behind them began filing toward the exits. Missouri, fans realized, was about to become the latest victim of one of college basketball’s best stories this season.
All of it, starting with the 37-year-old Lucas, the team he built and the confidence he infused it with.
“Just how relatable he is,” Donaldson, asked about his coach’s strengths, said. “That gives us as a team the ability to be that close to our coach. It’s easy for us as a team and players to come together, and just understand why we’re all here.”
In the box score, yes, Friday manifested a lot of what Lucas has preached since Day 1.
Rebounding as an avatar for toughness. Veteran leadership as a cornerstone of a roster infused with pride in its place and its purpose.
Strength in the face of adversity. Poise in the face of doubt.
Missouri tested that mettle Friday, hanging around as Miami missed free throws and Stone made 3s. The Tigers even grabbed a single-possession advantage as late as the under-8 timeout in the second half, 54-52.
Miami responded with an 11-0 run, leaving no doubt on the scoreboard or on the floor just who would be tougher Friday night.
Udeh saw it form in summer workouts, from individual drills all the way to 5-on-5 work. Nights like Friday, and wins like these, are no surprise to him now.
“When you bring a group of guys together who know how to compete and just want to push to make each other better, that’s already a sign you’ve got a great group,” he said. “Us winning these games, these gritty games, where a team goes on a run, to the outside crowd, it may look like things are getting out of hand.
“But between us and our locker room, we understand what it is — just stay poised, stay together. Everything that we’ve worked on from the summer is just on display now.”
Hurricanes ‘fight’ for Lucas, as Sweet 16 approaches
It will need to be again Sunday afternoon, when Miami plays No. 2 seed Purdue for a place in the Sweet 16.
Miami, which won seven games last season, now stands just one away from the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament. There has been no more dramatic, more impressive reversal of fortunes in the sport this winter, and there should be no question as to where it started.
Or, more accurately, who started it.
“We’re just fighting for our lives,” Reneau said. “We go out there and we fight for coach, every time we step on the court.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Miami turnaround continues with NCAA Tournament first-round win
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