Hurricanes fail to make NCAA Tournament for second consecutive season
For the second straight year, the Miami Hurricanes will not go dancing in the NCAA Tournament.
Miami (21-12, 10-8 ACC) was left out of the 68-team bracket, which was announced on Sunday night.
UM did garner a second seed in the National Invitational Tournament and will host North Carolina Central (25-7) at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the first round. The teams have met three times in the past, with UM winning all three games, the last of which came on Nov. 19, 2010. Miami is 7-11 in the NIT, never making it past the quarterfinals.
“Our players were very hopeful that we would get into the NCAA Tournament, and I’m sure the players are disappointed that we did not, but I made it clear to them that if we were good enough and we won enough games we would have been in there,” head coach Jim Larrañaga said in a statement. “We needed to win one or two more games to get into the field of 68. Now we are in the NIT and we play on Tuesday. We have very little time to prepare and very very little time to feel sorry for ourselves. We have got to get ourselves emotionally ready to play a great game on Tuesday night.”
The Hurricanes closed out the season winning three of their final four games, including one in the Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament.
Despite victories at Florida, No. 1 seed Duke and Syracuse, Miami lost to both Green Bay and Eastern Kentucky at home. Defeats to Florida State and Wake Forest also hurt its resume.
According to NCAA.com, Miami ranked 65th in the nation in RPI. Bubble teams that got in over Miami included UCLA (20-13), LSU (22-10) and Georgia (21-11). Miami wasn't one of the top four left out.
The first four out were Temple, Colorado State, Old Dominion and Richmond.
Six ACC teams made the tourney: Duke, Notre Dame, N.C. State, Louisville, Virginia and North Carolina. Providence, who beat UM, is the sixth seed in the East region.
North Florida, scheduled to face Robert Morris in a play-in game, is the only team from the state of Florida to earn a beth.
You can follow Christina De Nicola on Twitter @CDeNicola13 or email her at cdenicola13@gmail.com.
