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Miami Hurricanes Still Clinging To NCAA Tournament Hopes

By John Parker

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A shorthanded Miami Hurricanes squad visited the Pittsburgh Panthers and came away with a 67-63 victory in what may have been a “Play-Out” game for NCAA Tournament contention. Without second-leading scorer Angel Rodriguez, who played just three minutes against North Carolina on Saturday after suffering a wrist injury against Florida State a week ago, Miami needed sophomore Davon Reed to match a career-high 19 points to come away victorious.

Wednesday’s win is a nice start, but the Hurricanes need to continue winning in order to celebrate on Selection Sunday. Heading into the night, Miami found itself on the wrong side of the bubble of our Busting Bracketology thanks to bad losses against Eastern Kentucky, Georgia Tech and Virginia Tech. With an RPI of 70 and just 18 wins, there was a lot of work to be done to get into the tournament field. While a win certainly helps Miami’s chances, the Hurricanes aren’t in the clear yet.

From here, Miami definitely can’t afford to drop Saturday’s regular season finale at Virginia Tech. With a win Saturday, the Hurricanes still need to avoid a bad loss in the ACC Tournament against one of the bottom five teams in the conference.

Even then, avoiding a pair of bad losses wouldn’t give a big RPI boost. Miami would likely need to knock off whichever of the ranked ACC foes it would face in the conference quarterfinals to feel comfortable on Selection Sunday.

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For Pittsburgh, Wednesday night’s result was probably the final nail in the coffin for its at-large chances. Like Miami, Pitt wasn’t in the bracket on Busting Bracketology when the game tipped. Unlike the Hurricanes, Pittsburgh wasn’t even one of the top 8 teams on the outside looking in.

While the Panthers’ RPI (49 entering the night) is significantly better than Miami’s, Pitt didn’t secure a road victory until surviving an overtime contest ACC bottom-

feeder Boston College by a score of 61-60. The Panthers didn’t notch a second road win until February 21, traveling to Syracuse and taking out the Orange in the Carrier Dome. Besides not showing a tendency to win away from home, the Panthers haven’t managed many big wins. Outside of a victory over North Carolina, Pitt’s best wins are all against teams that find themselves—or in the case of postseason ineligible Syracuse, would find themselves—on the bubble.

As the regular season comes to a close, bubble teams’ seasons are on the line. Tonight, Miami kept itself in the hunt, while Pittsburgh might be resigned to playing spoiler. The Hurricanes might be a pair of winnable games away from locking up a bid, but if taking care of the winnable games came easy for Miami, the team would’ve played its way into the tournament already.

What does Miami need to do to get to the Big Dance? Let us know in the comments!

Next: Virginia Cavaliers: Justin Anderson may be back on Saturday

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