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Tag Archives: Miami Hurricanes

‘Canes to get visit from Sparty in November.

The 2012 ACC/Big Ten Challenge schedule was announced yesterday, and Miami will be hosting a potential top 10 team in Michigan State. The defending Big Ten regular season champs will be heading to Coral Gables Wednesday November 28 (TBA) and should provide UM with a rugged early season test. Tom Izzo coached teams are notorious for their intense style and dominant inside play. Miami’s front court. returning Seniors Kenny Kadji and Reggie Johnson in particular,  will need to be at their best to pull out a victory over the Spartans. Fortunately for the Hurricanes all world forward Draymond Green will be playing in the NBA when this game tips off.

Michigan State will be a huge challenge.

Tuesday, November 27
No. 13 North Carolina at No. 1 Indiana
No. 6 NC State at No. 5 Michigan
No. 25 Minnesota at Florida State
Maryland at Northwestern
Iowa at Virginia Tech
Nebraska at Wake Forest

Wednesday, November 28
No. 8 Ohio State at No. 15 Duke
Virginia at No. 22 Wisconsin
No. 9 Michigan State at Miami
Purdue at Clemson
Georgia Tech at Illinois
Boston College at Penn State

The “What If” Miami made the NCAA Tournament Sim

After the disappointment of Selection Sunday and the terrible Tuesday of watching Iona blow a 25pt 2nd-half lead, we called on our Category 6 computer programmers to run a simulation. At first they resisted, despondent over What if Miami had been put in the play-in game instead of Iona? We also reverse simulated Durand Scott’s ridiculous suspension.

In the simulated play-in game, Miami took on BYU and came away with a virtually hard-fought 64-60 victory over the Cougars. The ‘Canes balanced attack was spearheaded by Trey McKinney Jones (12pts, 5reb, 1ast, 1stl).

After being cleared by the BSNCAA, Durand Scott (10pts, 7reb, 5ast, 1stl) struggled from the field but came up big on the glass and finding teammates for open looks. Scott drilled some big FT’s down the stretch to maintain Miami’s slim lead.

Kenny Kadji (11pts, 6reb, 1stl, 1blk) drilled his lone attempt from 3 and pinned Noah Hartsock against the glass on a big defensive possession. Malcolm Grant (9pts, 2reb, 2ast, 1stl) hit both his 3′s and DeQuan Jones (9pts, 5reb, 1) had a steal that led to a breakaway dunk.

Shane Larkin (5pts, 5reb, 4ast, 6stl) created chaos for BYU’s ball-handlers. Larkin picked Matt Carlino 3 times and finished one of those steals off with a spectacular lob to Rion Brown (6pts, 2reb, 1ast). Reggie Johnson (2pts, 6reb, 3ast) was double and triple-teamed when the ‘Canes tried to get it to him in the post. The attention paid to Reggie seemed to open up the deep ball for the ‘Canes. As a team Miami shot a sterling 9-17 (52.9%) from beyond the arc.

Next Up: Miami takes on 3-seed Marquette.

11-12 Brigham Young
MIN FGM-A 3PM-A FTM-A REB AST BLK STL TO PF TP
Noah Hartsock* 30 5-8 0-1 0-0 4 0 0 0 1 2 10
Brandon Davies* 30 5-11 0-0 4-5 8 0 1 2 2 3 14
Brock Zylstra* 29 3-10 1-6 1-2 3 0 0 4 2 2 8
Matt Carlino* 28 6-11 3-5 2-2 4 5 0 0 4 3 17
Charles Abouo* 27 1-9 1-4 0-0 6 4 0 0 1 2 3
Craig Cusick 19 1-3 1-2 0-0 2 4 0 1 2 0 3
Anson Winder 14 1-3 0-1 0-0 0 1 0 2 1 0 2
Nate Austin 12 1-3 0-1 0-0 6 0 1 0 1 2 2
Josh Sharp 11 0-0 0-0 1-2 2 1 0 0 1 1 1
TOTALS 200 23-58 6-20 8-11 35 15 2 9 15 15 60
39.7% 30.0% 72.7%

* – denotes game starter

11-12 Miami (FL)
MIN FGM-A 3PM-A FTM-A REB AST BLK STL TO PF TP
Durand Scott* 35 3-10 1-2 3-4 7 5 0 1 3 2 10
Kenny Kadji* 30 5-9 1-1 0-2 6 0 1 1 3 2 11
Reggie Johnson* 28 1-5 0-0 0-0 6 3 0 0 1 3 2
Malcolm Grant* 27 3-6 2-2 1-2 2 2 0 1 2 1 9
Shane Larkin* 25 2-3 1-1 0-0 5 4 0 6 1 2 5
Trey McKinney Jones 21 4-8 2-5 2-2 5 1 0 1 2 3 12
DeQuan Jones 18 4-10 1-3 0-0 5 0 0 1 2 0 9
Rion Brown 11 2-7 1-3 1-2 2 1 0 0 1 0 6
Garrius Adams 5 0-0 0-0 0-0 1 0 0 0 1 1 0
TOTALS 200 24-58 9-17 7-12 39 16 1 11 16 14 64
41.4% 52.9% 58.3%

* – denotes game starter

Breaking: Mizzou’s starting 5 suspended from 1st NCAA game; Haith pissed

Category 6 breaks this incredible story. It appears that University of Missouri starters Kim English, Marcus Denmon, Ricardo Ratliff, Matt Pressey, and Phil Pressey were all found to have received benefits from assistants on former coach Mike Anderson’s staff.

Coach Frank Haith came out immediately against the 1-game ban and called it “completely unfair” and a “travesty” as he had nothing to do with the sins of the former coach. He lambasted the NCAA’s tradition of not holding coaches accountable for violations and instead punishing the players, the fans and the University of Missouri while running to another job free and clear.

Coach Haith was furious at the NCAA for depriving his team of a chance . . .

Kim English, Mizzou’s leading scorer spoke out against the ruling, stating that he had no idea that his parents received a Ferrari and a small subsistence farm complete with 2 goats, a cow and a bunch of chickens.

“This is really unfair,” said English. “Why am I being punished for something I knew nothing about?”

Marcus Denmon was equally upset and pleaded with the NCAA to review their decision. He noted that his family was assured by a former Missouri coach that taking flights on private Gulfstream jets to away games was perfectly within the rules.

“This guy, what a charlatan,” Denmon said about the unnamed assistant, “he told my family it was kosher, but clearly it wasn’t.”

Ricardo Ratliff, one of Missouri’s big men, was despondent after finding out that the piggyback ride a former coach gave him not only ruptured 2 discs in the coach’s back, but a 1-game ban for the first game in the NCAA Tournament.

Ricardo Ratliff looks like he could use a piggyback ride after learning of his NCAA Tournament suspension.

“I can’t believe it,” Ratliff complained. “He assured me that a piggyback ride didn’t violate any rules. I can’t believe a coach would leave and throw us to the wolves. Only a real selfish kind of person with the character of a radioactive slug would do something like this.”

 

 

 

The Pressey brothers were discovered to be fraternal and conjoined twins after a special NCAA investigation and the NCAA came down on them like a hammer on a molten strip of metal. Phil Pressey was immediately reclassified as a senior. It appears that Missourri illegally provided the operation to separate them while the brothers were in high school because they lacked health insurance.

“You don’t know how hard it was,” Phil Pressey said through teary eyes. “Prom was especially tough because Matt was always better with the ladies.”

“He’s right,” added Matt Pressey. “He didn’t have a chance until we were separated.”

After consoling his players, Haith went to the podium to make his case.

“The NCAA has gone too far this time,” said Haith. “When will this organization [the NCAA] get it’s act together? Don’t they realize that hard-working coaches like me play by the rules and don’t deserve to be punished for the violations committed by previous administrations? What kind of lesson are we teaching our kids? Why were Cam Newton and Terelle Prior cleared to play in bowl games and then go pro and avoid suspension and my guys aren’t? Why aren’t their former coaches being punished? The media really needs to ask these questions. They need to ask why the former staff is allowed to gallop into the sunset while we bear the punishment.”

"I'm melting! I'm melting! What a world! What a world!"

 

After his rant was over a salt truck crashed into the conference room and everyone was covered in NaCl. There was some nervous laughter from the press, and when the dust settled, it was found that Coach Haith had dissolved.

The NCAA was then injected with sodium pentothal (truth serum) and mistakenly released this statement:

 

 

 

 

“The NCAA doesn’t care about its fans, players, or even the universities. Our chief goal is to make money off of amateur sports. It doesn’t bother us at all that we hold an 18-27 (if you’re Bernard James) year-old to much higher standards than highly compensated grown men and women with a lifetime of experience and a get-out-of-trouble-free-card. It doesn’t bother us that we could come up with some kind of stipend program to supplement the athletes who make vast piles of money for us and still make vast sums of money, even as we know athletics can be a full time job in terms of time put in. We just don’t care.”

Note: This is complete snark and we are not seriously implying that any of the stuff above is real. If it offended Coach Anderson, the players on Missouri, the University of Missouri and their fans, we apologize, as that was not the intent (as we’re sure you figured out). NCAA hypocrisy is difficult to withstand sometimes.

To the entire state of Missouri and its worldwide network of fans: as the “show me” state, Miami Hurricanes fans everywhere assure you that Coach Haith will eventually “show you”.

To ‘Canes fans: think about this – if Haith gets suspended, Mizzou might actually win it all. Such a quandry.

A Hurricane hits the selection committee…sort of

(Editor’s Note: This article was written by Charlie Strauzer who repped the ‘Canes big-time in Atlanta. Thanks to CS from Category 6 and Miami fans everywhere for sharing his experience.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After submitting a 30 second video on the March Madness page on Facebook for the Super 10 Fan Selection Committee contest in February and having my friends vote for me I found out on Feb 22 that I had been chosen as 1 of 10 fans who got the chance to go through the same selection process as the actual NCAA committee.   I was flown to Atlanta this weekend and spent the entire time sequestered in the TBS studios complex in a conference room armed with a laptop and iPad.

Our goal was to literally pick the entire bracket from choosing at large teams to seeding to bracketing regions to help give the world a glimpse into the exhaustive and painstaking process that goes on behind the scenes.  The NCAA has gone out its way this year to make sure it was more transparent give the “black box” mystery surrounding the process in the past and this was one more way of doing that.

We were helped by former UC-Riverside athletic director and former coach of San Jose St., Stan Morrison, who had just retired from the real selection committee this year after a 5 year stint.  Coach Morrison brought tremendous insight into the process and was a terrific source of knowledge, stories and anecdotes.

The idea was the brainchild of Ronnie Ramos, Managing Director, Digital Communications for the NCAA and a graduate of the University of Miami.  Oddly enough Ronnie was the Miami Herald sports reporter who was charged with following ‘Canes Basketball during my time as the student manager for the team and didn’t realize he was involved until after I had won the contest (small world).

As the weekend wore on we analyzed and deliberated each team under consideration for our at large 37 slots.  We finally came to comparing Miami vs. Iona for last team in and ultimately the committee – with strong lobbying by myself that Miami’s two big wins over Duke at Duke and FSU and 54 strength of overall schedule were better than Iona’s overall win record and 44 non-conference SOS.  It was a tight vote: 6 to 4, that got the Canes into the fan bracket as some felt that the Iona PG was one of the best in the league and the Gaels could do well in the dance.

Ultimately it was that 44 non-conferences SOS for IONA vs. Miami’s 117 rank that did our Canes in as explained by committee chair Jeff Hathaway.  In addition Iona had 5 wins against the RPI top 100 vs. 3 for the Canes and had an 18 RPI and 9-3 record vs. non-conference opponents vs. the Canes at 69 and a 9-4 record OOC.

So how did we do overall vs. the real committee?  We got 66 of 68 right, only Miami and Drexel were in the Fan bracket vs. the real one.  As Stan Morrison said “outstanding, remarkable quite frankly.”

He was impressed by the homework, the diligence and the ability to understand the rules and to peel the onion and get down to what a team is really about and how conversant the committee was about the mid-majors.

Here are awesome clips of the Atlanta experience.

Category 6 @ the ACC Tournament – Days 1-1.5

After arriving in Atlanta Wednesday morning we spent some quality time trying to navigate the streets of the city with a flawed map. You see, for some reason several streets are Peachtree this and Peachtree that.  With our geographical difficulties finally solved, we met up with other ‘Canes fans – Phillip and Amy – and we hit up Miami’s open practice in the afternoon.

It looked like the four of us were the only ‘Canes fans to attend the practice. Coach Larranaga was in the middle of things running a bunch of drills. The ‘Canes looked like they were loose and having a great time. At one point near the end of practice, Kenny Kadji went berserk from 3, hitting an astounding 14 in a row.

Trey McKinney Jones and Malcolm Grant were also locked in from beyond the arc. We took some video of the practice, but were later informed that videotaping the practice violated ACC policy. So we burned the tape and spread the ashes outside the Phillips Arena.

Next up was an encounter with a Coach Larranaga connection:

On Thursday morning, on the way to breakfast, we ran into 3 players from the Virginia Cavaliers. We weren’t sure who two of them were, but the limping 7-footer had to be Assane Sene. After a hearty meal, we hit the ACC FanFest. Aside from being an interactive commercial for GEICO and AT&T, there were a lot of fun things to do. Jerry took cues from Kadji’s performance at practice, and calmly stepped-up and nailed a spring-loaded 3-pointer for a free ACC T-shirt.

Here is some raw footage from ACC FanFest:

Mascots from every team were at the event – and Sebastian seemed to be relieved there were some other Miami fans lingering around. We ran into a few others, but there isn’t that much orange and green in Atlanta so far. Here is some footage from FanFest.

Tonight we’re planning on meeting up with some more ‘Canes fans and indulge in some pre-game festivities. At 9pm the world will stop for UM basketball fans as the ‘Canes take on Georgia Tech. If the ‘Canes can defeat GT tonight, Miami’s chances at making the NCAA Tournament will hinge on defeating rival FSU on a neutral court.

That’s all for now from Atlanta. Stay tuned to category6um.com for ‘Canes hoops coverage at the ACC Tournament.

ACC Tournament Survival Guide

As the NCAA college basketball season winds down and March Madness rears its majestic head, you know that the stakes are higher than ever. There’s some guy out there named Joe Lunardi who seems to have the uncanny ability to deliver a 200 megaton payload of anxiety to the fan base of any school with a simple post or tweet.

This is, of course, due to the gigantic all-encompassing killer bubble that is threatening to wipe out half of all U.S. universities when it finally ruptures. The magnitude of this detonation, if you believe the talking heads on the television, will be so magnificent, so astonishing, so intense, that it could potentially wipe out all life on Earth.

 

Fortunately, before the Mayan end-time prediction of global disaster comes to fruition on Selection Sunday, we’ll have a brief respite from the cataclysm and a chance to enjoy the ACC Tournament.

 

 

 

 

 

 

First things first. If you’re a ‘Canes fan and you’re going to the ACC Tournament, email us at category6um@gmail.com. Or you could click on the Facebook icon at the top of the page which will take you to our awesome Category 6 group. Lots of solid ‘Canes fans on there! We’re planning on getting together in Atlanta and supporting the ‘Canes – as well as having some fun.

Now, let’s talk about Atlanta. Jerry and I went 3 years ago and there are some awesome things to do and see.

Basketball

This year, the games are being held in the Phillips Arena, which grows like a hemorrhoid off the CNN Omni complex. It’s a hotel and more. There’s a sick fitness center there with a steam room that is very good for clearing some of the negative effects of drinking a few beers. 3 years ago, the games were held at the Georgia Dome, which was a 10 minute walk from the CNN Omni. Note, the Omni is completely booked. As for tickets, you can buy books or go and wing it. I think we’re opting for the latter.

Food

In the food court of the CNN Omni, there are a lot of choices. There are tons of mall-like stalls. The best was a beer stand that gave 48oz movie theater cups filled with premium beer on tap for $6. Maybe the price has gone up a bit since then, but it was a place we found after Miami fell to Virginia Tech in the first game on the first day of the ACC Tourney. “Now what?” was answered quite adequately by the beer stand.

Adjacent to the food court is a great sports bar/restaurant called Dantana’s. The food is elevated bar food – which is not an insult. Traditional fare like wings, burgers, and sandwiches are available. The menu seems to have changed a bit, but I’d bet on the wings still being excellent. There are a lot of restaurants in the area and it’ll be fun to have an extra day to explore.

Atlanta is a major city with a fine choice of restaurants. We ate at Prime Meridian, one of the restaurants in the CNN Omni last time. I’d stay away from hotel restaurants because they’re way overpriced and the food isn’t anything special. Think about this: every time you’ve went to a hotel restaurant has it lived up to expectations? For some reason it never seems to hit the mark. But you always try, hoping against all hope that this time it will be different.

Downtown Atlanta also has a ton of restaurants. Aside from the hotel meal, we mostly stuck to Dantana’s and the food court. We’ve been talking to a sports bar/restaurant called Stats Atlanta about doing a blogging event there with other ACC bloggers, but it was too last-minute to set-up. The place looks pretty amazing.

Entertainment

Philips Arena – Philips Arena is located next to CNN Center, west of the intersection of Marietta Street and Centennial Olympic Park Drive (formerly Techwood Drive).

Georgia World Congress Center – Located in the heart of downtown Atlanta, the Georgia World Congress Center is one of the world’s finest convention, sports and entertainment venues.

Centennial Olympic Park –  An unique 21-acre park performs a dual mission: it serves as Georgia’s lasting legacy of the Centennial Olympic Games and it anchors efforts to revitalize residential and commercial development in Georgia’s capital city of Atlanta.

Georgia Dome – The Georgia Dome, the largest cable-supported domed stadium in the world, opened in 1992. Located in downtown Atlanta, the Dome is the home venue for the Atlanta Falcons, host to Super Bowl XXVII in 1994, host of the gymnastics and basketball events for the 1996 Olympic Games and host to the Super Bowl XXXIV in 2000.

Georgia Aquarium- The Georgia Aquarium is located in downtown Atlanta across from Centennial Olympic Park.

50 Fun Things to Do In Atlanta- I found this link. Some cool stuff. Kind of saves me the trouble of doing more research – this is pretty comprehensive.

Hope to see some ‘Canes fans in Atlanta for an exciting ACC Tournament.