Rise and Shine: There has never been a team like Miami

By Sam Federman

Miami Ohio MBB on Twitter

You read that right. There has never been a college basketball team quite like this Miami (Ohio) group at this point in a season.

After taking down Buffalo on the road last night, the Redhawks improved to 23-0 and 11-0 in the MAC as one of just two undefeated teams remaining in Division I men's college basketball this season. The other one is not quite like Miami, though. Arizona is a juggernaut. Its 22-0 record has come with wins over Florida, UConn, UCLA, Auburn, Alabama, UCF, and BYU.

And that's not to say that Miami going 23-0 isn't impressive. And it's not to blame them for having a poor strength of schedule either -- nobody wants to schedule a good but not surefire NCAA Tournament-level mid-major team that returns a lot from the previous season.

The Redhawks entered this season 127th in KenPom, and despite a zero in the loss column into the fourth month of the season, they have only risen to 89th.

Before this year, the last team to enter February undefeated was Gonzaga in 2021. Another juggernaut stacked with NBA players, top recruits, and a preseason No. 1 KenPom ranking. Before that? San Diego State in 2019-20, which was 6th in KenPom by the time it beat Utah State at home to improve to 23-0.

That SDSU team was 97th in KenPom in the preseason, which isn't that far off from Miami's preseason rank, but big wins over Creighton and Iowa in Las Vegas in late November helped the Aztecs get from 66th to 35th in KenPom within a week.

2016-17 Gonzaga and 2014-15 Kentucky also made it to February undefeated, but the last true mid-major to do it before Miami was Wichita State in 2013-14, if you could even call Gregg Marshall's Shockers a mid-major.

In 2013, Wichita State made the Final Four. Its players were known commodities nationally before the 2013-14 season started, and even coming into the year, they were 39th in KenPom. The Valley was a one-bid league that year, and was only a two-bid league in the two years prior because Creighton hadn't left for the Big East yet. So while this counts as a one-bid league team making this run, it's not like Miami. This team was known, projected to be awesome, played a non-conference schedule with multiple high-majors on it, and was top 10 in KenPom by February.

I hear you screaming about 2012 Murray State. It fits the true one-bid league criteria. It fits the criteria of not being in the KenPom preseason top 100. It came out of nowhere nationally.

But the Racers were up to the top 30 in KenPom by the start of January, and had fallen all the way down to 66 by the time they lost their first game in February. They had three top 70 wins in non-conference play, including winning on the road at Memphis.

Murray State is probably the closest comparison in recent memory, but they still made the KenPom climb a lot higher than Miami ever did, and had more notable wins.

Alright. Let's keep going back. 2010-11 Ohio State is a high-major. 2007-08 Memphis had the No. 1 recruit in the country, John Calipari, and was top 10 in KenPom each of the previous two years. 2004-05 Illinois is another high-major.

If you go back to 2003-04 Saint Joseph's, you get another mid-major, but the A-10 in that era was consistently a multiple bid league. The Hawks were top 20 in KenPom the previous year, and made significant KenPom leaps the 2003-04 season, finishing in the top 3.

2001 Stanford, 2000 Syracuse, 1996 UMass, 1991 UNLV. None of those teams are anything like Miami.

That's it for teams undefeated into February since the NCAA Tournament expanded out to 64 teams in 1985. So nobody has ever been undefeated into February from a true one-bid league yet still not close in terms of the metrics to the at-large caliber teams since the current picture of at-larges was created.

Now, Miami would undoubtedly get an at-large bid if the MAC Tournament started today and it lost a game. After all, they're currently 26th in wins above bubble and 24th in strength of record.

But they're not top 80 in any of the predictive metrics.

Who are the most similar teams to Miami in terms of their resume per Torvik's database?

2012 Oral Roberts: Lost 4 games before New Year's.

2019 UNC Greensboro was 91st in KenPom after 23 games, very similar to where Miami is... but it had lost three games.

2023-24 James Madison was 12-0 in non-conference play, then won its first two league games to improve to 14-0 and 60th in KenPom. Not too dissimilar, but it lost three games in January and was 20-3 by the time that they played 23 games. Not to mention, they were on the national radar immediately because they beat Michigan State on opening night. But remove the MSU game, and you get a pretty similar non-conference schedule to this year's Miami team.

It's just that you can't take that away from them.

You start to get some similar teams if you pull out to teams with one, two, three, or four losses at this point, but the reason why Miami is unique is that they have the zero. It's the defining factor of the Redhawks' season.

Typically, mid-major teams that start 11-0 in conference play are running through the league or already much higher in KenPom than the rest of the league. 2019 Wofford only had three games within single digits out of the first 11, and they were up to 31st in KenPom. Last year's Yale team played four games within single digits out of its 11-0 start in Ivy play, but even then, they ranked well higher in KenPom than anybody else in the conference.

For Miami, seven of the eleven games have come within single digits.

And yes, undefeated teams survive scares. It's what they do. I remember 2015 Kentucky going to double overtime with Texas A&M after needing overtime to escape Mississippi.

But they followed that up by beating Missouri by 49 and Alabama by 22.

In four of Miami's last five games, the Redhawks have either needed to score or needed a stop on the final possession of a one-possession game to win or extend the game to OT. And each time, they've done it.

They've been wildly lucky to win all of these close games, and regression is likely coming soon.

But for now, it's magical.