OXFORD, Ohio — After 31 games without a loss, the Miami University RedHawks fell to UMass Thursday.
Now, men's basketball coach Travis Steele and his team must wait to see if they have a spot in the NCAA Tournament.
The 20th-ranked RedHawks became the last men’s Division I program to fall from the unbeaten ranks on Thursday as UMass rallied in the second half for an 87-83 victory in the Mid-American Conference Tournament quarterfinals.
“It was a little bit of shell shock. We hate to lose, and our guys put a lot into it. So does UMass,” Steele said. “Not a lot was said. I think sometimes you’ve got to get the emotion out of you first before directing your team. So we’ll do that when we get back to the hotel.”
Miami was the fifth team this century to go undefeated in the regular season and the first since Gonzaga in 2020-21. The RedHawks join Saint Joseph’s — which lost to Xavier in the 2004 Atlantic 10 quarterfinals — as teams whose unbeaten run ended in their conference tournament.
The RedHawks' strength of schedule ranks 344th out of 365 Division I teams, according to the NCAA Evaluation Tool. So can they still make March Madness?
Here's where the experts have Miami:
- ESPN's Joe Lunardi has the RedHawks as an 11 seed facing 6 seed Wisconsin in Greenville
- CBS has them as a 10 seed facing BYU
- FOX has the RedHawks as an 11 seed facing Tennessee
- USA TODAY's Erick Smith has Miami as an 11 seed playing in one of the First Four play-in games in Dayton
The last team to go through the regular season unbeaten and not make the NCAA Tournament was Alcorn State in 1978-79. That was because the Southwest Athletic Conference was in a transition period to Division I and did not have an automatic bid.
