{"id":798786,"date":"2026-03-07T17:00:19","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T17:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/798786\/"},"modified":"2026-03-07T17:00:19","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T17:00:19","slug":"miami-ohio-at-31-0-is-a-perfect-college-basketball-team-causing-an-insufferable-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/798786\/","title":{"rendered":"Miami (Ohio), at 31-0, is a perfect college basketball team causing an insufferable debate"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Editor\u2019s note: This is excerpted from the March 7 edition of The Pulse,\u00a0The Athletic\u2019s daily newsletter. Sign up here<\/a> to receive The Pulse directly in your inbox.)<\/p>\n

Last night, Ohio\u2019s Miami University beat the Ohio Bobcats, 110-108, in overtime to move to 31-0, in\u00a0one of the most thrilling games<\/a> of the men\u2019s college basketball season. You\u2019ll rarely see a regular-season college hoops game that feels like a bigger deal as it\u2019s unfolding. Personally, it might be the most fun regular-season college hoops game I have ever watched, wrapping up on a missed OU three that would\u2019ve won it at the overtime buzzer. Ideally, this result will preempt the whole discussion we\u2019re about to have. I expect that it will, and Miami should, finally, be a confirmed March Madness team.<\/p>\n

After all, the No. 16 RedHawks are the\u00a0first men\u2019s basketball team to finish a Division I regular season undefeated since Gonzaga in 2021. They were already the first in\u00a035 years\u00a0to start a season 30-0.<\/p>\n

The RedHawks should now be looking forward to their inevitable Cinderella opportunity in March Madness. Except that isn\u2019t universally agreed, because\u00a0a wretched discourse from college football has crossed into basketball: Should a non-power team with an exceptional resume get a shot at the sport\u2019s premier postseason event?\u00a0If Miami loses in its conference tournament next week, should the RedHawks be forced to the NIT while an SEC or Big Ten team with double-digit losses takes their slot? It\u2019s highly doubtful, but some folks will keep arguing it.<\/p>\n

Of course, Miami could win the MAC tournament and make this all moot.\u00a0But the anti-RedHawk movement is real, and it\u2019s important to preemptively push back on those who would dump them if they lost a single game.\u00a0The brewing case against Miami is a case against everything people claim to enjoy about college basketball.<\/p>\n

The face of the anti-Miami movement has a conflict of interest:<\/p>\n

Bruce Pearl built Auburn into an SEC powerhouse, then retired just before the season, effectively forcing the school to elevate his son, Steven, to head coach.
\nIt\u2019s gone poorly, with Auburn staring down a 7-11 record in SEC play if it loses at No. 16 Alabama today. The Tigers have faced a brutal schedule, sure, but they\u2019ve performed badly against it. \u201cNo team is feeling the pressure of the bubble more than Auburn,\u201d\u00a0our staff says<\/a>. It turns out that\u00a0collecting a huge sack of TV cash in an expanded conference also means playing games you might lose.
\nSo it was galling when the elder Pearl went on TV last weekend to argue against Miami, which could jump Auburn in the bubble queue: \u201cIf we\u2019re selecting the 68 best teams, then Miami is going to have to win their tournament to qualify as a champion. Because as an at-large, they are not one of the best teams in the country,\u201d Pearl told his TNT colleagues, contrasting \u201cbest\u201d with \u201cmost deserving.\u201d<\/a> He later defended himself<\/a>, claiming \u201cthere is no nepotism involved here.\u201d (Pearl does say that nepotism played a role in his son getting the Auburn job \u2014 obviously \u2014\u00a0but that\u2019s a separate Pearl-nepotism storyline<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

We have seen this a billion times in football, a sport where the power conferences have tried to manipulate the playoff format to hoover up as many spots as possible \u2014 after years of denying the smaller conferences any chances at all. (If something good accidentally happens for non-power teams,\u00a0the rules quickly change<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Sure, Miami\u2019s schedule is light, with a best win over No. 62 Akron. But\u00a0loads of power-conference teams<\/a>\u00a0declined to schedule the RedHawks when they asked. You can\u2019t beat who you can\u2019t play, and the genius of the NCAA Tournament is that your opponents don\u2019t have a choice.\u00a0College basketball is supposed to love potential Cinderellas.<\/p>\n

If people like Pearl got their way, the selection committee would more or less just grab .500-ish teams based on their\u00a0KenPom ratings<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 Auburn is 40th, Miami 90th \u2014 and turn the tournament into an \u201con-paper\u201d referendum that the power conferences would always win. Having fewer mid-majors in the tourney would only expand the power conferences\u2019 financial advantages.<\/p>\n

In any format, a selection committee will balance \u201cbest\u201d (stats, roster quality, the \u201ceye test\u201d) with \u201cmost deserving\u201d (resumes, achievements).\u00a0College football disputes invented that terminology<\/a>. But if wins and losses don\u2019t matter, what\u2019s the point? Spurning Miami would tell most of Division I that there\u00a0is\u00a0no point.\u00a0It would also deny us the chance to see how far Miami could go, all to watch a totally forgettable team from a bigger league wash out after the same one to three games as Miami. I know why Bruce Pearl might want that, but why should we?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Editor\u2019s note: This is excerpted from the March 7 edition of The Pulse,\u00a0The Athletic\u2019s daily newsletter. Sign up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":798787,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[7,5480,21192,49,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-798786","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-mens-college-basketball","10":"tag-miami-oh-redhawks","11":"tag-ncaa","12":"tag-ncaa-football"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116188965998593744","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=798786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/798787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=798786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=798786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=798786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}