WOODLAND HILLS, Calif. — The Opening Finals is shaping up to be the premier showcase event of the offseason, and the nationwide tour continued this past weekend at the Los Angeles Rams' training facility where many of the West region's top prospects gathered to compete.
With spring just around the corner, recruiting is ramping up another few notches.
Let's dive into a collection of tidbits from those in attendance Sunday:
To read this full article and more, subscribe now —
Get access to this article and all of the in-depth coverage from the 247Sports Network with this special offer.
Join TodayAlready a subscriber? Login
It's almost unthinkable what Miami (Ohio) has done. Unheard of these days. Every coach dreams about it, sure, but almost none can conceive of actually accomplishing such a feat in this modern era of college basketball. And no, not the win-all-their-games thing. That's merely a byproduct of this other highly unusual achievement.
The RedHawks, coming off a school-record 25 wins last season, somehow brought most of their roster back for another run this season. To put a finer point on it: a successful mid-major program managed to keep six of its top nine players.
"It's just so rare," said Peter Suder, Miami's leading scorer the last two seasons. "In today's landscape, when you have one good year, you enter the portal and try to get some money somewhere else. But the grass isn't always greener other places. Having fun is important. Doing it with your friends is important.
"Our connectivity is our superpower, and we knew if a bunch of us stayed, we were going to do something special — just maybe not quite this special."
Maybe not a 29-0 start, joining 2014 Wichita State, 2015 Kentucky and 2021 Gonzaga as the only Division I teams this century to reach March without a loss. Maybe not a season so historic that coach Travis Steele would lose his mind on national television two weeks ago and promise to wear a Speedo during the NCAA Tournament selection show if the RedHawks are still undefeated.
Now Steele is just five wins away from having to honor that vow.
Suder has recently noticed his coach in the weight room more often, he said.
"That is a scary, scary thought," Steele told 247Sports this week. "But that's a heck of a problem to have. The thing my staff didn't realize is they're going to wear them as well. We are so connected, so together, that we need this shared adversity, right? So you better get in shape."
Miami is beginning to feel like a team of destiny. What else to think after its latest escape Friday night at Western Michigan? The RedHawks were already down a starting point guard, Evan Ipsaro, who tore his ACL in the 12th game. And Luke Skaljac, who stepped in at point guard for Ipsaro, was out Friday night with a wrist injury. Then Suder fouled out with seven minutes to go and Miami trailing by seven points.
With a perfect season in jeopardy, an unexpected hero emerged. Freshman Trey Perry, who averaged just 12.8 minutes this season, started his first career game, scored 14 points, led a furious comeback and sank a driving layup for the win with fourth-tenths of a second remaining.
"That's where your culture shows up," Perry said. "You learn from the players who are already here what it takes to be here. I knew coming into this that I had to mold myself to be like them, to build the coaches' trust throughout the season, just keep grinding and improving for those first 28 games so that they could trust me to put the ball in my hands in the 29th game and keep this thing going."
Six of Miami's top seven players this season are returners, three of the top four are on their third season with the RedHawks, and their other two rotation players are freshmen who were thoughtfully identified to fit the style and substance of Steele's program.
"Development is what excitements me — it's why I got into coaching — and retention is key," Steele said. "If you're getting eight, nine, 10 transfers a year, man, how do you have a culture? And fit is at a premium. On both ends. Do we know what we're getting and do they know what they're getting into? If you're taking a transfer, why is he transferring? Because winning has to matter. Development has to matter. The experience you have has to matter.
"I tell our guys I'm not going to give you a recruiting pitch at the end of the season. I'm not going to promise you the world. Your recruiting pitch is your experience here."
Last season's experience was equal parts excellence and agony. The program turned a corner in Steele's third year, setting a school record for wins after 14 losing records in the previous 15 seasons. But the RedHawks were denied their first NCAA Tournament berth since 2007 when Akron roared back from an 18-point deficit and nailed the game-winner with 2.3 seconds left in the MAC Tournament Championship Game.
"Probably the worst loss I've been a part of," said Suder, who almost immediately told Steele he was coming back to get redemption. "It lit a fire."
Miami's coaching staff has images from that heartbreak saved as the background on their phones.
"It hurts them, man," Perry said. "It haunts them. And it influences all our practices, because it's important to them. And that's why I'm here, because starting with our head coach, everyone is ultra-competitive. That's who I am and what I want to be around."
Steele knew something extraordinary was brewing in the spring, he said, when he brought one potential transfer on campus and the returning players reported back: "He's not one of us." Not competitive enough for what they wanted to chase this season. So Steele didn't take that guy.
Then in spring 3-on-3 workouts, "this guy Peter Suder is diving on the floor, taking charges, and I'm going, 'Bro, you gotta chill,'" Steele said. "That Akron game, how we lost, was really, really painful, but I think that spearheaded us."
This season, Miami ranks No. 2 nationally in scoring (90.9 points per game), No. 3 in 2-point percentage and No. 6 in effective field-goal percentage, has nine guys who've made at least 10 3-pointers, eight of them shooting better than 35% from deep and seven who score in double figures. All of that to say: these RedHawks are really fun to watch.
They have the third-best field goal percentage (.527) by a team averaging 90-plus points in the last 35 years. The only two teams ahead of them are 1991 UNLV and 2021 Gonzaga, who both got all the way to the Final Four undefeated.
"When you watch this team play, there's no way they don't deserve to be in the NCAA Tournament," said Wally Szczerbiak, who led Miami to a Sweet 16 in 1999, the last time the program won a game in the tournament.
That idea of what this Miami team deserves, in the event it does not win the MAC tournament, has become a national debate. At the heart of it is the RedHawks' strength of schedule. They've beaten just one KenPom top 100 opponent, a three-point home win against No. 61 Akron, and have piled up 20 wins against teams ranked 200th or worse.
"Nobody would play them," Szczerbiak said.
"My first couple years, we had a line from Oxford, Ohio, to Cincinnati of teams wanting to play us," Steele added. Then you win 25 games, bring most of the team back, "and all of a sudden, all the power-conference schools are telling me they're only playing Quad 1 and Quad 4 games, because that's how they're leagues have told them to schedule. I hated that for our guys, but we can only play who's in front of us, and so far, we've beat them all."
There have been some razor-close calls, however, and those have only added to skepticism about how good Miami really is. After No. 252 UNC Asheville took the RedHawks to overtime in December, there was a three-game stretch in January where they survived No. 194 Buffalo and No. 159 Kent State in overtime, and No. 204 Massachusetts by two points at home. Then the oh-so-narrow escape Friday at No. 271 Western Michigan.
But they did win them all. Despite key injuries, big deficits, stars fouling out, Steele flipping over a DJ speaker in anger and other potential distractions.
"So many things happen to throw you off in a season," he said, "so no matter who you're playing, winning all your games just doesn't happen."
Steele doesn't give much thought to someone like former Auburn coach Bruce Pearl, whose son replaced him and currently sits on the NCAA Tournament bubble, going on national TV to diminish what Miami has accomplished. Pearl said recently that the RedHawks should not get an at-large bid to the dance, even with an undefeated regular season, if they don't win the MAC Tournament.
"I could not care less," Steele said. "I'm not calling Bruce Pearl asking him what he thinks of our team. He probably hasn't even watched us play."
There is one former coach whose opinion Steele sought earlier this season, when it became apparent Miami might have a real shot at running the table. He called up former Saint Joseph's coach Phil Martelli, whose 2004 team went 27-0 in the regular season, then lost in its first Atlantic 10 tournament game by 20 points, then reached the Elite Eight. Steele asked him for advice in navigating the mounting attention and pressure and the pursuit of perfection.
"Enjoy it," Martelli told him. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime deal. Enjoy every second of it. I wish I would have enjoyed it even more than I did."
Steele has heeded that advice, pausing to note sold-out home crowds in an arena that was so empty he could hear his own thoughts when he started at Miami four years ago. He soaks in the increasingly hostile road atmospheres, too, wishing aloud that the RedHawks could split the gate with opponents enjoying that one-night surge in attendance. He revels in every victory, every locker room celebration, knowing how much exponentially harder each one gets now that a perfect record is within reach.
This is what Suder and his teammates came back for. He can't imagine any NIL compensation package from another school that would've outweighed the worth of this historic chase.
"No money in the world," Suder said. "It's been a miracle season. We don't have five-stars or four-stars or all the NIL money, but that's what makes this so cool. And that's why people should want us in the NCAA Tournament."
