How Miami (Ohio)’s First Loss in the MAC Quarterfinal Impacts RedHawks’ March Madness Hopes

No. 20 Miami (Ohio)’s perfect season came to an end on Thursday afternoon, as the RedHawks blew a late second half lead and fell to UMass 87–83 in the MAC quarterfinal.

The RedHawks took a 39–37 lead into halftime, and led by as many as 11 with under 10 minutes to play. But a furious run by the Minutemen in the final eight minutes saw them take the lead for good at 83–81 with 29 seconds to go.

UMass’s Leonardo Bettiol led all scorers with 25 points to pace the upset for the Minutemen.

The RedHawks, who have been flirting with losses over the last several weeks leading up to the conference tournament, finally had its undefeated season end. Miami (Ohio) finished the regular season 31–0, which included an 18–0 mark in MAC play, but questions still surrounded the RedHawks’ résumé due to the lack of quality wins. Miami (Ohio) played one of the worst non-conference schedules in the country (362 out of 365), and has now left it up to the committee to decide whether they’re worthy of an at-large bid.

How Miami (Ohio)’s loss to UMass impacts the NCAA tournament bubble

This loss does not knock Miami-Ohio out of Sports Illustrated’s projected bracket: The RedHawks will stay in the field as an at-large team. The main case for Miami is the strength of their résumé metrics. They entered the day 21st in strength of record and 33rd in Wins Above Bubble, a metric that NCAA selection committee chair Keith Gill has highlighted regularly as one that will be critically important to the selection process. Those numbers will drop some after the loss today, but will likely still be better than the vast majority of bubble teams. If the committee doesn’t put in Miami, it would be disregarding its own public remarks on what matters most.

How they’re seeded, however, is now an open question. Miami has by far the worst quality metrics (like KenPom) of the at-large pool, and SI now projects that the RedHawks will head to Dayton for the First Four. The rest of the bubble’s substantial struggles of late could help Miami’s case to stay out of Dayton, though.

The other significant angle to this is that the RedHawks now occupy an at-large spot in the field, effectively shrinking the bubble by a spot. As of this morning, the last team in the field was Texas, which will get knocked out by this result. The bubble could contract further in the coming days, which might a trip to Dayton more likely for Miami.

Other results on the bubble should help Miami (Ohio)'s case

This year features one of the worst bubbles in recent memory in men's college basketball, which should help the RedHawks’ case come Selection Sunday. It will be hard to keep a team that completed an undefeated regular season out of the field when very few bubble teams have performed well enough in the late stages of the regular season or in the conference tournaments to make the field as an at-large.

SMU blew a second-half lead and fell to Louisville on Wednesday. Texas found a way to lose to 12–19 Ole Miss in the SEC tournament. Indiana lost to Northwestern in a must-win Big Ten tournament contest, while Virginia Tech and Stanford both lost in the first round of the ACC tournament.

None of those teams deserve a bid over the RedHawks, who should still find their way into the bracket with plenty of seeding questions.

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