This is starting to look a lot like 1993-94.
The Miami Hurricanes finished that season with a 0-18 Big East record and 7-20 overall under coach Leonard Hamilton.
On Saturday afternoon, the SMU Mustangs routed host Miami 117-74, sinking the Hurricanes to a 4-14 record overall, 0-7 in the ACC.
The Hurricanes have lost seven consecutive games and 14 of their past 15. Miami has also lost 16 straight ACC games.
Miami’s Matthew Cleveland, who scored a game-high 31 points on Saturday, took questions from the media following the rough loss. He reflected mostly on the first half, when Miami trailed by as many as 38 points.
“That was embarrassing,” Cleveland said. “We need to fix things on the defensive end. We need to fix our effort and toughness.
“We only had two fouls in the first half. We weren’t playing hard enough. [SMU] was shooting 80 percent from the field [actually 76.5 percent in the first half, 69.2 percent for the game].”
Cleveland said Hurricanes interim coach Bill Courtney had some pointed comments at halftime.
“He said we had to play with pride,” Cleveland said. “The second half was [better]. But it doesn’t matter when you lose by 43.”
The silver lining for the Hurricanes is that they did come back from that rough season 31 years ago. In fact, they had a winning overall record and nine conference victories the very next season.
Four years after 0-18, the Hurricanes were in the NCAA Tournament, and, the season after that, Miami finished ranked among the nation’s top-10 teams.
