UM can still win the Coastal. It needs help, but it’s not crazy — here are the scenarios

The Miami Hurricanes climbed past one of their most important Atlantic Coast Conference hurdles a year ago when Mark Richt led Miami to the ACC Championship Game in his first year as coach. When the Hurricanes arrived in the ACC, the conference expected them to be the perennial favorite in the Coastal Division, consistently winning its half of the league and playing for a conference title in Charlotte or wherever the game may be.

With the seal broken in 2017, Miami appeared poised to finally make good on the potential the ACC envisioned. The Hurricanes were the overwhelming favorite in the division as recently as three weeks ago. Two upset losses later, Miami has fallen to legitimate underdog status in the race for the Coastal. With four games remaining, the Hurricanes are nearly out of mulligans.

“It’s a little premature right now to start trying to predict what will happen in the Coastal the rest of the way,” Richt said during his Sunday teleconference

But let’s try to do it anyway.

If the favorites win...

Football Power Index (FPI) is an ESPN-developed predictive rating system, which the network uses to project upcoming results. You’ve probably seen it mentioned plenty of times by name and plenty of other times without even realizing it’s being used — the ESPN app, for example, uses FPI for its matchup predictor placed within box scores and game previews. On Monday, ESPN reporter Andrea Adelson tweeted out the new FPI odds for the Coastal. The Virginia Cavaliers are the new favorite with a 42 percent chance to win the division, followed by the Virginia Tech Hokies at 29 percent and Miami at 15 percent. The Pittsburgh Panthers and Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets are both alive, too, with 8- and 6-percent odds, respectively.

Still, if FPI favorites win out in the Coastal, the Hurricanes will head back to the ACC Championship Game. Miami is currently the favorite in each of its final four games, while Virginia is an underdog twice more and Pittsburgh is an underdog in each of its remaining games. If it plays out this way, the Cavaliers will finish with three ACC losses, while the Hurricanes and Virginia Tech would each end the year with two. Miami would hold the tiebreaker based on a head-to-head win against the Hokies on Nov. 17.

The trouble, of course, is statistics aren’t so simple. While the Hurricanes are the favorite in each of the four individual games, FPI only gives the Miami an 11.8 percent chance of winning out. Even one loss would be another crippling blow for the Hurricanes. If it came against Virginia Tech, Miami would be mathematically eliminated assuming the Panthers doesn’t win their next three.

“I will say anybody can beat anybody, it looks like, this year,” Richt said.

The simplest scenario

The most straightforward way to look at the Hurricanes chances: If the they win out and the Hokies beats Virginia in the regular-season finale, Miami will likely find itself tied for the top spot in the division. FPI has Hurricanes with a greater than 60 percent chance to win three of their last four games. The lone exception comes against Georgia Tech in Atlanta on Nov. 10, when FPI gives the Hurricanes a 54.6 percent chance to win.

The critical showdown comes a week later, when Miami faces the Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va. The Hurricanes currently have a 61.1 percent chance to win, according to FPI. Miami and the Hokies entered the season as the only two ranked teams in the Coastal.

If they manage to turn their season around and win out, the Hurricanes would finish with a 9-3 record overall and a 6-2 record in conference play. Miami would also guarantee both Virginia Tech and Pitt finish with at least two conference losses, and secure a head-to-head tiebreaker with both. If the Cavaliers win out, then lose to the Hokies, there would be a three-way tie atop the division, assuming Virginia Tech doesn’t drop another game.

If the Cavaliers lose another one of its remaining conference games, the Hurricanes would win the division based on its potential head-to-head wins against the Panthers and Hokies. FPI considers Virginia an underdog against both the Yellow Jackets and Hokies, and gives the Cavaliers worse than a 40-percent chance against both.

What about tiebreakers?

For now, figuring out who will hold the likely tiebreaker is tough. Assuming Miami wins out, Virginia wins every game but the one against the Hokies and Virginia Tech wins every game but the one against the Hurricanes, all three teams would be tied with two conference losses. Miami and the Cavaliers would have the edge in the next tiebreaker as both teams would have only one divisional loss, while Virginia Tech would have two. If this plays out, the Cavaliers would win the division based on its head-to-head win against the Hurricanes.

Additional tiebreakers in a three-team tie include record against non-division opponents and overall record against non-division foes. Miami and Virginia have no common non-division opponents and matching 1-1 records outside of division play. An eventual seventh tiebreaker is particularly hard to predict: “The tied team with the higher ranking by the Team Rating Score metric provided by SportSource Analytics following the conclusion of regular-season games.”

So Miami doesn’t control its own destiny — it hasn’t since losing to Virginia on Oct. 13 — but the season isn’t a totally lost cause yet. If the Hurricanes can start to win again, a return trip to the ACC Championship Game could remain in play until the final days of the regular season.

And five days from now, the division picture could look totally different. None of this will matter, though, until Miami gets in the win column again.

This story was originally published October 29, 2018 at 5:53 PM.