From tryouts on the student union patio to Elite 8. Covering Canes has been quite a ride | Opinion
We are taught, as sportswriters, to remain objective, never to cheer in the press box.
The moment we put a media credential around our neck, we relinquish our role as sports fan and become an observer and chronicler of the drama on the fields and courts.
But there is no rule about nostalgia. So, I will freely admit that sitting courtside at the United Center in Chicago for the Miami Hurricanes’ Elite Eight game against Kansas on Sunday brought back a flood of memories reminding me just how far this basketball program has come in the past 40 years.
When I arrived at the University of Miami as a freshman from Killian High in 1983 there was no men’s basketball team. Only women’s basketball.
The men’s program had been disbanded on April 22, 1971, when the UM Board of Trustees sat around a conference table and decided to do away with it because of sagging attendance and financial losses. The nomadic Hurricanes had traipsed from the Coral Gables High gym to the Miami Beach Convention Hall to Miami-Dade Junior College to Dinner Key Auditorium.
When the Board of Trustees folded the program that sad day, the press release read: “The basketball team will cease operation temporarily until such time as a permanent field house can be constructed on the main campus.’’
A decade earlier, Rick Barry had become a UM legend and would go on to star in the NBA. Before Barry got there, a kid named Dick Hickox led the 1959-60 Hurricanes to a 23-3 record, top-10 ranking and their first NCAA Tournament. Forced to get by on a shoestring budget, those players, known as “The Cinderella Five,’’ drove themselves to road games, shared banana splits at Breeding’s Drug Store, and their coach, Bruce Hale, laundered their uniforms and shared an office with coaches from three other sports.
During the 14-year hiatus, while the UM men’s team lay dormant, other programs, like Kansas, continued to build on their tradition.
Then, in 1985, during my junior year, the UM program was reborn under coach Bill Foster. I was working for the school newspaper, The Miami Hurricane, at the time and it was a huge story.
The resurrection actually began during my freshman year, when newly hired athletic director Sam Jankovich pledged to bring back men’s basketball. A small group of Miami businessmen opened their checkbooks to get the project going.
Open tryouts were held on the student union patio with portable baskets. Frat boys and other UM students showed up. Bob Schneckenberg, a 6-6 architecture student from Orlando, and Mike Noblet, a 6-7 Coral Springs High grad, were among the lucky few who made the cut.
The first recruited players were sharpshooting Kevin Presto, high-flying Dennis Burns, New York high school star Eric “Downtown” Brown, Tim Harvey and Tim Dawson.
Games were played at the 5,109-seat James L. Knight Center, a downtown theater with velvet seats. The court was literally on the stage and the lighting was meant for concerts and plays, not college basketball. But it was cozy, and fun, and finally UM basketball was back.
I was there for their first game on Nov. 23, 1985. They defeated The Citadel 85-77. Burns scored a game-high 24 points and Presto added 22.
Foster threw his young team of mostly freshmen and sophomores into the fire. Their opponents that first year included UCLA, Notre Dame, Arizona, North Carolina, Dayton, and Duke – all teams that made the NCAA Tournament the year before.
I was there when in 1986 when 7-1 center Tito Horford from the Dominican Republic joined the team, which was a huge deal at the time.
I graduated, left South Florida for a decade, and watched from St. Petersburg and Detroit as the UM program slowly grew and moved to the Miami Arena. I joined the Miami Herald in 1996, and four years later, Leonard Hamilton got the Canes back to national prominence with a Sweet 16 berth in 2000.
It was miracle considering UM went 0-18 in the Big East in 1993-94. James Jones, now the Phoenix Suns general manager, was on Hamilton’s Sweet 16 team, along with Johnny Hemsley, Mario Bland, Vernon Jennings, Elton Tyler and John Salmons, who had a successful NBA career.
I didn’t get to cover that Sweet 16 run because my daughter was born in late-February of 2000, so I was going through a sleepless March Madness of a different kind.
But I was around for the dedication of the $48 million on-campus arena in 2003, and the move from the Big East to the ACC. I was there for the Perry Clark years and the Frank Haith years. And I was there 11 years ago, when Jim Larranaga was hired, and have watched him, and his staff, take the program to new heights.
I saw them beat North Carolina and Duke – numerous times. I was in the Greensboro Coliseum when they won the 2013 ACC Championship over the Tar Heels. I saw sellout seasons from 2015 to 2018.
And then, last Sunday, from my courtside press seat, I posted this on Twitter: “A sentence I did not expect to be writing when the season began: Miami leads No. 1 seed Kansas 35-29 at halftime in the Elite 8.”
Though the Hurricanes wound up losing that game – badly – I couldn’t help but think back to those tryouts on the student union patio. It’s been quite a ride, theirs and mine.
This story was originally published March 29, 2022 at 9:37 PM.