Undefeated but far from perfect, Hurricanes ‘pushing forward’ with second half of season
Lance Guidry claims he’s not a fortune teller.
But there he was on the sidelines, essentially serving as the Miami Hurricanes’ Nostradamus.
The Hurricanes had just held the Cal Golden Bears to a field goal but were still down by 20 early in the fourth quarter.
At that point, Guidry huddled his players on the sideline and gave his prophecy.
“We’re gonna win by one,” Miami’s defensive coordinator recalled telling the group. “We’re gonna win by one.”
What unfolded after that lived up to Guidry’s prediction. Cal didn’t score again in the quarter, while Miami scored three touchdowns, with the final one putting the Hurricanes up 39-38 with 26 seconds left on the clock.
Miami won by one.
“You just get a feel for things and how things are going to go sometimes,” Guidry said. “It’s kind of a gut feeling.”
While the Hurricanes came away with the win — Miami’s 25-point comeback win after being down 35-10 at one point was the second-largest in school history — it’s also a reminder of how far this team still has to go.
Yes, the Hurricanes are undefeated at the halfway mark of the regular season.
But they know they are far from perfect.
Their 6-0 record is intact because of a pair of ferocious comebacks to begin Atlantic Coast Conference play — rallying from multiple 10-point deficits to beat Virginia Tech 38-34 on Sept. 27 and then that miraculous road win at Cal.
Miami has acknowledged that there’s more that they can show on the field.
Coach Mario Cristobal knows he has to keep his team grounded amid the team’s success — the Hurricanes are one of 11 Football Bowl Subdivision teams with a perfect record entering this week. Offensive coordinator Shannon Dawson said the team has “left huge chunks of meat on the bone” even with the team leading the nation in scoring (47.7 points per game), total offense (583.8 yards per game) and yards per play (8.15). Guidry knows the Hurricanes can’t rely on miracle comebacks every week after putting themselves in an early hole.
And now here comes the second half of the season as Miami comes off its first bye week of the season. The six games ahead — all conference contests, starting at noon Saturday when No. 6 Miami travels to face Louisville — will determine whether Miami gets to its ultimate goal.
“I don’t think anybody’s looking back,” Cristobal said. “We don’t let them. We don’t want them to because it means absolutely nothing. Everybody’s on the same plane. If you put up conference standings, [almost] everybody’s either 1-0, 2-0, 3-0, 1-1, 2-1. Everybody’s alive, and everybody will be mathematically alive until Week 10 or 11, and then there’ll be another handful alive all the way at the end. The more you win, the more you control your destiny. ... Everybody is fighting for their lives, and everybody’s gotta understand that if anyone loses sight of the urgency necessary to win right now, they’re out of their minds and they don’t understand football. Everyone’s going to get everyone’s best because everyone has a chance.”
So for the Hurricanes, it’s back to the practice field for Miami, back to meetings, back to watching film, back to prioritizing fundamentals and technique and game situations. Nothing is going to be handed to them. The focus is on maximizing the present so that the future can come to fruition.
“We just need to fine tune every little detail,” fifth-year senior wide receiver Xavier Restrepo said after the win over Cal. “Even on the bye week, we’re just trying to get better. We can’t get too high or too low. We have to just keep on pushing forward and getting better each and every single day.”
Cristobal said the Hurricanes did just that during their bye week. He said the team took a “humble approach” to the week. They had time to rest early after returning from their late-night, adrenaline-filled win over Cal before going back into “full-throttle practice” mode on Wednesday and Thursday.
“You look in the mirror [after the past two wins] and say ‘Man, that’s not good enough,’” Cristobal said. “Win or loss, that shouldn’t be good enough.”
Cristobal and his coaching staff put the onus on themselves to get things right, especially at the start of games.
“You’ve gotta take ownership as a coach, and you gotta make it a point not to cover material, but to teach,” Cristobal said. “There’s a very big difference. Anyone go out there and say, ‘Hey, we covered that in a meeting; well, that’s BS. You’ve gotta teach it, and teaching means you’re sharing and the learning process. We feel that we did a much better job getting to the nuts and bolts of what it means to get better.”
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