Miami Hurricanes want to keep season goals alive. That starts with beating Wake Forest
Cam Ward knows his short time with the Miami Hurricanes is nearing its conclusion. He came to Miami with the goal of proving he can be an elite player and to win championships.
The former has been established. The latter is still a possibility.
“It’s been fun. It’s been an exciting journey,” Ward said. “My teammates welcomed me in. They really pushed me to who I am as a person and player right now. I just don’t want it to end.”
Ward has the ability to extend his Hurricanes career a few extra games if he and his team can take care of business over the next few weeks.
While the No. 8 Hurricanes (9-1, 5-1 Atlantic Coast Conference) suffered their first loss on Nov. 9 in a 28-23 defeat at Georgia Tech, they still control their path to both the ACC Championship Game and the 12-team College Football Playoff if they win out the rest of their schedule.
That starts noon Saturday when Miami hosts the Wake Forest Demon Deacons (4-6, 2-4 ACC) at Hard Rock Stadium in their final home game of the regular season. The game will be broadcast on ESPN.
“It’s just exciting to see what we’re doing, just as a whole, especially as a team,” Ward said. “At this time of the year, we’ve just gotta keep being us, keep being the same team that we’ve been. We’ve got a good locker room, good guys. All that stuff goes into trying to win football games. We’ve just gonna remain focused, and just continue to love on one another.”
The Hurricanes had an off week following the Georgia Tech loss. It gave them extra time to look over what went wrong and correct their mistakes.
It also gave them extra time to stew over the defeat and let the reality of the situation sink in.
“Guys on the team already know what it is,” fifth-year senior wide receiver Xavier Restrepo said. “We didn’t play our best football. We let each other down. At the end of the day, we’re just super stoked to get back on the field and just have the respect for each other and not to let each other down.”
The mistakes and the pitfalls against Georgia Tech were glaring. The defense couldn’t stop a Yellow Jackets offense that it knew was going to be predominantly run-heavy. Georgia Tech gashed Miami for 271 rushing yards and made the few key plays it needed to through the air.
The common theme from defensive coordinator Lance Guidry and players throughout this week when talking about the struggles was communication issues.
“Make sure you overcommunicate,” Guidry said. “Sometimes you communicate things, but if they don’t give you a signal back, you really don’t know if they got it or not. So just some of those things, we’ve got to a better job as coaches, making sure we implement those things.”
On offense, Miami’s normally clutch offense went stagnant at times and it proved costly. The Hurricanes went just 3 for 10 on third down after entering the game converting 58.8 percent of their third-down attempts. They also went just 1 for 4 on fourth down after entering with a 76.9 percent success rate (10 for 13) on the season.
“Those are key downs of a drive,” Ward said. “You’ve gotta be able to make plays and we didn’t do that. We weren’t consistent.”
Now comes the question that generally comes after a team trying to prove itself suffers its first loss: Will Miami rebound or did it start the beginning of the end? A team’s resolve gets tested. It’s true self comes out.
How Miami plays against Wake Forest, a 24-and-a-half point underdog, will be the first sign of which way the team is heading.
“We finally got exposed,” Ward said. “Wins hide a lot of stuff, but it doesn’t hide everything. We got better at what we need to get on the bye week right through the game. We’re just trying to go get the dub this week.”
A chance for perfection at home
If the Hurricanes win on Saturday, they will go a perfect 6-0 at home this season. It would be their first time going undefeated at home since 2017.
“It’d be a strong statement,” Hurricanes coach Mario Cristobal said. “You have so many goals that you talk about when the season starts, and certainly that’s one of them. You always want to make your own place a tough place to play. And the beauty of it, it ties into right way to the ultimate goal, being 1-0 on Saturday. This one just happens to be the last one at Hard Rock. And you know what? Our fans have done a great job all year at home and away. We want to make sure that they feel it, that they continue to feel a tighter and a stronger bond to us.”
Stats to know
▪ Miami is 8-3 all-time against Wake Forest and has won each of its past seven games in the series.
▪ Ward is 149 yards shy of passing Bernie Kosar’s single-season school record for passing yards (3,642) set in the 1984 season.
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