Miami Hurricanes blow early lead in loss to Syracuse, miss out on ACC Championship Game
There were all the expected feelings in the Miami Hurricanes’ locker room on Saturday.
Disappointment. Hurt. Pain.
The way the game on the field unfolded, it’s all justified.
The sixth-ranked Hurricanes blew a three-touchdown lead — and very likely blew their chances at making the College Football Playoff — in a 42-38 loss to the Syracuse Orange on Saturday at the JMA Wireless Dome.
The loss drops Miami to 10-2 on the season (6-2 in Atlantic Coast Conference play) and eliminates the Hurricanes from a chance to play in the ACC Championship Game next weekend in Charlotte. The conference title game will instead be between the No. 9 SMU Mustangs and No. 12 Clemson Tigers, with the winner advancing to the 12-team College Football Playoff field.
Miami, meanwhile, will have to hold its breath and watch how results play out next week to see if it can sneak into the field with an at-large berth.
“Tough loss,” senior linebacker Francisco Mauigoa said. “Never wanted to go that way.”
Especially with everything that was at stake. Miami knew all it had to do was win on Saturday to get into the conference championship game. Play 60 minutes of complimentary football, and they were bound for Charlotte.
And especially considering how the game started. The Hurricanes jumped out to a 21-0 lead 2:03 into the second quarter on a 2-yard touchdown run by Mark Fletcher Jr. and passing touchdowns from Cam Ward to Xavier Restrepo (16 yards) and Elijah Arroyo (3 yards) for the team’s biggest first-half lead in conference play.
And then Syracuse’s offense, led by senior quarterback Kyle McCord, came to life and picked apart a Miami defense that has been susceptible to big plays all season long.
Syracuse (9-3, 5-3 ACC) scored on five of its next seven possessions. The two it didn’t score on: A punt late in the second quarter that led to Miami being up 21-14 at halftime, and a fumble in the red zone in the third quarter that the Orange’s defense made up for by recording a fumble of its own and returning it for a touchdown.
Overall, the Orange racked up 479 yards of offense, with McCord completing 26 of 36 passes for 380 yards and three touchdowns to lead the comeback. Eight of McCord’s passes went for at least 21 yards — all from the second quarter and beyond.
“We thought we lined up well,” Hurricanes coach Mario Cristobal said. “They made the contested catch just about 80, 90 percent of the time. We had difficult time covering them. The ball was out quick. We affected the quarterback early. We were up by a good chunk, and that didn’t affect them as much as it went on. ... They were executing a little bit better than we were. We were trying to play some man [and] we played some zone. We mixed it up as much as we could. I don’t know. We did not have much success. We blew a couple of assignments back there, too.”
Even then, Miami still had a chance to tie the game late. After the Orange up 42-35 with 9:16 left in the fourth quarter, the Hurricanes marched down the field and got to the Syracuse 8-yard line. However, an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on second and goal pushed Miami back to the 23 yard line. Ward, who finished the game completing 25 of 36 passes for 346 yards, completed an 8-yard pass to Cam McCormick and then ran for 5 yards to set up fourth-and-goal from the 10. Instead of trying for the game-tying score, Cristobal opted for a 27-yard Andres Borregales field goal that cut the deficit to 42-38 with 3:42 left on the clock.
“If it was outside the 10-yard line with four minutes to go, it was get the points and get a stop,” Cristobal said. “You have to get a stop anyways, with four minutes.”
The defense didn’t get the stop. Syracuse picked up three first downs on the final possession and sealed the game with a kneel down before its fans stormed the field in celebration.
“We laid it all on the line that last drive,” Mauigoa said. “Those guys, they showed us a lot of shifts and all that to get our eyes in the wrong spot, and they just got us at weak spots on the coverages.”
And now, Miami waits to see what the rest of its season holds. Miami still has an outside chance to make the 12-team playoff field pending the results of next weekend’s conference championship games.
How will Cristobal have the team handle the following week?
“You re-emphasize reality,” Cristobal said. “This team won 10 football games against some really good opponents, and this last game came all the way down to the wire. Our two losses are one-possession losses, less than a touchdown. That makes us one of the better teams in the country. We can control what we can control, so we have to wait and see. But certainly, this team is has really worked hard and busted its butt to put its best foot forward.”
This story was originally published November 30, 2024 at 7:07 PM.
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