OXFORD, Ohio — Quick now. Who’s the only team in Division I this season to have two different players score 40 points in a game?
While we’re at it, who’s the only team in the history of the Mid-American Conference to lose 22 games in a row to the same league opponent?
One last thing, what team is 19-5 after enduring losing seasons in 14 of the past 15 years?
The Miami RedHawks, on all counts.
We can address the second question first. When Miami (Ohio) blew past Toledo 92-80 Tuesday night. It was the RedHawks’ first win over the Rockets in 14 years. Almost to the day. Miami’s last victory had been Feb. 12, 2011. Since then, it’s been 22 meetings, 22 losses, which had never happened before in the MAC. Six by one possession. “We came into the game with a chip on our shoulder to change that,” said sophomore guard Kam Craft.
Speak of the devil. It was Craft who buried nine 3-pointers in 14 attempts and finished with 40 points Wednesday night. Teammate Peter Suder scored 42 against Air Force in early December. The list of 40-point games in Division I this season runs 21 names. but Miami is the only program with two, both obviously skilled shooters but neither a consistently huge scorer. Craft’s average is 14.9, Suder 14.1, good for 12th and 14th in the league.
“Two really good players. We try to put them in good positions to let them play. Take the handcuffs off,” said coach Travis Steele, who added that the Miami offense with all its options can be “very hard to scout.”
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Plus, the RedHawks are very adept at getting the ball to a player when he’s on a roll. That’s why Craft had 22 shots Tuesday. The game before, when things weren’t going so well, he had nine. “He was like a video game, shooting like he’s Steph Curry,” Steele said of Craft in the Toledo game. “His teammates did a great job finding him. He was hot and they knew it.
“He’s been crushing it in practice, absolutely crushing it. He doesn’t miss. So I’m not surprised by what he did.”
It’s been something of an unusual journey for Steele and Craft. Steele recruited him out of high school in Illinois but that's when he coached Xavier. Steele had parted ways with the Musketeers when Craft arrived. Craft played a few games for Xavier, then injured his knee and was more or less shelved over the next year and a half. By then Steele was at Miami and Craft decided to join him. So 1,222 days after Craft originally committed to Steele, he finally played a game for him.
“He’s a scorer, he’s fearless, he’s got swagger and he’s got belief,” Steele said. “That’s not fake, that’s real. And he puts in the work. He loves ball, loves it, loves it. I love guys who love ball.”
Two guys going for 40? No wonder Miami is in the top 25 nationally in a bunch of offensive departments — the RedHawks put up 141 points against an NAIA opponent — and the 10-1 start in the MAC is the best this century. The RedHawks, traditionally a mid-major power, have had one winning season since 2009, and that was a pandemic 12-11. One more victory added to the 19-5 record will give them their first 20-win season in 26 years.
Miami was picked to finish sixth in the MAC but now is one game off the lead owned by Akron, the only league team to beat the RedHawks. But the conference tournament is where Miami wants to soar, given how the last NCAA tournament bid was 18 years ago. Regular season heroics don’t count for much in a one-bid league. Ask the team the RedHawks beat Wednesday.
"I refused to talk about it until now, but it's a remarkable accomplishment,” Toledo coach Tod Kowalczyk said of the 22-game winning streak over Miami. “We've done a lot of things that haven't been done in the history of the league, like 20 straight conference wins and winning four consecutive MAC titles."
Yep, the Rockets have piled up the past four regular season championships. “The gold standard in our league,” Steele called them. But they haven’t been to the NCAA tournament since 1980 because something has always gone wrong in the MAC tournament. Wednesday’s loss left Toledo in third place, three games behind Akron, so a five-peat is unlikely.
But what the Rockets want are three wins at the league tournament in Cleveland. Miami, too. That’s where Steele wouldn’t mind someone going for 40. It has happened. Twice.
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