Archdeacon: 31-0 Miami will ‘always be remembered as the perfect team’

Popcorn boxes, trash, some loose change, plastic water bottles and, as one security guard pointed out afterwards, a pair of old dirty socks.

“It was like playing in a hornets’ nest,” Miami athletics director David Sayler said afterward.

To be fair, Miami did some stinging of its own. The RedHawks were whistled — a couple of times questionably — for three technical fouls and one flagrant foul.

While this already was an over-the-top rivalry between two teams going back 119 years and 219 games, nothing has ever quite compared to this confrontation.

Miami, ranked No. 19, came into Athens 30-0, the only undefeated team in the nation and in recent weeks the most talked about, debated and celebrated team in the game.

That set the stage for this thrilling, often gut-wrenching, toe-to-toe slugfest that Miami won 110-108 in overtime to cap off a 31-0 regular season and become one of just seven teams in the past 50 years to finish the regular season unbeaten.

Miami hadn’t won at the Convocation Center since 2011, back when the late Charlie Coles was the RedHawks coach.

Back when he collapsed on the court with a heart attack during a Miami game at Western Michigan in 1998 when a doctor came out of the stands and brought him back to life — Coles told me the next day as he lay in a Kalamazoo hospital:

“I’m glad this happened here. If it had happened at OU, they would have just pulled me off the court and let me lay there as they kept playing.”

That kind of give-no-quarter reputation is why some people thought Miami’s storybook streak would come to an end in Athens Friday night. But that was not the case for Miami’s freshman guard Trey Perry, who has come into his own down the stretch this season, and in the words of RedHawks star Peter Suder: “He gives us some swagger.”

You saw that in Friday’s game as Perry finished with 21 points and became the perfect complement of junior guard Eian Elmer, who led the way with 32 points, 12 rebounds and one huge, blocked shot with 92 seconds left in overtime.

Credit: AP

Credit: AP

And you heard it from Perry afterward, as well:

“All week, all I heard was how we hadn’t won in this gym … how we’d lost all these games here to these guys. But all those (OU) teams hadn’t played the 2025-2026 RedHawks. With us, we’re all about winning. No matter what the situation, we find a way.”

Elmer claimed Friday’s crowd actually helped fuel Miami’s victory:

“We’ve gotten to love opposing crowds. We always have to play the villains now. Everybody wants to be the David that takes down Goliath. We go in with that approach and know we have to handle business.”

Friday’s 110-108 escape was the sixth game the RedHawks have won by two points this season and the fourth time they’ve prevailed in overtime.

“No matter what the situation — no matter what the team has needed — someone has stepped up and provided it," Sayler said. “This team has refused to lose.

“That’s why these kids, these student-athletes and the coaching staff, they’re going to be legends at Miami for the rest of their lives.

“They are the embodiment of perfection.

“They will always be remembered as the perfect team.”

‘Everybody’s best shot’

As the RedHawks went through the postgame handshake line with the Bobcats — although there had been a brief shoving match on the court at game’s end — you saw shared respect among the players.

It took a few fans a little longer to drop the aggression:

“I am upset some things got thrown at us,” Miami head coach Travis Steele said. “That’s not right. We’re not animals at the zoo. You don’t do that. There’s a line. It was a great environment tonight, a real rivalry game. It was just some yahoos up there in the stands doing that.”

Credit: AP

Credit: AP

Once the players got into the dressing room, they knelt and said the Lord’s Prayer and then cheered and went through their celebratory rituals.

Perry was given a sledgehammer and proceeded to break a cement block — adorned with an OU logo — with a mighty swing.

Elmer was given the big, gold EGB chain — something Mr. T would have worn with pride back in the day — for the energy he infused in the team on this night.

He was the one sure answer the team had for the magnificent play of Ohio guard Jackson Paveletzke, a transfer from Iowa State, whose long-range accuracy and gritty drives produced 37 points and six assists.

The 6-foot 2 senior was all but unstoppable until Elmer blocked one layup attempt late and he missed two crucial shots: a contested, game-winning short jumper at the end of regulation play and his three-point attempt for the win at the buzzer in overtime.

Steele brought Elmer to the front of the dressing room and praised his play and told how one game after another, one of them has risen up to carry the team:

“We overcame a lot of stuff tonight and you always kept your mind. We’ve been doing that all year long, fellas, and I’m super proud of you. We’ve taken everybody’s best shot and never flinched. We’re 31-0. You know how ridiculously hard that is?”

‘40 minutes of sheer will’

Later Steele talked about the way he has handled this run and said he’s leaned on Phil Martelli, the former coach of Saint Joseph’s, who led his 2003-04 team to a perfect 27-0 regular season record and a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

The Hawks finally lost in the Elite Eight and Martelli was named the National College Coach of the Year.

“A month and a half ago I started to reach out to him just for advice. He has been through this — how everywhere you go it feels like the freakin’ Super Bowl. I asked him about keeping it loose and not letting the pressure set in. And he gave me some really good advice. Some things he’d have done differently and some things he loved that he did.”

Those suggestions contributed to the wondrous job Steele already had done putting this team together the old-fashioned way with retained players and freshmen rather than just all NIL-monied players pulled from the transfer portal.

Credit: AP

Credit: AP

After guiding them to perfection, his RedHawks now should be a lock for an NCAA Tournament berth regardless of what they do in the upcoming Mid-American Conference Tournament.

While there is much debate about their weak non-conference schedule, the truth is power conference teams — not to mention local heavyweights like Dayton and Cincinnati — will not play them now.

But with three victories in the MAC Tournament, they’ll have the league’s automatic bid and no one will be able to argue their entry. Steele though is looking for more than that:

“Our goal is not to win 31 games, it’s to advance.

“I want to get to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament. That’s where anything can happen. It doesn’t matter who the better team is. It’s not the NBA playoffs, best of seven.

“It’s one game. It’s 40 minutes of sheer will, Man!”

And that would make it a repeat of Friday night.