“Usually I go out there beforehand, at about the 52-minute mark of warmups,” said the Miami head coach. “I like to watch both teams warm up and see kind of where we’re at mentally.
“But I can’t sit in my normal seat anymore. It used to be in the student section (at the end of the court.) I’d sit in the top row of the bleachers, all by myself.”
An hour before Friday night’s game, those seats and most of the rest in Millett Hall already were filled with fans.
“I had to take my rear end to the top section in the middle (of the arena) just to sit down,” he said with a laugh.
Brant Byers, the 6-foot-8 sophomore wing player who led the RedHawks with 21 points in the 90-75 victory Friday night, was just as struck by the early-arriving, already stoked — on hoops euphoria, High Street libations or both — crowd when he came out well before the game’s 9pm start:
“It’s amazing. It’s a lot different than it was here just two years ago, my first year here. To see the amount of people in here even before warmups start is insane. We weren’t getting that kind of crowd for our games.”
Miami basketball isn’t just the best basketball experience in the Miami Valley right now, it’s one of the top hoops spectacles in all of college ball.
With Friday’s victory, the RedHawks are now 25-0 and the only Division I team in the nation that’s still unbeaten. It’s the best start not only in Miami basketball history, but in the Mid-American Conference, as well.
Monday the RedHawks again will be nationally ranked. They’ve been in the Top 25 for a month now, though they deserve to be higher than No. 23.
“When we see that No. 23 next to our name, it something probably none of us expected when we first came here,” Byers admitted. “But at the same time, we know if we have one bad game, then most likely, it’s gone.”
The RedHawks have had no bad games at home. They’ve now won 29 games in a row at Millett, also a program record.
Friday’s crowd of 10,640 was the second straight sellout of a RedHawks game and it tied the all-time attendance mark for Millett set at the Northern Illinois game two weeks ago.
This is the same program not too many years ago — in the midst of a 15-year span with just one winning season — that had trouble drawing 1,500 people to a game.
When Steele took over the job four years ago — after the plug was pulled early on him at Xavier — he said as lowly as Miami hoops had become, he saw “so much upside.”
Credit: David Jablonski
Credit: David Jablonski
“To me the campus is the best campus in all of America. It really is. It’s like Disney World. There are no bad days.
“I knew there could be more here, but we had to get everyone pulling in the same direction — from the Board (of Trustees), President Crawford, (athletics director) David Sayler and myself.”
He said everything did get “aligned very, very well.”
If you want to know how on board everyone is, all you had to do was look at the student section at the far end of the court during a time out with 14:41 left in the game and Miami up by 17.
The students, many wearing red and white candy-striped overalls, were up dancing, as were the cheerleaders
They were up swaying and dipping and moving their arms in unison to Swag Surfin’ by the hip-hoppers F.L.Y. (Fast Life Yungstaz.)
And out front, right in the middle of them, was Miami president Gregory Crawford and his physics professor, fund-raiser wife, Dr. Renate Crawford, grooving with them.
Before the game, ESPN announcer Mark Adams got in on the fun, as well. The Miami swim team, which has laid claim to those prime seats beyond the baseline, have become a must-see side attraction. At an opportune moment, they suddenly shed their pants and cheer bare-chested while just wearing red Speedos.
They especially cavort to distract opposing free throw shooters just a few yards away.
Adams, who is just a few months shy of 70, came over, stripped down to what looked like pink swimming trunks and soon was hoisted on the swimmers’ upraised arms so he could body surf above them.
Friday’s crowd included Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, himself a Miami alum, and at least two Miami hoops standouts from the past:
Jermaine Henderson, once a star guard here, who became a longtime RedHawks assistant coach and now is on Anthony Grant’s staff at Dayton sat with Devin Davis, a Miami Hall of Famer, who had a long pro career overseas and joined Miami greats Wayne Embry and Ron Harper as the only players in program history to amass over 1,000 points and 1,000 rebounds in their Miami careers.
Harper and Embry have both been back to Oxford recently to watch their team play and thank it for restoring honor to the program.
Thursday Miami RedHawks great Wally Szczerbiak, now a CBS basketball analyst, visited campus. He practiced with the team, shot a segment for TV and took part in a gala pep rally hosted Uptown at Brick Street, the popular hangout operated by Mark and Will Weisman.
“Love and Honor” is the motto of the school, and Friday night Steele stressed: “It is real.”
You see it from the alums who finally have reason to return to Millett, which by the way, Steele stressed, has become “one of the hardest places to play in in college basketball.”
Credit: David Jablonski
Credit: David Jablonski
The crowd’s a big reason, but more so this team, which Steele built contrary to the popular perception of the day.
In these times of an open portal and the demand for instant success, most teams rely on transfers and don’t have time to develop freshmen.
Steele has done the opposite.
The team added just one transfer this season — 6-foot-8 forward Almar Atlason from Bradley — brought in several freshman and, unlike many mid-major schools, was able to retain several key players.
“When everybody is zigging, we’re zagging,” Steele said with a grin “Sometimes it’s easier to be different than better.”
His team is both.
Friday night, besides Byers’ 21 points, Miami got 20 from Pete Suder and 15 from Eian Elmer, while point guard Luke Skaljac added 12 and Atlason 11.
With the offense clicking game after game and the defense getting better, this is a team to reckon with.
The 44-year-old coach deserves to be in the national coach of the year conversation. He took a program on life support and made it the talk of college basketball.
And it’s not just what the players are doing, but how they are doing it.
Byers said Steele stresses that they have fun along the way and that allows them to play “free.”
“Listen, everybody wants to take the fun out of stuff,” Steele said. “You only live life once. We’ve got a great group of guys and they’re doing extraordinary things.
“People see that and want to be a part of it.”
That’s why they come so early to the games now.
And that’s why Travis Steele no longer has his pregame seat.
“It’s a fun problem to have,” he said. “I understand. I like watching our guys, too.”
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