“Ecstatic is the right word,” RedHawks second-year coach Brian Smiley said. “I’m speaking for our entire coaching staff, our administration. We’re just happy for our players. To see all of their hard work come to fruition.
“Like we’ve talked about, the championship wasn’t won over the weekend. It was won back in September, October, November — those early mornings — that’s when all the hard work was put in.”
The RedHawks (35-21) won the Mid-American Conference Tournament this past weekend and were selected as the fourth seed in the Knoxville Regional.
Miami will face host Tennessee (43-16) in its opening game at 6 p.m. on Friday. Included in the same regional are Wake Forest (36-20) and Cincinnati (32-24).
“Whenever we got here as a coaching staff, the players were really good,” Smiley said. “It just needed a little bit of spark — a little bit of rejuvenation. It was never a lack of talent, it’s just can we get the players to believe in themselves as much as we believed in them as coaches. That was our ultimate quest.
“And little by little, day by day, month by month, week by week, you could see the confidence start building — not only in them as individuals, but the confidence as a team.”
Miami claimed its sixth regular-season MAC Championship this year (1973, 1974, 1979, 1983, 2005 and 2025) along with its fourth MAC Tournament Championship (1983, 2000, 2005 and 2025). This will mark Miami’s eighth appearance overall in the national tournament.
“You just go back to all those early mornings, all those tough practices,” Smiley said. “It’s certainly as a head coach, but all of our coaches, we’re demanding. We demand a lot for them. We expect a lot from them. They’ve never complained. They’re never down. You’ve got to kill them if you want to beat them. This group is truly, truly tough as nails.
“Every time they get knocked down, they get up. So to see them come through a lot of those lows they experienced and come out on top is really cool.”
RedHawks junior Dominic Krupinski went 3-for-4 with one run and two RBIs in Miami’s 6-3 MAC Tournament title victory against Toledo on Sunday.
“It’s a great feeling to kind of be in this spot for the first time in a while with this program,” Krupinski said. “All the work we put in to win the regular season, to win the tournament. We knew we were going to get in, it was just a matter of where and when — and we’re ready to go.”
Miami is 2-1 all-time against Tennessee, with all three games played in the 1960s in Knoxville.
Miami lost to Cincinnati twice during the regular season and had another one cancelled mid-game due to weather. The RedHawks are 55-45-1 all-time against UC.
“It’s awesome,” RedHawks senior David Novak said of competing against Cincinnati in the same regional. “They’re a great team, and obviously a ton of guys on the team being from around here. We play them all the time. We know a lot of guys on that team. It’s great to see where they’ve gone, and being able to be in that regional is just awesome.”
The Knoxville Regional is paired with the Fayetteville Regional that includes No. 3 national seed Arkansas, Kansas, Creighton and North Dakota State. The winners of those two regionals will play in a Super Regional June 6-9.
“The ability to play college baseball is an amazing opportunity,” Miami senior Blake Buzzeo said. “Obviously we’ve had a little more success, especially this year. It’s just a great opportunity to be able to share it amongst the guys and be able to play for each other. It’s something that I’ll never forget.
“We’re definitely built on blue-collar grit and hard work. It comes back to the work we put in behind the scenes. We know that we believe in the work that we’ve put in. It’s just a matter of demonstrating it on the field.”
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