Miami (OH) spent the past week getting treated like a statistical glitch: 30 plus wins, a perfect regular season, no power conference opponents on their non-conference schedule, and an at large spot that came with an invitation to the First Four and a label that read “prove it.”

On Wednesday night at UD Arena, the RedHawks did exactly that.

No. 11 seed Miami (OH) beat SMU 89-79 in the First Four to earn its first NCAA tournament win since 1999 and advance to a first round Midwest Region matchup against No. 6 seed Tennessee on Friday in Philadelphia.

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Miami led most of the night and made tournament history for the program along the way. The RedHawks hit 16 three pointers, their most in an NCAA tournament game, and posted their highest scoring total in a tournament contest since 1958.

Coach Travis Steele was blunt afterward about the storyline that surrounded the matchup. “The reason people love March Madness is they love to see quote, unquote, upsets,” Steele said. “This wasn’t an upset tonight, at all.”

The win also gave Miami’s season a new chapter after a path that has been anything but normal. The RedHawks did not face a power conference team in non-league play and went 31-0 in the regular season before losing to UMass in the Mid American Conference tournament quarterfinals. Miami’s strength of schedule hovered near the bottom of Division I, which is how a 31 win team wound up as one of the last at large selections and then had to open the tournament 40 miles from campus.

Steele acknowledged the margin for error Miami faced just to get into the field. “I mean, we had to basically be perfect in the whole regular season to get that at-large,” he said.

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On the floor, Miami looked comfortable in the role it had been denied for weeks: the team dictating terms. The RedHawks leaned hard on three point volume and accuracy. The RedHawks had more made threes in the first half than it attempted two point shots.

Guard Peter Suder framed the night as a response to the resume debate. “All the doubters that doubted us, all saying we don’t have Quad 1 wins, two wins, all that stuff, I don’t know what they’re going to say now,” Suder said. “We proved the doubters wrong. To win by double digits against a really good team, athletically, physically talented players, it’s huge for this program.”

Miami also addressed one of the most common criticisms from its MAC tournament loss: physicality and rebounding. The RedHawks finished even with SMU on the glass at 35 and grabbed 12 offensive rebounds. One of those second chance plays became a back breaker when Suder collected an offensive board with 3:08 left that led to a three by Eian Elmer, pushing the lead to 81-68.

Elmer delivered several of the night’s biggest shots and finished with 22 points. Miami forward Antwone Woolfolk said the response after the UMass loss was direct. “We crashed the glass,” Woolfolk said. “We put pressure on the rim, instead of letting pressure get put on us.”

The environment felt more like an Oxford home game than a neutral site. Miami’s campus is about 40 miles from Dayton, and the crowd leaned heavily RedHawks. SMU coach Andy Enfield said, “That was a great crowd, a home game for Miami. They probably had 12,000 fans here. Felt like 40 or 50,000.”

Miami’s men’s swimming and diving team added its own version of postseason chaos, sprinting down the aisle behind SMU’s basket early in the second half to distract a free throw shooter, matching what it does at Miami’s home arena. Woolfolk noticed. “What really surprised me was the swim team, when they came out,” he said. “That was elite.”

The historical note is the one Miami has been chasing for decades. A MAC team had not earned an at large bid since 1999, the same season Miami reached the Sweet 16 behind Wally Szczerbiak. Wednesday’s win also extended Miami’s first NCAA tournament appearance since 2007 and kept its season rolling into the round of 64.

Now comes the part Miami has been asking for all season: another power conference opponent, with Tennessee waiting Friday in Philadelphia.

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