ACC Roundup - It’s All Miami Monday

Only one ACC game on Christmas Day as Miami survived Middle Tennessee 84-81.

We’ve talked about a few teams this year that are regional powers or surprising basketball schools, including New Mexico State. Davidson is another and then there’s Dayton, East Tennessee State, UAB, Weber State...there are a lot of schools like that. You could go on...St. Mary’s...Niagara...Evansville. Belmont.

Middle Tennessee is one of those.

Miami won but it wasn’t an easy game but it was critical coming after the upset by New Mexico State.

Coach Jim Larranaga said the key to this win was rest: "We didn't do our practice. I think the mistake that I made playing (twice) in 24 hours, I didn't rest the guys. We actually went and practiced because we knew New Mexico State did a lot of things that we needed to prepare for and that was bad preparation, (but) we should have just let our guys execute the fundamentals the way we play and that was my mistake. I didn't want to make that same mistake again."

Well it worked: after shooting 34% against the Aggies, Miami hit 60% against the Blue Raiders and needed to because MTSU was right there for most of the game.

Miami’s lead was just one at 72-71 with 2:04 left. The ‘Canes then got a basket from Ja’Quan Newton and then a three from DJ Vasiljevic to go up 77-71 and from there it was basically game management.

With the win, Miami moves to 11-1.

Since everyone is off until Wednesday, we’ll skip ACC At A Glance today.

• What Markell Johnson's suspension means for North Carolina State basketball
• Virginia makes first appearance in AP Top 10 in 2017-2018 season
• North Carolina basketball set to begin ACC schedule
• How did the North Carolina schools miss out on Jerome Robinson?
• What do you want for the Virginia Cavaliers this Christmas season?
• For St. Bonaventure and Jaylen Adams, beating Syracuse was moment 36 years in the making