Miami Hurricanes - Men's Basketball

Men's Basketball

Main article: Miami Hurricanes men's basketball

The Miami Hurricanes men's basketball team has produced three players who are currently on NBA rosters. Rick Barry, who played his collegiate basketball at UM, is a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame. Barry is the Hurricanes' only consensus All-American in basketball and led the nation in scoring his senior year with a 37.4 average during the 1964–65 campaign. The team plays its home games at the BankUnited Center on the University of Miami's Coral Gables campus.

The Board of Trustees attempted to shut the program down in the middle of the 1970 season, which forced Will Allen to organize his teammates and strike because it was not sufficient notice for the players to transfer schools. They held a press conference and this caught the attention of the national press, and the university actually dropped the program after the 1971 season, with the Board citing inadequate facilities, sagging attendance, and serious financial losses as the reasons for the decision. The program was revived before the 1985–86 season, though UM would be minimally competitive over the next several years. The program's fortunes turned around in 1990 when Miami hired Leonard Hamilton as head basketball coach and accepted an invitation to join the Big East. By the end of the decade, Hamilton had turned UM into one of the better basketball programs in the Big East and had guided UM to three straight NCAA tournament appearances (1998–2000), including a #2 seed in the 1999 tournament and a Sweet 16 appearance in 2000. The 1998 tournament appearance was UM's first since 1960.

Hamilton left at the end of the 2000 season to become head coach of the NBA's Washington Wizards and was replaced by Perry Clark. During Clark's second season (2001–02) the team won 24 games and a #5 seed in the NCAA tournament. With the 2002–03 season, the team moved into its newly completed on-campus arena, the BankUnited Center. Despite a win over powerhouse North Carolina to christen the new arena, Clark's teams performed woefully over the next two seasons, leading to his dismissal following the 2003–04 season (UM's last season in the Big East). Clark was replaced by Frank Haith, whose teams were competitive in UM's first two seasons as a member of the Atlantic Coast Conference.

In the 2007/2008 season, after being picked to finish last in the Atlantic Coast Conference the Hurricanes finished the year 23–11 (8–8 in the ACC) and reached the second round of the NCAA Tournament before falling to the second seeded University of Texas at Austin. This was the team's first NCAA tournament bid since the 2001–2002 season.

For the 2009/2010 season, Miami had a winning record overall (20–13), but finished in last place in the ACC with a record of 4–12.

On April 4, 2011, Miami Coach Frank Haith accepted a Head Coaching position at the University of Missouri.

On April 22, 2011, George Mason Patriots Head Coach Jim Larranaga accepted the Head Coaching position after coaching the Patriots for 14 seasons.

Read more about this topic:  Miami Hurricanes

Famous quotes containing the words men and/or basketball:

    It is not book-learning young men need, nor instruction about this and that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies: do the thing—”Carry a message to Garcia!”
    Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915)

    Perhaps basketball and poetry have just a few things in common, but the most important is the possibility of transcendence. The opposite is labor. In writing, every writer knows when he or she is laboring to achieve an effect. You want to get from here to there, but find yourself willing it, forcing it. The equivalent in basketball is aiming your shot, a kind of strained and usually ineffective purposefulness. What you want is to be in some kind of flow, each next moment a discovery.
    Stephen Dunn (b. 1939)