Can the Canes?

The latest from The Field of 68 Premium tackles the subject everyone's wondering about entering the Final Four: How in the world can Miami beat UConn? We identified the formula that can make it happen, just like we pinpointed what made Purdue vulnerable and why San Diego State was bound to make a run in March.

This exclusive content for paid subscribers is written by Will Warren, who writes a marvelous college hoops newsletter, Stats By Will. (Sign up for it here.)

Miami: More than just a vibe

Of the four teams who’ve made it to the final weekend of the college basketball season, the Miami Hurricanes probably had the least likely path to get here, both based on their odds and on how their first game went. With 5:10 to go, Miami trailed 12-seed Drake 55-47 and had an 8% chance of winning the game, per KenPom.

The run of a lifetime for Miami faithful, and for human ball of delight Jim Larrañaga, was unlikely to happen.

The beauty of March is that it did happen.

Miami players have to have a little bit of a Paul Rudd vibe to them at the moment: “look at us, who would’ve thought?” So does the rest of America, despite how thoroughly watchable the Canes were throughout the season. Miami is not the underdog that a 2021 UCLA may have been, but they enter this Final Four as perhaps the least-hyped of the four, which is a funny thing to say about a 29-7 Final Four team from the ACC.

Now, the Hurricanes take on the prohibitive favorite in UConn, the current No. 1 team in KenPom and a team with an absurd +90 scoring margin through their four Tournament wins. There are a few who are predicting a Miami win (We see you, Randolph Childress), but they're few and far between.

UConn’s yet to play a single game within 15 points at the final buzzer in this event. The first question: can Miami hang with these tough, disciplined Huskies for a full 40? The next: if so, how can they pull off the mild-but-memorable upset?

First off, control the controllable

We’ll get into Miami’s ability to get scalding hot from three eventually, but considering how real game-to-game shooting variance is in college basketball, it’s best to hold off for now. (Plus, Miami just won a game where they made just two threes in 40 minutes of basketball.) There’s a couple of factors that matter a hair more here and are more controllable for Miami in the traditional sense: two-point efficiency and the rebounding battle.

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