Making NCAA tournament ‘released some pressure' for Hurricanes. Now, it's time to play

Miami Herald

5 days ago

There were mixed emotions inside the Miami Hurricanes baseball team's locker room on Monday.
Excitement. Nerves. Anticipation.
The team knew it had the talent and a case to make the NCAA tournament this year but also understood it didn't do itself any favors with a slow start to conference play or a sluggish finish to the regular season.
So it was easy for jitters to turn to relief when Miami found itself as the No. 3 seed in the Hattiesburg (Mississippi) regional hosted by No. 16 Southern Miss, the second of 16 regionals announced.
'That kind of released some pressure,' shortstop Jake Ogden said.
And now, the Hurricanes can focus solely on what's ahead.
Miami (31-24) begins the tournament against No. 2 regional seed Alabama (41-16) at 3 p.m. from Pete Taylor Park, with the game televised on ESPN2. No. 1 seed and host Southern Miss (44-14) and No. 4 seed and Ivy League champion Columbia (29-17) round out the field.
The Hurricanes will clearly be an underdog, but this team went through hard times during the regular season to get to this point.
So their thought process going into the tournament: Bring it on.
'We've had our ups and our downs, but there's never been a hangover from the night before, from a game before, anything like that,' second-year Hurricanes head coach J.D. Arteaga said. 'Every day's been a new day. We've shown up to the ballpark with a great attitude, top of the mountain. We didn't always end there, but we're 0-0 every day when we wake up and we've got a chance to be 1-0 at the end of the day and start over the next day. Yesterday's hits don't help us win today's game, and vice versa.'
The Hurricanes making the field is due in large part to a late-season surge. Miami was 15-15 in early April and had won just two of its first nine games in Atlantic Coast Conference play.
After that, UM went on a tear in conference action. The Hurricanes won five consecutive conference series against Pittsburgh, Duke, Georgia Tech, Boston College and North Carolina State, going 15-3 overall in that stretch (including midweek games) to significantly boost its RPI and get into good enough standing to be a contender to make the tournament.
A sluggish finish — getting swept by Virginia, dropping two of three to Notre Dame and a first-round exit in the ACC tournament to Cal — eliminated any slim hopes of Miami getting a host bid or even being a regional No. 2 seed but wasn't enough to knock the Hurricanes out of making the tournament all together.
'Nothing's too big,' said redshirt junior pitcher Brian Walters, who began the season as the No. 3 starting pitcher in Miami's weekend rotation before converting to closer midseason and racking up eight saves down the stretch. 'We've come back in some crazy games and we've held some leads in some crazy games. ... We're excited to go put that on display in a new place.'
Added sophomore third baseman Daniel Cuvet, who is experiencing the NCAA tournament for the first time after Miami missed the field in 2024 during his freshman campaign: 'We've obviously been on the very low side of the season and the very high side of the season, but we've been sticking together. ... That's what's going to help us in the playoffs.'
Hattiesburg Regional schedule
Friday
3 p.m.: No. 2 Alabama vs. No. 3 Miami
7 p.m.: No. 1 Southern Miss vs. No. 4 Columbia
Saturday
3 p.m.: Loser of Game 1 vs Loser of Game 2
9 p.m.: Winner of Game 1 vs. Winner of Game 2
Sunday
3 p.m.: Winner of Game 3 vs Loser of Game 4
7 p.m.: Winner of Game 5 vs. Winner of Game 4
Monday
TBD time: Winner of Game 6 vs. Loser of Game 6 (if necessary)