Miami’s men’s basketball team secured a decisive 97-41 win over Delaware State on Sunday at the Watsco Center in Coral Gables. The Hurricanes’ victory was their first by a margin of at least 50 points since defeating Nova Southeastern in 2009.
Miami, now with a 5-1 record, opened the game strongly with an 11-2 run and extended its lead to 25-7 early in the first half. By halftime, Miami led by 31 points after holding Delaware State to just seven field goals and forcing 11 turnovers. The Hurricanes shot nearly 65 percent from the field during the opening period.
The team maintained control throughout the second half, starting with a 16-5 run and later building a lead of 57 points before the under-eight-minute timeout. Forwards Tre Donaldson and Malik Reneau led scoring efforts with 24 and 21 points respectively, shooting a combined perfect percentage from the floor. Reneau also collected his third double-double of the season with ten rebounds. Salih Altuntas contributed his first career double-double with thirteen points and eleven rebounds.
Overall, Miami shot just over sixty-one percent for the game while limiting Delaware State to less than twenty-six percent—marking the first time since 2012 that Miami has held an opponent below thirty percent shooting.
Head coach Jai Lucas commented on how the team responded after its earlier loss to Florida: “Well, you know, the main thing for me was sometimes, as a coach, you can tell them about stuff and try to give them the answers to the test, but they really don’t, I won’t say, pay attention, or they don’t understand, until they go through it. So some of those things that I talked about and told about we went through in the Florida game. I feel like going into the Elon game, we still were kind of caught up in Florida and a little bit hungover with what happened and how the game went and how we felt about it, and it was our first loss. But I feel their response from the film and everything has been good. And so, you know, we just had Florida, we had some injuries and kind of have kept us out of whack a little bit of practice and stuff like that. So hopefully we can get those guys back before Thursday and get some good practice in. And so some of the stuff we talked about, just the defensive intensity, getting back to being a high assist team and limiting our turnovers as much as we can. It’s a big part of it, too.”
Lucas also addressed his focus on defense: “I just want to get back to where I felt we were defensively to start the year, and part of that is getting them to understand with some of these games and the scores getting out of hand is that we have to stay true to who we are, no matter what, no matter the opponent, no matter the score, what we preach and what we say we’re about, it has to show every time we go on the court. And so that’s the main thing that I’m looking at. I’m not coaching the game thinking ‘oh well Delaware State has 19 points at halftime.’ I’m coaching the game ‘are we executing what we practice and what we preach?’ And we are a little still too inconsistent for me but we are going to work in right direction.”
Senior forward Malik Reneau spoke about how size benefits their play: “Yeah, I mean our size and our height it gives us so much ability to do a lot of things on court…just being confident…is going be huge step in our next step to ultimately having better offensive skill.”
Senior guard Tre Donaldson described their defensive priorities: “I mean making it tough for other teams. We have a really good big and good team…it’s just being able to bother people…using that [athleticism] to our advantage…and then turn them over…that’s something we want do every night no matter who we’re playing.”
Looking ahead,tickets remain available for upcoming games as Miami prepares for its next matchup against ninth-ranked BYU on Thursday in ESPN Events Invitational play.
