CORAL GABLES, Fla. (AP) -Getting through a rough four-game stretch of the season with three wins and vaulting back into the AP Top 25 poll has Miami feeling good about itself again.
Mark Whipple and John Lovett aren’t necessarily impressed.
Miami’s first-year coordinators have known each other for 30 years, are close friends and apparently think exactly the same way. Beating Florida State, Georgia Tech and Oklahoma was nice, but both insisted Tuesday that the 11th-ranked Hurricanes (3-1) still have plenty of improvements to make if this season is ultimately going to be successful.
Proof? There are 43 teams in major college football with 3-1 records or better so far this season.
Of those, only Miami – which has scored 99 points and given up 102 – has been outscored by its opponents.
e is, stats are stats, and what are we, No. 85 or something in the country in offense? Jacory Harris, seventh in the conference? I don’t see any of our guys playing that well.”
Whipple’s message is clear: Miami is capable of more than being the nation’s 67th-ranked offense in terms of total yards, 83rd-ranked in terms of points, and Harris – the sophomore quarterback in his first season as the Hurricanes’ starter – shouldn’t have stats placing him in the middle of the Atlantic Coast Conference pack.
Lovett, the defensive coordinator, is giving his side of the team roughly the same message.
“Guys are still feeling their way, somewhat,” Lovett said. “With some of the people we’ve played, we’re kind of hanging on sometimes with just trying to get guys on the ground to make tackles, to make plays. I think as we play more confidently, there’ll be a lot more guys around the ball.”
Whipple – whose son, Spencer, transferred from Massachusetts to Miami last month and is the Hurricanes’ scout-team quarterback – and Lovett both came in shortly before the Hurricanes started spring practice. Neither had any real time to fully learn everything about their new players before real work began.
But Miami coach Randy Shannon said if he didn’t believe the new coordinators could fit in seamlessly, he wouldn’t have hired them.
So far, he’s been proven right.
t to know your coaching staff quickly,” Shannon said. “Offense, defense coaches have to know each other and that happened, so that’s one thing that’s helping us have success. Coach Whipple and coach Lovett, having them here has been a big relief to me. You hire guys who can be head coaches, and both of those guys can be head coaches.”
The Hurricanes won’t do much in the way of acknowledging this publicly, but some of these numbers that Whipple and Lovett spoke about could turn more in Miami’s favor this week.
M (4-0) on Saturday night, the Hurricanes won’t be lining up against a member of the Top 25. The Rattlers aren’t even from the same division; they hail from the group formerly known as Division I-AA, and have lost their last six meetings against Miami by an average score of 51-6.
“We’ve got to improve this week,” Lovett said. “Miami’s got to get better this week. That’s the objective.”
Players are getting that message, too. There were no pats on the back when practice started Tuesday at 5:45 a.m. Instead, the Hurricanes were greeted by a series of sprints, the intensity of which was typically reserved for training-camp workouts.
“We’ve got to take every team the same, treat every team the same,” safety Ray Ray Armstrong said. “Every game’s a big game for us. We know that.”
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