Hurricanes beat Wake Forest to keep ACC Championship Game, College Football Playoff hopes alive

The Miami Hurricanes knew they needed to respond. They had two weeks to think over what went wrong the last time they were on the field, when they suffered their first loss and knew any margin for error they had was gone.

Their performance Saturday wasn’t pretty early on, just like so many of their games this season.

But in the end, the No. 8 Miami Hurricanes found a way to beat the Wake Forest Demon Deacons 42-14 on Saturday at Hard Rock Stadium.

And in the end, the Hurricanes’ hopes of making the Atlantic Coast Conference Championship Game and hopes of getting a spot in the 12-team College Football Playoff remain alive going into the final week of the season.

With the win, Miami (10-1, 6-1 ACC) now just needs to win its final regular-season game against Syracuse next Saturday to secure a spot in the conference title game against the SMU Mustangs on Dec. 7 in Charlotte. SMU secured its spot in the conference championship game on Saturday with a 33-7 win over Virginia.

The winner of that game is assured a spot in the CFP field.

“Our team just finds a way to dig deep, to hold each other accountable, and find a way to get it done,” Hurricanes coach Mario Cristobal said.

On Saturday, it was the Hurricanes defense that stepped up when it mattered the most.

Miami led 20-14 at halftime behind a Cam Ward 13-yard touchdown pass to Jacolby George, a Mishael Powell 76-yard interception return for a touchdown and a pair of Andres Borregales field goals. Wake Forest scored on a 36-yard passing touchdown on its opening drive and a kickoff return for a touchdown.

After that, Miami’s defense shut things down.

The Hurricanes held Wake Forest to just 50 yards in the second half and kept them off the scoreboard over the final 30 minutes. Overall, the Hurricanes had six tackles for loss, five sacks and three pass breakups. Powell was one of the main stalwarts with the pick-six, a sack and two pass breakups.

For context...

▪ It was the first time UM shut out an ACC team in the second half since Nov. 27, 2021, against Duke.

▪ It was Miami’s most sacks against a conference opponent since Oct. 29, 2022, against Virginia.

▪ The 193 total yards allowed was the fewest Miami has given up to an ACC team this season and the fewest overall in a conference game since Dec. 5, 2020, when it gave up just 177 in a 48-0 win over Duke.

“Having the type of offense that we have, I think everyone talks about the offense a lot,” Powell said, “so being able to have an exceptional game that we played on defense — there’s still a lot of things to correct — to be able to put that on tape and on display, it’s definitely good for us.”

And it came on the heels of one of the Hurricanes’ worst performances on defense. In Miami’s loss to Georgia Tech on Nov. 9, the team gave up a season-high 271 rushing yards and allowed the Yellow Jackets to convert 9 of 13 third-down attempts.

After a blown coverage on the first drive that led to Wake Forest’s first touchdown, the defense responded with Powell’s pick-six and then allowed just two first downs the rest of the way over the final eight drives.

“We felt it during the bye week,” Cristobal said. “Even though they scored first, we were more along the lines of, ‘Everybody settle down.’ The couple things that hurt us on that drive, we’ve been good at, and we fixed them. We’re going to play better against those particular things – the formations, the alignments and the routes. It was a tremendous turnaround for them, in terms of communication, alignment, assignment. Those guys were able to play fast and they played with an edge today. They knew the game was going to come down to them providing stops, because we’ve been really good offensively all year. We had our struggles [today]. We play as a team. In November, it’s funny…in November, you take the games, you take the wins as you can get them. It was really important to get that one today.”

Miami added three touchdowns over the final eight minutes — a Ward 1-yard rushing touchdown and two-point conversion, a Jordan Lyle 18-yard rushing touchdown and a 15-yard pass from Ward to George — to turn the game from a one-score affair into a rout.

Ward finished the game completing 27 of 38 passes for 280 yards, the two touchdowns to George and one interception. In the process, he passed Bernie Kosar’s single-season school records for passing yards and completions.

On the season, Ward has completed 67.2 percent of his passes for 3,774 yards and 34 touchdowns against seven interceptions.

But Ward isn’t focused on the individual accolades — not yet at least. He came to Miami with the intent of winning championships to wrap up his college football career.

Miami is in position to do just that.

“I think we have the pieces to be a championship-caliber team,” Ward said, “but we’re getting better. We have the mindset of a championship team. That’s the next step. We’re almost there. Next week might be the week that we’re able to put all three phases together. It should be the week. It’s the last game of the [regular] season. We’ve got to go there and put everything on the line. Next week’s going to be a big game for us. We’re excited for it. We’ll celebrate this tonight. We know once we get done with this, it’s move on to Syracuse.”

Notables

▪ The Hurricanes went a perfect 6-0 at Hard Rock Stadium, marking the first time they went undefeated at home during the regular season since the 2017 season.

▪ George had his first multi-touchdown game of the season and just the third of his UM career.

▪ With two field goals made on Saturday, Borregales now has 71 for his collegiate career. That’s the third-most in UM history behind only Michael Badgley (77) and Carlos Huerta (73).