Miami Hurricanes ‘finally hit adversity’ after first loss. How will they respond?

The emotions were still raw and fresh as the Miami Hurricanes made the slow walk to the locker room. They had just lost their first game of the season, falling 28-23 on the road to an unranked Georgia Tech team. Weeks of comeback victories and pulling out magical rallies finally hit a wall.

But as the fourth-ranked Hurricanes stewed together in that moment, sitting through the immediate aftermath of the defeat, one key message from quarterback Cam Ward stuck with his teammates.

“Remember this feeling,” tight end Elijah Arroyo said.

It stings. It hurts.

But it also puts Miami (9-1, 5-1 Atlantic Coast Conference) at a critical — perhaps needed — juncture as its head into its second bye week of the season.

“Who are we going to be when we come out of this bye week?” Ward asked rhetorically following the game. “Who are we going to show as a team when we come out of this bye week?”

It’s a question the Hurricanes haven’t had to answer yet this season because when mistakes did come, they were masked by heroic efforts that kept their record unblemished. Miami had rallied from double-digit second-half deficits three times in conference play — down 10 to Virginia Tech, down 25 to Cal and down 11 to Duke.

They couldn’t make up their 12-point hole against Georgia Tech.

The defense bent and broke too many times against an offense that they knew was going to be run-heavy. The offense was inefficient on third down. Aggressive decisions to go for it on fourth down backfired. The final chance to take a lead ended with Ward fumbling the ball with about a minute-and-a-half left.

“Extremely, extremely disappointing,” Hurricanes coach Mario Cristobal said. “I think, as you can imagine, the entire locker room is really sad, down, disappointed. You have to own it. There’s no can’t sugarcoating — if this or if that. We didn’t do a good enough job, and we knew it was going to be a great atmosphere. We had a pretty good feel for what to do and how to do it. The routine stuff that we’re good at doing did not show up.”

The Hurricanes will have the next week to look internally as they attempt to correct their mistakes and right the ship.

“I would say the only positive is we finally hit adversity,” Ward said. “When you win nine games straight and you lose a game, you can finally see everything start to unfold, but that’s nothing that we’ve got to worry about our locker room. We’ve got a locker room full of good guys, good humans on both sides of the football. We’re gonna pour into each other for these next two games and try to control our destiny.”

Road to ACC Championship Game still clear

While the loss on Saturday put a damper on a previously undefeated season, the Hurricanes’ chances to make the ACC Championship Game on Dec. 7 didn’t take as severe of a hit as they could have.

With No. 18 Pittsburgh also getting upset on Saturday, losing 24-19 at home to an unranked Virginia team, Miami still has the inside track to get to Charlotte for the conference title game if it can win its final two conference games against Wake Forest on Nov. 23 and Syracuse on Nov. 30.

Miami is one of three ACC teams with zero or one loss in conference play. The others are the No. 13 SMU Mustangs (8-1, 5-0 ACC) and No. 23 Clemson Tigers (7-2, 6-1 ACC).

SMU’s final three conference games are against Boston College on Nov. 16, Virginia on Nov. 23 and Cal on Nov. 30.

Clemson’s final league game is Nov. 16 against Pittsburgh.

Should Miami win its final two games and go 7-1 in conference play, there are only two scenarios that would involve UM having to deal with any sort of tiebreaker to get into the ACC Championship Game. Both tiebreaker scenarios result in a Miami-SMU conference championship game.

And, as a reminder: The five highest ranked conference champions receive automatic bids to the 12-team College Football Playoff, with the top four of those teams receiving first-round byes to the quarterfinals.

“We still have everything to play for,” Arroyo said. “We’ve just got to go out and execute.”