Miami Hurricanes’ nightmare season continues with seventh consecutive defeat

This is starting to look a lot like 1993-94.

The Miami Hurricanes finished that season with a 0-18 Big East record and 7-20 overall under coach Leonard Hamilton.

On Saturday afternoon, the SMU Mustangs routed host Miami 117-74, sinking the Hurricanes to a 4-14 record overall, 0-7 in the ACC.

The Hurricanes have lost seven consecutive games and 14 of their past 15. Miami has also lost 16 straight ACC games.

Miami’s Matthew Cleveland, who scored a game-high 31 points on Saturday, took questions from the media following the rough loss. He reflected mostly on the first half, when Miami trailed by as many as 38 points.

“That was embarrassing,” Cleveland said. “We need to fix things on the defensive end. We need to fix our effort and toughness.

“We only had two fouls in the first half. We weren’t playing hard enough. [SMU] was shooting 80 percent from the field [actually 76.5 percent in the first half, 69.2 percent for the game].”

Cleveland said Hurricanes interim coach Bill Courtney had some pointed comments at halftime.

“He said we had to play with pride,” Cleveland said. “The second half was [better]. But it doesn’t matter when you lose by 43.”

The silver lining for the Hurricanes is that they did come back from that rough season 31 years ago. In fact, they had a winning overall record and nine conference victories the very next season.

Four years after 0-18, the Hurricanes were in the NCAA Tournament, and, the season after that, Miami finished ranked among the nation’s top-10 teams.

So, while that may offer future hope for Hurricanes fans — especially in the era of the quick-fix transfer portal — that does nothing for Miami’s current predicament.

Thirteen games remain in this season, and all of them are in the ACC, where the Hurricanes are the only team without a league win.

On deck for the Hurricanes is a tough two-game trip to the West Coast, facing Stanford on Wednesday and Cal on Saturday.

Miami will likely be an underdog for every game the rest of this season, and Courtney — who moved up to the big chair when veteran coach Jim Larrañaga announced his retirement on Dec. 26 — is not sugarcoating anything.

“There is no other way around it — that was terrible,” Courtney said to start off his postgame comments on Saturday. “It was like an avalanche rock rolling down the hill that never stopped.”

Indeed, Miami trailed 9-7 early in Saturday’s first half when SMU went on a 21-4 run.

The Mustangs (14-4, 5-2) kept pounding Miami, taking a 60-26 halftime lead. In that first half, SMU had advantages in rebounds (19-4); paint points (34-8); and fast-break points (11-2).

Miami stayed relatively close in the second half, but that was only because Cleveland scored 25 points in the final 20 minutes.

“You continue to fight,” Courtney said. “Matt did an excellent job of competing in the second half. I thought we all did.

“We still weren’t good defensively, but we competed. And Matt’s maturation is the next step for him as a leader. He can’t hang his head. He has to rally the troops.”

Miami on Saturday played its seventh straight game without starting point guard Nijel Pack, who has an ankle injury.

Courtney said he has no idea when Pack will return.

On the positive side, backup point guard Divine Ugochukwu returned after missing two games due to a left hip injury. He scored seven points.

“These are our guys,” Courtney said of the healthy Hurricanes. “We have to figure out how to get these guys to play better, and that starts with competitive spirit.

“It starts with the defensive end. We gave up too many easy baskets. Even if you foul a guy, we at least need to contest them at the rim.”

On a side note, Matt Cross — who started his college career at Miami — scored 17 points for SMU. After Miami, Cross has played at Louisville, Massachusetts and now with the Mustangs.

After the game, SMU coach Andy Enfield was asked if Cross had added motivation playing Miami.

“Matt has been at so many schools,” Enfield said with a laugh, “that every other week we play someone he’s played for before.”