No. 10 Hurricanes know upsets ‘can happen to anybody.’ They’re not overlooking Ball State

Lance Guidry knows a thing or two about being on the winning side of a college football upset. Two years ago, he was the defensive coordinator at Marshall when the Thundering Herd managed a 26-21 road win at Notre Dame early in the season.

“It seems like the longer the game goes, when a team that’s not supposed to win stays in it, the bigger opponent gets tighter and tighter, and you start being like, ‘Oh my God, this can’t happen to us. This can’t happen to us,’” said Guidry, now in his second season as the Miami Hurricanes’ defensive coordinator. “Of course, with Notre Dame, it’s happened to him before, you know. It’s a tough deal, but it can happen to anybody.”

It’s a point of emphasis the Hurricanes have been prioritizing so far throughout this young season. Head coach Mario Cristobal doesn’t need much, if any, external motivation to get his Hurricanes team going and focused on the task at hand.

But if he did, he could just point to what happened around college football last week.

Northern Illinois of the Mid-American Conference went to South Bend, Indiana, and upset then-No. 5 Notre Dame — the first time NIU won a game against a top-10 team in school history.

USF of the American Athletic Conference played No. 4 Alabama close for three quarters on the road before the Crimson Tide pulled away with three touchdowns in the final seven minutes.. Nicholls State, which plays at the FCS level, got within two points of then-No. 18 LSU early in the second half before the Tigers pulled away with a 21-point third quarter.

“You better learn your lessons by watching or listening, or you’re going to feel them,” Cristobal said. “That’s a reality.”

So while No. 10 Miami (2-0) is a 36-and-a-half point favorite over Ball State (1-0) and should be able to cruise to a third consecutive win to begin the season, the Hurricanes aren’t taking anything for granted.

When the game kicks off at 3:30 p.m. Saturday at Hard Rock Stadium, the opponent becomes irrelevant. The focus is on how the Hurricanes will prepare to execute their game plan and maximize their performance.

If they do that, they believe the rest should take care of itself.

“That’s just the standard,” Hurricanes defensive back Mishael “Meesh” Powell said. “I think when it comes to college football, on any given Saturday, any team can go out and beat anybody. I think last Saturday was a bit of a whirlwind, seeing certain teams go down, but that’s just the nature of college football. It’s very competitive and we understand that. We know that any type of team can come in and if they do their job and we’re not on our job, anything can happen. We always emphasize that we have our own standard that we play to, that we feel is higher than anyone that has for us. If we just keep working on that standard and keep exceeding it and focusing on that, we’re gonna be really good.”

So far, the Hurricanes have managed to do just that. They beat the Florida Gators on the road 41-17 and then dominated an overmatched Florida A&M team 56-9 at home to open the season.

The Hurricanes are averaging 539 yards and 48.5 points per game while giving up an average of just 225.5 yards and 13 points per game.

The offense, led by quarterback Cam Ward, is distributing the ball to just about anyone and everyone that gets on the field, with nine players scoring at least one touchdown so far.

But, in Ward’s mind, the Hurricanes are “not even close to playing our best football.”

“We’ve got to get better this week, working the right concepts that we’re supposed to run,” said Ward, who became the first quarterback in Hurricanes history to start his UM career with consecutive games of at least 300 passing yards and three touchdown passes. “We’re going to continue to chop wood at it and just keep playing ball.”

As for the defense, the group has been cohesive despite a lot of turnover. While the linebackers remain steady with Francisco Mauigoa and Wesley Bissainthe, the defensive line, currently playing without reigning ACC Defensive Rookie of the Year Rueben Bain Jr., features three starters who transferred in this season (Tyler Baron, Simeon Barrow and Elijah Alston) and a fourth (Akheem Mesidor) who was limited by injury last season. Powell, who transferred in from Washington, anchors a secondary that has two returners in Daryl Porter Jr. and Jaden Harris.

(A third, Damari Brown, is injured.)

“We’re playing together,” Porter said, “and we look good right now.”

The goal now is to continue that against Ball State, which won its season opener Missouri State 42-34 last week. The Cardinals, in their ninth season under coach Mike Neu, went 4-8 last season and have not had a winning season since going 7-1 in the pandemic-impacted 2020 season.

But the Hurricanes aren’t looking past this Ball State team or any opponent. Miami has been on the wrong end of upsets in recent years — the 45-31 home loss to Middle Tennessee State in 2022 and a 30-24 loss to FIU in 2019 come to mind.

They don’t want to be on the opposite end of another one any time soon.

“In college football, anything can happen,” Guidry said. “You play the game. You play it through four quarters.”