Power 5 football is officially in the building and feeling itself as the Miami Hurricanes posted their first W of the season with a 31-14 victory over UAB.
There was a lot of chatter about redshirt-senior transfer D’Eriq King and how the veteran quarterback would help Miami’s passing game. Critics questioned his accuracy despite coaches and teammates praising his leadership and playmaking ability. Though King attempted only 11 passes in the first half, he found his rhythm in the second, finishing with 141 passing yards and 83 rushing yards and two touchdowns. King also extended his FBS record of 16 straight games with both a touchdown pass and a touchdown run.
But the ground game is what kept Miami afloat early on and props must be given to junior running back Cam’Ron who finished with 134 yards off of 17 carries and two touchdowns. It was his first career multi-touchdown game for the Canes.
Love also needs to be shown to Miami’s offensive line, who looked extremely cohesive and created holes all night for both Harris and King as well as freshman Jaylon Knighton, who finished with 59 yards off of 9carries and Donald Chaney Jr., who added 52 yards.
“It felt good, I felt like I was watching them on TV,” chuckled defensive end Quincy Roche of his impressive offense. “D’Eriq escaped so many plays and watching the run game – you know shout out to the O-Line for blocking. I thought they played a tremendous game and I’m excited to see what they have in store for the rest of the season.”
UAB’s offense, particularly senior running back Spencer Brown were stymied by the staunch, athletic Hurricane defense, recording just 285 yards of total offense with Brown getting 16 carries for only 74 yards and one touchdown. Plus, head coach Bill Clark could not have been happy with the 11 sloppy penalties for a loss of 75 yards. Roche finished with 4 total tackles including one big sack that brought his career total to a NCAA FBS best 27. Redshirt junior Bradley Jennings Jr. finished with a team-high six tackles and two tackles for a loss in his first career start.
Roche called the defense’s performance “stout,” but gave credit a lot credit to the coaches.
“It was just the coaches having a good game plan – everything we game planned; we saw in the game today,” explained Roche. “And you know anytime that happens, it’s all on the players to execute so I think we did a really good job.”
The Miami athletic department took every precaution for those at Hard Rock Stadium – they limited the event to 13,00 fans (though only 8,153 attended), they had temperature checks and health screenings for media and social distancing in the press box as well as in the stands and limited concessions. Plus, hand sanitizer everywhere. Event staff mentioned that the health safety plans started back in March and evolved about five times with new information received before settling on the current protocol.
“Ball is ball.” Said Miami Head Coach Manny Diaz, ” Once the game started, you’re so wrapped up into the game. Certainly, the environment was a little bit different. I’ve got say, it was great to see the fans that were able to come to the game, come to the game. This was the first major sporting event in Dade County since mid-March and just to have that sense of community and have our players see people supporting them and stuff like that again [was great]. This was not promised to us, so we were happy to have the fans we had and thought they did a great job during the game.”
