Miami Hurricanes Basketball: Sheldon McClellan Scores A Career-High 31 Points; Miami Beats Charlotte Again, 77-74

On Monday, the Miami Hurricanes basketball team moved up the national rankings and the whole nation started taking notice of these Canes. On Tuesday, Miami battled again with the Charlotte 49ers and were able to beat them for the second time in three days with a final score of 77-74. The Canes were led by Sheldon McClellan who poured in a career-high 31 points for Miami and also added 11 rebounds in the win. Manu Lecomte continued to impress with 18 points of his own and seemed to hit dagger after dagger when the 49ers were making a push in the second half.

Coming off a loss to the Hurricanes, we knew that the 49ers would come out with a ton of energy in front of their home crowd trying to beat Miami, and that’s exactly what happened. Charlotte ran off the first 6 points of the game and forced Miami to some long one-on-one three-point attempts that are not part of the Hurricanes offense. The 49ers shot 57% in the first half and did a great job offensively and only had four turnovers at the break.

However, despite the initial surge by Charlotte, the Canes took a 1-point lead into the break behind seven three-pointers in the first half. Angel Rodriguez started the onslaught of threes with back-to-back threes after the Hurricanes found themselves in a 9-point hole early. Sheldon McClellan added two threes and Sherman added a three of his own, en route to his 7 first half points.

Another reason why the Canes had a lead at the break was the rebounding effort by Tonye Jekiri. The junior had 11 first half rebounds. The whole Charlotte team combined for 13. Jekiri controlled the boards and was able to get Miami a couple of second shots that led to some easy buckets.

In the second half, it became a battle late for Miami.

The Canes have a knack to steamroll their opponents in the second half and at a time, it looked like Charlotte was going to fall victim to that again, but the 49ers came back fighting.

The Hurricanes continued their three-point barrage and hit their first 5 threes of the second half. The Canes hit 14 threes on the night and only one of those came from someone not named Rodriguez, Lecomte or McClellan. The Canes “big three” (I think we can start calling them that now) were really good offensively on Tuesday and combined for 63 of Miami’s 77 points.

Despite the great efforts from those three Miami players, Charlotte refused to go away and kept clawing back in front of their home crowd. With 5:09 left in the game, the 49ers found themselves down 12 but then turned up their defense and make a big comeback against a Canes team that went close to four minutes without a point.

Braxton Ogbueze, who missed most of Sunday’s game with an injury, led the comeback with a couple of timely three-pointers that eventually got the 49ers within three with less than 20 seconds to go.

After a missed free-throw by Rodriguez, Charlotte ran up the court trying to hit a game-tying three to send this game to overtime. Ogbueze got a look and got fouled by Jekiri from behind the line and the 49ers found themselves within three free-throws from forcing overtime against Miami.

Ogbueze made the first two, but luckily for Miami, the third free throw rimmed out and the rebound was secured by McClellan. After two made free-throws by Sheldon, Ogbueze threw up an off-balanced three that was off the mark and the Canes came away with a 77-74 and still have an unblemished record at 6-0.

The Canes showed a lot of good in this game, especially offensively, but were a step slow all night defensively which is expected out of a team playing it’s fifth road game in eleven nights. It’s not easy beating a team twice in three days so the Canes will gladly take this win however it happened. The team was noticeably tired in the second half so this is a big win. The Canes now host a string of teams before heading to Brooklyn on December 22nd to play Providence.

It’s early to think about a possible undefeated record heading into ACC play, but it’s also a real possibility for this team.

This year has been fun so far, hasn’t it?

NEXT UP: Miami returns home and goes at it with South Alabama at 7:00 PM EST on Friday, November 28th.