Miami Hurricanes Basketball: Game Preview: College of Charleston

Flashback to last season on December 19th, 2014.

The one-loss Miami Hurricanes took on a team that day ranked 163rd in the KenPom at home in front of the BankUnited Center faithful. With almost everyone expecting a blowout victory, the Canes put forth their worst performance of the season in a shocking 72-44 loss against Eastern Kentucky.

When the Miami Hurricanes take on the College of Charleston, ranked 160th in the KenPom on Saturday afternoon, it’ll mark exactly one year since the Canes dug themselves a hole they could never get out off come Selection Sunday 2015. While Miami is more talented a year later, the similarities to last year’s game are eerie and if the Canes have hopes of making the tournament and progressing far, they can’t slip up again.

The 7-2 Cougars have been impressive this year with just two losses by a combined seven points to a solid Davidson squad and Coastal Carolina. Their most obvious resume strength though comes from their 12-point win over Ben Simmons and the LSU Tigers. With that win over the SEC school, Charleston showed they’ve got what it takes to win against big-time programs and what’s a bit scary for Hurricanes fans is the fact that like Northeastern, the Cougars come from the Colonial Athletic Association.

In that buzzer-beater loss against Northeastern, the Hurricanes faced one of the nation’s top scorers in David Walker who ranks 15th in the nation in points per game at 21.5. Just behind him is another lethal scorer, Charleston’s Canyon Berry.

The 6’6” junior has been far-and-away Charleston’s biggest threat as he’s averaged 21.4 points a game this season including two 31-point games earlier in the year. The sharpshooting Berry has been phenomenal at getting to the foul-line with an average of 6.8 free throws a game and a fantastic 86.9% percentage from the charity stripe to go along with it.

While his free-throw shooting has been impressive, he also poses a huge threat with his three-point shooting which makes him a difficult man to guard not only in the paint, but on the perimeter as well.

Once again, Coach Jim Larranaga will be posed with an interesting decision on who should guard the dangerous Berry. I think we’ll likely see Davon Reed start on him, with Amp Lawrence and potentially even Kamari Murphy rotating on him as well.

While he has had success this season, Miami could have figured out a way to stop him in last year’s 67-40 victory over Charleston when the Canes held Berry scoreless. The Hurricanes will clearly come into Saturday’s game as favorites, but limiting Berry will go a long way in making it an easy victory.

The real issue for Charleston this season has been the fact there just isn’t much to support Berry. In the team’s 82-81 defeat to Davidson, the 6’6” guard scored 31 points and the team still lost.

If the Cougars want to pull the upset at the BankUnited Center, they’ll need second-leading scorer Cameron Johnson to step up Saturday afternoon. The 6’4” sophomore has averaged 12.1 points and 4.4 rebounds a game this season and leads the team with a 43.6% three-point shooting percentage.

Charleston doesn’t provide much of a threat on the inside with just one player above 6’8” and that player, Nick Harris, is just a freshman. Tonye Jekiri should be in for a big game Saturday afternoon in both the points and rebounds categories with not much opposition upfront.

Kamari Murphy will have to deal with 6’7” freshman Jarrell Brantley who leads the team in rebounding with 5.7 a game, but besides that, the Canes should clean up the boards all game long.

There really isn’t much to this game for the Miami Hurricanes. If they come out with a 100% effort and focus for 40 minutes, there’s no doubt they’ll win this game, but sometimes that’s easier to say than achieve.

The Miami coaching staff will need to find a way to slow down Canyon Berry and if they can do that, the Hurricanes offense should take care of itself.

A year ago this Saturday, the Canes essentially eliminated themselves from NCAA Tournament contention. While a loss this weekend wouldn’t necessarily do that, it would be a disappointing sign to see the inconsistency back from last year.

The similarities of this game vs. Charleston and that shocking defeat to Eastern Kentucky are eerie, but with that awful experience from last season sure to be in their head, the Miami Hurricanes should have no trouble Saturday afternoon.