Miami Redhawks Men’s Basketball and the quiet grind behind an undefeated season no one wanted to schedule
In a small office months before tipoff, miami redhawks men’s basketball associate head coach Jonathan Holmes worked the phone and his messages, trying to build a non-league slate that would test a roster he viewed as ready for real resistance. What he ran into, again and again, was not hostility—just silence, hesitation, and polite declines that piled up until the schedule itself became part of the story.
Why did Miami Redhawks Men’s Basketball struggle to schedule quality opponents?
The issue, as Holmes described it, began three months into the process of assembling a challenging non-league schedule: few teams wanted to play a mid-major that had won 25 games the previous season and brought back six of its top nine players. Holmes said he spread word last spring that Miami (Ohio) was willing to travel to two or more power-conference opponents without expecting a future return game in Oxford. The responses he received pointed in another direction—coaches wanted either marquee matchups against top-tier teams or low-risk games against small-conference opponents ranked 275th or worse.
When Holmes adjusted his approach and targeted elite teams from the Atlantic 10, Mountain West, and other top mid-major leagues, he heard variations of the same message: some saw no benefit in scheduling Miami, others had no open dates, and a few who initially expressed interest cooled once contracts were sent for signature. Holmes said he was told no by “probably 75 to 90 teams, ” spanning power conferences and high-performing mid-major leagues alike, leaving Miami in what he called “scheduling no man’s land. ”
What does an unbeaten record mean when the schedule is questioned?
The consequences of that scheduling reality are now playing out in public debate as Miami stands at 30-0 and sits 19th in the latest Top 25. The unbeaten run has made the RedHawks a focal point of the season, but the discussion around their résumé remains unusually intense. There is spirited debate over whether Miami could miss the NCAA tournament if it loses Friday night at Ohio and then loses again in its conference tournament.
On the court, the record is spotless. On paper, skeptics point to the quality of opponents Miami has faced: half of the 30 wins have come against non-D-I opponents or teams ranked 250th or below in the NET. Miami’s lone top-100 victory is a three-point home win over Akron, and its next-most impressive result is an early-season road win at Wright State, a team ranked 137th.
Even the historical framing cuts two ways. Miami is one of eight teams in the last 50 years to start 30-0, joining 1976 Indiana, 1976 Rutgers, 1979 Indiana State, 1991 UNLV, 2014 Wichita State, 2015 Kentucky, and 2021 Gonzaga. That company signals excellence, but it also raises the standards by which outsiders judge the path taken to get there.
Who is speaking up, and what evidence is being cited?
Holmes’ account is not the only window into how the schedule formed. Miami athletic director David Sayler (Miami University) said the program has had trouble scheduling power-conference opponents and described a system that favors those schools early in the year, when schedules are built. Sayler argued that power-conference teams can set schedules with home-heavy setups and avoid road games, while Miami has to travel—and then faces criticism later for not having enough big games. He characterized the predicament as a “double-edged sword, ” saying the team “can’t win either way. ”
In one documented example of outreach, emails obtained through an open records request show Miami reached out to University of Pittsburgh on 6/2/25 seeking to schedule a guarantee game at Pitt on Dec. 7. The material provided included no record of a response from Pitt. Miami ultimately played Maine on Dec. 7, while Pitt hosted Hofstra on the same date. The same request noted outreach to University of Wisconsin as well, with no specific dates listed and no record of a response included.
Those fragments matter because they move the conversation from accusation to paper trail: attempts were made; doors did not open. In that light, the schedule becomes less a strategic choice and more an outcome of leverage—who has it, who needs it, and who is deemed too risky to help.
The story is not only about numbers, though the numbers keep intruding. Miami’s record is 30-0. The ranking is 19th. The opponent tiers are frequently cited. And hovering over it all is a question that has become inseparable from miami redhawks men’s basketball: what does an undefeated season “count” for when the strongest opponents never agreed to play?
What responses are being pursued as the stakes rise?
The immediate response, Holmes indicated, was persistence—lowering targets, expanding the pool, and continuing to hold schedule slots open into the fall in case a name-brand team had a game fall through and needed a replacement. Miami waited for that call “in vain, ” and only in early October did the program give up and unveil a non-league schedule that included three NAIA opponents and additional matchups against the lower end of Division I.
That sequence—ambition, rejection, contingency—now shapes how Miami is evaluated as it approaches the games that could define its postseason fate. The program’s position is straightforward: it sought better games and was turned away. The wider system question, raised in Sayler’s remarks, is harder to resolve midseason. Yet the act of documenting outreach, and the willingness of specific officials to put their names to the frustration, signals that Miami is not content to let the debate be framed solely as a résumé critique.
Back in that office where the schedule was built one unanswered message at a time, the stakes were theoretical. Now they are immediate, tied to what happens Friday night at Ohio and in the conference tournament that follows. And as the unbeaten run continues to pull attention, the same unresolved question returns with fresh urgency: how should selection judgments weigh what miami redhawks men’s basketball did, against what it could not convince others to let it do?
