Report: Miami, UCF to play in November as part of multi-year series

Fresh off a Final Four run, Miami now knows one of its first opponents of the 2023 season. It’s an in-state rival, too.

The Hurricanes will host UCF Nov. 10, CBS Sports’ Jon Rothstein reported. It will be the start of a multi-year series between the two teams, and it starts as the Knights make the jump to the power conference level.

UCF is gearing up to join the Big 12 from the American Athletic Conference as part of the initial round of conference realignment. Houston, BYU and Cincinnati will also be joining the league as Oklahoma and Texas prepare to leave for the SEC in 2024. The Knights are coming off a 19-15 overall record in 2022-23, including an 8-10 record in AAC action before falling to Oregon in the NIT.

Miami put together an impressive year with a 29-8 overall record and a 15-5 record in ACC action. The Hurricanes fell to Duke in the ACC Championship, but rattled off an impressive run to the Final Four, where they lost to UConn in Houston.

Still, Miami has had quite the two-year stretch. The Hurricanes made it to the Elite Eight last year and got through to the Final Four this year. Even head coach Jim Larranaga wasn’t sure what to say when looking back at it all.

“I don’t know the exact words,” Larranaga said in his postgame press conference. “But they got the message that I was so proud of them, that I loved them, that I really just been on a magic carpet ride with these young men. They’re so much fun to be around, on the court, off the court. They each have very unique personalities. And they’re going to be very successful in basketball for a very long time because all these guys are really good players.

“We didn’t play that well today. And what I told the guys afterwards was simply that I used to watch a show growing up called “Wide World of Sports.” You remember it, Dave? And the theme going into the show was the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat. I said we experienced both. Now, last weekend it was the thrill of victory and accomplishing something that Miami had never done. Even last year, we got to the Elite Eight. We were not able to move forward. This year we did. But today was the agony of defeat.”