Hurricanes see opportunity in NIT

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Posted 7:43PM on Monday, March 14, 2005

CORAL GABLES, Fla. (AP) Miami's basketball staff had trouble finding flights to South Carolina, difficulty digging up game tapes to scout the Gamecocks, and scurried to complete a last-minute game plan. And Hurricanes coach Frank Haith didn't mind the headaches. A few months ago, Haith was fielding questions about how his team was picked to finish last in their first season in the Atlantic Coast Conference. Now, he's answering questions about taking Miami to the postseason; his Hurricanes play at South Carolina on Tuesday night in the first round of the National Invitation Tournament. ``As long as there's games, there's opportunities,'' Haith said Monday, about 12 hours after Miami accepted the NIT invitation in a late-night call Sunday. ``I'm definitely very excited and I think our kids are excited.'' It's Miami's 12th trip to a national postseason tournament and the school's seventh appearance in the NIT. South Carolina is headed to the NIT for the ninth time, its first since 2002 when it lost the title game to Memphis. Miami (16-12) may have played its way out of the NCAA field by losing five of its final six games, including a 66-65 loss to Virginia in the first round of Atlantic Coast Conference tournament. And while some programs look at the 40-team NIT as a consolation prize, the Hurricanes say it's a chance to keep disproving doubters. ``It doesn't matter anymore that we didn't make the NCAAs. This is the important thing now,'' said guard Guillermo Diaz, Miami's leading scorer at 18.5 points per game. ``The NIT is a great tournament, too. There's a lot of great teams in this tournament. So now we've got to focus on it and get ready.'' South Carolina (15-13) also lost five of its final six games, yet coach Dave Odom who gave Haith his first college job 16 years ago and had Miami's coach on his staff for several seasons said his club looks at the NIT as a second chance. ``While we didn't finish the regular season the way we would have liked, we are capable of getting our game back for the NIT,'' Odom said. Miami had a couple of tapes in its film vault on South Carolina; Haith had film crews record plenty of games from around the country throughout the year, just in case his club reached the postseason. And while Odom's philosophies are essentially the same as they were when Haith worked on his staff, the system South Carolina uses isn't at all reminiscent of what the coaches used when working together at Wake Forest a few years ago. ``He's changed a lot, but in a lot of ways he's going to be similar,'' Haith said. ``I know he's going to be defensive-oriented. They're going to play hard and they're going to be physical.'' By all accounts, this season has been a surprising one for Miami. The Hurricanes were 25-33 in Perry Clark's last two seasons at the school, not reaching national postseason play and not even qualifying for last year's Big East tournament. Haith's team lacks a true big man, has undersized guards and spent this season getting acclimated to the rigors of the ACC. And somehow, they play on, while 222 of the 327 Division I-A teams are already done for the year. ``We've had a good season and we've shown we can compete with anybody,'' Diaz said. ``I just want more. We have talent, and I'm not satisfied with what we've done so far.'' (Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)