It’s Florida State week all throughout the campus of the University of Miami this week, and rightfully so. But, it’s also the start of the basketball season for the Miami Hurricanes.

It was impossible for last year’s team to capture the hearts of fans the same way the 2012-2013 did. What last year’s team did do, however, was maintain hope for Miami fans and show that they’ll remain competitive, even when losing virtually every contributor on your roster. The Hurricanes finished the year at 17-16 in the best conference in basketball, but the team lost 9 games by less than 5 points or in overtime. If they would’ve won 5 of those games, they would’ve won 22 games. That’s after losing Deandre Burnett to a wrist injury, and he was perhaps their most talented player.

Last year’s team didn’t have much scoring; this team has plenty of scoring, but they’re going to have to find a main source for their rebounding. After losing Davon Reed to knee surgery, the Canes only return two contributors from last year’s team. Once this team gels — watch out.

Now, let’s talk about the game on Friday.

The Miami Hurricanes host the Howard Bison and, simply put, they’re not very good. The Bison finished 8-25 last season and had the worst offensive efficiency in the country at 87.7, according to kenpom.com. That’s really not good. Kenpom wasn’t very nice to Howard in their initial rankings, as they have the Bison at 349 out of 351. He has Miami at 57th.

Basketball is a weird game, but this is by far the easiest game on the schedule for the Hurricanes. And with a tough schedule, they need all the tuneup games they can get.

Howard Scouting Report

First of all, I’m not going to pretend like I watched any Howard games last year, because I would be a liar. I did, however, try to garner enough information on them to make a decent preview post. And I hope you think I did a good job after you’re done reading this.

Now, Howard might not be a good team, but every team has their go-to guy and Miami needs to be aware of him and shut him down. For the Bison, that guy is James Daniel. The Bison point guard is listed at 5’10” 165 but he’s not afraid to chuck it up there. As bad as Howard is offensively, this is the guy that can put up buckets. Daniel led the team in points last season as a freshman. He averaged 21.0 points, took 233 free throws and shot 39.4 percent from behind-the-arc. The rest of the Howard team had 84 threes. The flaw in Daniel’s game is that he’s just a guy that gets his own. In 28 games last season, he only had 44 assists, that’s 1.6 assists a game. For a guy that’s the predominant ball handler for this team, that’s not very good. Daniel was voted as the pre-season player of the year in the MEAC so Miami’s guards need to know where he is before he gets into a groove.

Daniel is the guy that can light it up for the Bison, but Prince Okoroh is the guy that makes the team click. Okoroh led the team last season is minutes, logging over 33 minutes a game, and he appeared in all 33 games for the Bison. Okoroh is 6’5” 220 but he takes on the responsibility of the 3 with James Miller playing as the off-guard. The biggest thing for Miami is to keep Okoroh off the glass. He led the team with 5.3 rebounds a game and the only guy close to him in that department is starting center Oliver Ellison, which is listed at 6’8” 190 pounds.

Keys for Miami

Well, stopping James Daniel will go a long way for Miami and if they do that, they should come out of this one at 1-0. My biggest thing with this game isn’t about what Miami should stop Howard from doing, but what Miami should do to improve.

The Canes get Florida on Monday in Gainesville, and that will be their toughest game until they get into the thick of ACC play. This team is still learning how to play with each other and games like these are the ones that you need to jumpstart your confidence. It took a while for the Canes to get into a groove against Eckerd College during their exhibition and that’s a sign of a team trying to find an identity. I have no doubt that Jim Larranaga and his staff will have these boys ready to go.

Even if this game isn’t a complete blowout, the key of the game is for Miami to find an identity and work out through some rotation problems, and get ready for the Florida game, while still not overlooking your opponent.

Prediction

To be honest, this game should be over by halftime. I want to see how the Canes perform on the glass, and I’m intrigued to see what the rotation will be, but there’s no reason for this team to be hanging around on Friday night. For the sake of the prediction, I have the Hurricanes winning this one big, 71-47.