I know his name is poison on this board, and some of it for good reason, but Bud Elliott does make some good points at times. One reason for some pessimism on Miami in general is exactly what D mentioned. These middle of the road ACC home games, we get zero juice from the building. No, it’s not an excuse why we lost. And it’s literally never going to get any better, we just have to deal with it. But he (and he’s not the only one by any means) has pointed out that the home crowd atmosphere critique is two-fold. People say we have no home field advantage. That’s patently false. For the big games, it’s absolutely an advantage. ND and UiF were absolutely advantageous situations.
But for these ACC games, the building is largely dead, most notably at the start. Many, many other teams in the P4 (just about all of them, to be fair) get energy from the home crowds every single time out. To be blunt, we don’t. Elliott has pointed that out as a reason that we’ve traditionally struggled in these spots. We can all roll our eyes, and part of me does. At the end of the day, it’s your job to coach and play well, whether there’s 8 or 80,000 in the building. You’re literally paid to do it these days. But to completely ignore it as a factor is disingenuous at this point. It’s beyond a trend.
I’m sure this post will get negged, and that’s fine. It’s NOT the reason we lost. And again, this is probably pointless, because we’re never going to just make the place Nebraska or Death Valley for “******” ACC teams. There’s no solution, frankly. But I do think it contributes to the performance in some way. I wish there was some way to change it, but it’s never going to happen. We just have to find ways to win in the 1-2 times a year when we do come out flat (EVERY team does it), because we’re not going to get carried by the building in these underwhelming on-paper matchups.
