Lost in the hype of the then-impending ACC – Big Ten challenge, I forgot to post about a remarkable game down in south Florida. Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that Miami nearly lost to Wofford at home and then did lose at home to South Carolina State. Not really a team I want to play too close of attention to.
But still, this was pretty remarkable. Miami played and beat Florida Atlantic 84-68 on Monday night. That’s not a big deal, but check the performances of three of their players.
First, the Hurricanes got a career-high 27 points from star guard Guillermo Diaz. That’s a nice game for the sophomore who will need to keep playing at that level against the ACC guards.
But Diaz was on the second-leading scorer on the night. Robert Hite went for his career high of 38 points. 38! That could turn out to be the most points any ACC player scores all year. Pretty impressive to get 65 points out of your backcourt, huh?
But those two performance pale (somewhat) in comparison to their teammate. Big man Anthony King had a triple-double with 11 points, 10 rebounds and 13 blocked shots.
The triple double was the first in Miami history. According to Charlie Board’s ACC stats site, it was just the twentieth triple double in ACC history.
And this is the big one… I’m taking a deep breath here… The thirteen blocked shots are a new ACC record. The previous record of twelve was held by three different players, the shot-blocking Lewis brothers of Maryland (Cedric and Derrick) and Ralph Sampson. Yes, Anthony King, a guy I have to admit I’d never heard of, who plays for Miami, a bad team in its first year of the ACC, knocked Ralph Sampson from the record books.
Wow.
And I thought I couldn’t possibly like expansion less.