Miami Hurricanes’ bowl misery continues in 31-24 loss to Rutgers

This was a third-tier college football bowl game sponsored by a lawn mower and played in a less-than-full baseball stadium between two unranked teams.. No matter.

“It just feels big,” as Miami Hurricanes coach Mario Cristobal had said this week. “It feels New York-ish.”

It doesn’t get more New York-ish than Yankee Stadium, where a Canes team depleted by the transfer portal and opt-outs for the NFL Draft fell to the Rutgers Scarlet Knights, 31-24, in Thursday’s Pinstripe Bowl.

It doesn’t get more New York-ish than when your team’s bowl experience included a tour of Times Square, a Rangers hockey game, visiting Radio City Music Hall and the 9/11 Memorial, ringing the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange, and seeing the Empire State Building lit up in both teams’ colors.

But it felt big to Cristobal for more reasons than just the host city.

And if that means this would have been a big win, doesn’t that in turn mean it’s a big loss?

Miami entered the game having lost four consecutive bowls and 10 of the past 11 dating to 2008, the lone postseason win in 2016. And the bowl slump goes on.

“We haven’t won a bowl game in a minute. I don’t know when that was, but it’s been a minute,” as Canes offensive lineman Jalen Rivers had put it. (Actually, it has been roughly 3.68 million minutes.) “It’s important to just change that trajectory of us not winning bowl games. This will be an important step in the right direction leading into next year.”

Winning to end on a high note and carrying that into 2024 was another reason this game felt big.

More personally, it was important for Cristobal, whose less-than-sterling first two seasons leading UM have resulted in a 12-13 record, including Thursday’s loss leaving this season 7-6. He is 6-10 in Atlantic Coast Conference games and 1-5 against ranked opponents.

The bowl loss encourages the predictable social-media outcry from Cristobal detractors who had the funny memes roaring online by the final whistle. Theme: You lose to … RUTGERS!?!? As if it’s a maior shock or cause for outrage that a 6-6 team beats a 7-5 team missing its starting quarterback and at least six other key starters.

Rational hopes that Cristobal can turn the program around and reignite new glory days are rooted in consecutive top-six national recruiting classes, with the ‘24 class rated No. 1 in the ACC. A bowl win would have been the cherry on that, another sign of progress, if mostly symbolically.

Especially because losing to 6-6 Rutgers, of all teams, is special ignominy, since it symbolizes how far UM has fallen from the program that won five national championships, the last in 2001.

UM before this was 11-0 vs. Rutgers by an outrageous average margin of 46-10. All 11 meetings were from 1993 to 2003 when both played in the Big East and UM was ranked seven times.

The asterisk to this result is that Miami’s roster much more than Rutgers’ was depleted by departures via the transfer portal, including that of starting quarterback Tyler Van Dyke, running back Don Chaney Jr., two offensive line starters and at least three other starters. Other key players who skipped the bowl game because of the NFL Draft including star safety Kam Kinchens.

The departures left sophomore Jacurri Brown starting at QB after not playing all season.

It was an audition of sorts for him. Will he be Miami’s starter in 2024? Or, with UM hoping to sign an accomplished arm from the transfer portal — Cam Ward, please — would Brown be satisfied as a backup to the new gun or to returning QB Emory Williams or might he elect to transfer? To be determined — all of it.

Brown showed flashes, especially in leading three scoring drives of 69-plus yards, one ending on a 30-yard TD pass to Xavier Restrepo, who surpassed 1,000 receiving yards for the season and set a school record with his 80th catch.

Brown settled in after an early interception, scoring on two TD runs as well.

“He showed what we’ve seen in practice,” Cristobal said.

Alas, much of Brown’s and UM’s best showing came amid 17 unanswered points after falling behind early, 14-0. It ended with 17 unanswered points by Rutgers (coached by Cristobal’s longtime friend and colleague, Greg Schiano), until Miami’s late score with less than a minute left.

Terrible run defense plagued Miami, which ranked 10th in the nation at stopping the run this season. That led to time-of-possession domination by the Big Ten school Rutgers. The Canes also gave up a special teams TD to Rutgers on a blocked punt that saw flagrantly awful blocking by UM.

And Cristobal’s game-management skills continued in fair question as he left two timeouts unused.

UM recovered an onside kick with 25 seconds left after the late score to make it interesting, but the game ended with a fourth-down completion that fell a yard short.

“This team battled,” said Cristobal of his Canes.

Not good enough.

I can’t be too harsh at UM for losing a bowl game to Rutgers, given all of the key players missing. I’ll leave that to those on the Internet whose hobby is starting dumpster fires. Bigger than the loss, to me, was the left foot injury to freshman running back Mark Fletcher that appeared serious. He’s a cornerstone of things that should have UM fans optimistic moving forward.

Meantime the loss did seem a fitting end to Year 2 of the Cristobal era and a homecoming-hire that has thus far fallen hugely shy of big expectations.

It left Hurricanes fans disappointed, and rightly expecting better.

And it raised the pressure on the head coach to parlay those recruiting gets and deliver in a big way in his Year 3.

This story was originally published December 28, 2023, 5:59 PM.

Greg Cote is a Miami Herald sports columnist who in 2021 was named top 10 in column writing by the Associated Press Sports Editors. Greg also hosts The Greg Cote Show podcast and appears regularly on The Dan LeBatard Show With Stugotz.