The 2025-26 Miami RedHawks authored one of the great seasons in college basketball history. Thirty-one wins. Zero losses — in the regular season. The first Mid-American Conference team ever to sweep league play. A top-20 ranking, the nation’s highest-scoring offense, a coach’s Speedo bet on national television, a heartbreaking conference-tournament loss, and then an at-large NCAA bid and a tournament win anyway. In Oxford, Ohio, at Millett Hall, Travis Steele’s fifth season produced the most successful campaign the program has ever seen — 32-2 — and turned the RedHawks into America’s favorite mid-major.
The numbers still defy belief. Miami won every game in the regular season to become just the third Division I program this century to enter its conference tournament at 31-0. They set the school record for consecutive weeks ranked (seven), climbed as high as No. 19 in the AP poll — the program’s first ranking since 1999 — and led the nation in scoring at 93.7 points per game while shooting a blistering 53.4 percent from the field. They won eight games by three points or fewer, the most by any undefeated team on record, because close games are simply what great teams survive. The 26-0 start made them the last unbeaten team in the country after Arizona fell. The 31-0 finish made them immortal in the MAC record book: best start in conference history, most consecutive conference wins, longest winning streak.
Then came the gut punch. In the MAC tournament quarterfinals, UMass — of all teams — ended the perfect season 87-83. For forty-eight hours, the dream teetered: would the committee reward a mid-major with one bad loss? The answer was yes. An at-large bid, a No. 11 seed, the program’s first NCAA tournament appearance since 2007. In the First Four, Miami beat SMU 89-79 — the RedHawks’ first NCAA tournament win since 1999. The season finally ended against No. 6 seed Tennessee, 78-56, in the round of 64. Final record: 32-2, a school record, tying the 2018-19 Buffalo Bulls for the most wins in MAC history.
The heroes were a veteran, selfless core. Peter Suder was the unanimous choice as MAC Player of the Year and a First-Team All-MAC selection — the engine of the nation’s best offense. Brant Byers and Eian Elmer earned Second-Team All-MAC honors; Luke Skaljac, whose 16 points and 7 assists keyed the February win at UMass that sealed 26-0, made the third team; Antwone Woolfolk took honorable mention. And Travis Steele was the unanimous MAC Coach of the Year — the first Miami coach to win the award since Charlie Coles in 2005 — before signing a contract extension through the 2033-34 season. “Miami has created a lot of happiness for us,” Steele said, “and we are excited to continue to build.”
The season had folklore, too. When the Miami swim team started packing Millett Hall in nothing but their Speedos to support the basketball team, Steele went on College GameDay and promised that if the RedHawks won their final six games and the MAC tournament, he would let himself be hoisted — in a Speedo — on Selection Sunday. The UMass loss spared him the swim trunks, but the moment captured everything about the season: a campus, a town and a team completely, joyfully locked in together.
The build is the real story. Steele arrived in 2022 after four seasons as Xavier’s head coach — a tenure he now calls, without bitterness, the making of him. “It’s probably the best thing that ever could happen to me,” he told Sporting News. “I knew exactly how I wanted our program to look, feel, smell here at Miami — right from the jump.” Year one: 12-20. Year two: 15-17. Year three: 25-9, a school record at the time, ending with a 76-74 loss to Akron in the MAC championship game. Year four: 32-2 and history. It is the classic program-building staircase, climbed at a sprint.
The history beneath it is rich. Miami is the “Cradle of Coaches,” and its basketball heritage includes Ron Harper — the school’s greatest player, a five-time NBA champion; Wally Szczerbiak, who carried the 1999 team to the Sweet Sixteen with an upset of No. 2 seed Utah; the 1995 shocker over Arizona; and Charlie Coles’ beloved sixteen-year run (1996-2012), which produced the 2007 MAC title — the program’s last NCAA trip before 2026. Millett Hall’s 6,400 seats have seen it all, and a brand-new arena is on the way in 2028.
Now the encore. The 2025-26 stars were seniors, which means 2026-27 is a fascinating reset: a rebuilt roster, a new core, and the impossible act of following the greatest season in school history. But here is the beautiful part — the streaks carry over. Miami opens the season riding a 33-game regular-season winning streak, a 31-game home winning streak, and a 15-game road winning streak. Every opponent on the schedule gets a shot at history. Every night, the RedHawks get to defend it.
The standard has been reset in Oxford. For four years Travis Steele talked about building a program the right way — recruiting to core values, developing players, winning with joy. The 31-0 regular season was the receipt. The 2026-27 RedHawks do not need to go undefeated again. They just need to prove that what happened last winter in Millett Hall was not a miracle. It was a program arriving — and staying.