Accompanied by his family, Barry Larkin walked into a restaurant across from the University of Miami on Wednesday night and was greeted by a standing ovation.
But the cheers weren’t for Larkin, a 12-time Major League Baseball all-star with the Cincinnati Reds who was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in July.
Instead, they were directed at Barry’s son, Shane, the Hurricanes’ sophomore point guard who had led No. 25 Miami to a 90-63 demolition of top-ranked Duke a couple of hours earlier at the BankUnited Center.
“He received a hero’s welcome,” said Barry Larkin, who attended Wednesday’s game with his wife and two daughters. “I remember when I was playing and Shane was a kid, we’d go somewhere to eat after we won a ballgame or won the World Series and it was like, applause. Now being able to watch that happen for him is an absolutely awesome thing.”
The buzz from UM’s first victory ever against a top-ranked team was still in the air on Thursday at the AllCanes sporting goods store, a few blocks away from the Hurricanes’ basketball arena.
Normally, the conversation at the store is centered on football, even in the heart of basketball season. But on Thursday, the talk was about Larkin’s double-double, Reggie Johnson’s unexpected return from a thumb injury and the frenzied capacity crowd that lifted UM to “the greatest night in Miami basketball,” according to AllCanes general manager Harry Rothwell.
“It’s beyond words,” said Rothwell, a longtime booster. “Everybody that walks into the store today has a smile on their face and there’s a little bit of giddy-up in everybody’s step because we beat the No. 1 team.”
The win was popular not only with UM fans. It also captured the attention of the college basketball world. USA Today ran the story on the front page of its sports section while ESPN.com displayed a story of the upset as its centerpiece for much of Thursday morning, accompanied by the headline “Blown Away.”
Meanwhile, UM coach Jim Larranaga was getting more interview requests than Manti Te’o. By Thursday afternoon, Larranaga had conducted around a dozen radio interviews, answered hundreds of emails and texts and watched a replay of Wednesday’s game.
“I saw him today, and he didn’t look like he had slept at all,” said Amy Woodruff, UM’s assistant director of communications.
UM’s victory, its sixth in a row, was not entirely unexpected. The Hurricanes (14-3, 5-0 ACC) beat Duke at Cameron Indoor Stadium last season and entered Wednesday’s game first in the conference standings.
But few could have imagined the game’s one-sidedness. Miami went on a 25-1 run to build a 42-19 halftime lead and was ahead by as many as 32 points in the second half.
“It was the margin that was surprising,” ESPN analyst Jay Bilas said by phone. “I’ve seen Miami play a lot. They’re very good. They’re Top 20 good. They have good players at every position, which not every team has. But the margin was surprising. That doesn’t happen very often to a Top 5 team.”
Duke’s loss was the third worst for a No. 1 team. The last time Duke lost a regular-season game by a larger spread was January 1984.
UM always has had trouble drawing good crowds, but the Duke win may be making Hurricanes basketball a tough ticket to get. The university announced Thursday that Sunday’s game against Florida State at the 7,972-seat BankUnited Center is sold out. That’s two sellouts in a span of five days. Prior to that, UM had sold out only one game since 2009.
“This team deserves that type of environment, that type of atmosphere because they’re a really good team,” said ESPN analyst and former Virginia Tech coach Seth Greenberg. “Really good. And I’m not talking just for Miami. They’re just really good.”
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