Shortly after 1 p.m. Saturday, Al Golden said he didn’t plan to spend the rest of the afternoon watching other ACC teams determine his team’s future.
“We’ll all lose our minds,” the University of Miami coach said, adding that he didn’t want to “become a slave to the TV for seven hours.”
So Golden and his team were likely at work when Duke, which beat UM two weeks ago, captured the Coastal Division title with a 27-25 win at North Carolina. The Hurricanes needed Duke and Virginia Tech to lose to win the division and get a rematch with Florida State in next weekend’s ACC championship game in Charlotte, N.C.
Just as well for the Hurricanes, who beat Pittsburgh 41-31 on Friday to finish the regular season 9-3 overall with a 5-3 ACC record. On Saturday, UM turned its focus to recruiting, final exams and, of course, preparing for its first bowl game appearance since 2010.
A week from Sunday, the Hurricanes will learn their late-December bowl destination. The most likely landing spots are the Dec. 31 Chick-fil-A Bowl in Atlanta and the Dec. 28 Russell Athletic Bowl in Orlando.
Golden said reaching 10 wins — for the first time since 2003 — is the team’s goal, along with improving the program with an extra month of bowl preparation. That’s needed development time that UM didn’t have last year or the season before due to self-imposed bowl bans.
“It’s been a rough couple years,” Golden said. “So all said and done, let’s keep recruiting, let’s keep moving the program forward and have some opportunities here in the next four weeks that we haven’t had the previous two years.”
Noteworthy: Golden said his team suffered no injuries against Pitt and injured junior cornerback Ladarius Gunter and redshirt freshman defensive end Dwayne Hoilett, both of whom missed the game, would return for bowl practices. Freshman linebacker Alex Figueroa, who has missed UM's last three games with a shoulder injury, hasn't been cleared by a doctor but could return for the bowl game.
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