Travis Steele did not need to call the moving vans or pack any boxes or send all his contacts a new address when he went from his first head coaching job to the second. Which is not to say there was no significant change involved.
And when he says, “It’s probably the best thing that ever could happen to me,” he is throwing no shade at his former employer, the Xavier Musketeers.
He simply means he’s a better coach for what he went through there, and his 20-0 record with the 2025-26 Miami RedHawks is a nice piece of evidence to make his case. It’s the best start by any team in Mid-American Conference history, one better than Western Michigan in 1975-76.
“I think you are your experiences,” Steele said. “At the time, I didn’t feel that, but it was so powerful for me because it confirmed some things, and I knew there were some things I was going to have to do differently.
“As a coach, you’re probably never fully ready for your first head coaching opportunity. You just get thrust into it. I knew exactly how I wanted our program to look, feel smell here at Miami – right from the jump. We’ve recruited to our core values. Obviously, we’ve recruited good players, but we’ve recruited people that really fit.”
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Steele continues to live in the same house in the Cincinnati area as when he worked at XU. Now, he has a longer commute.
It may be an easier drive, though, when you’re floating on a perfect record.
“I could really care less about the streak,” Steele said. “I’m more concerned about trajectory. I have this quote above my desk: Don’t worry about the results. Be obsessed with trajectory, and the rest will take care of itself. Our guys really embody that. They love practice. They love film. They love weights. They love the process. And that’s where, I think, our group really thrives. We create a lot of our separation with our preparation.”
Miami’s 20-0 start includes an 8-0 mark in the Mid-American Conference, which demanded consecutive overtime victories in the past week. Buffalo visited on Sunday and the RedHawks bussed to Kent State on Tuesday. In both games, Miami allowed more than 100 points and still won; they hadn’t achieved a victory like that in 39 years.
There are only three undefeated teams remaining in Division I. The other two, Arizona of the Big 12 and Nebraska of the Big Ten, will not have to worry whether their perfect stars will lead them to the ideal ending of berth in the NCAA Tournament. No MAC team since Wally Szczerbiak's Miami squad in 1999 has earned an at-large bid.
These RedHawks entered the AP Top 25 on Monday, also for the first time since Wally was the big man on campus. It's a fine bit of acknowledgment for their accomplishments to date, but it won't get them into March Madness. They'll likely need to stay very near to the neighborhood of perfection, or win the MAC tournament, to make it. Only two current online brackets of 88 aggregated at BracketMatrix.com currently have the RedHawks as a single-digit seed.
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Miami is led in scoring by redshirt sophomore forward Brant Byers, but the heart of the team is senior guard Peter Suder, who averages 14.1 points, 4.2 assists and shoots 46.3 percent from 3-point range. Emerging sophomore guard Luke Skaljac plays with some attitude and was heroic in both of the recent overtime periods, finishing with 18 points in each game.
Steele said his roster embraces the program’s core values:
“No. 1 would be to compete at every moment. No. 2 would be to embody undeniable confidence, and you earn that through your process. No. 3 would be to carry your brother, which is just being a good teammate on and off the court,” Steel said. “And No. 4 is just strive for more, never becoming complacent.”
Since Xavier emerged as a successful program under Bob Staak in the early 1980s, a long line of coaches left the Musketeers for higher-paying jobs in more prominent conferences. Staak took over the Demon Deacons at Wake Forest in 1985. Then it was Pete Gillen heading to Providence and the Big East; XU was a member of what is now the Horizon League back then. Then Skip Prosser became coach at Wake, Thad Matta at Ohio State, Sean Miller at Arizona and Chris Mack at Louisville.
You see the pattern, right?
Steele never failed at XU. His teams won 19 games three times in each of his three full seasons and went 13-8 in the shortened 2020-21 season. None of those teams reached the NCAAs, though. The last of those, in 2021-22, went into the Big East Tournament needing at least to defeat Butler in their opening game to have a chance at March Madness. The Musketeers lost in overtime.
“We always were just one game away,” Steele said.
All of that led him to understand, though, what he’d need to be when he got another chance.
He only had to wait two weeks from his departure at XU to his arrival in Oxford.
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And Miami’s decision has turned out to be prescient. The RedHawks won 25 games and finished second in the MAC in Steele’s third season, 2024-25, and also reached the conference tournament final and lost by just two points to an Akron squad that went 17-1 in the league regular season – and is coached by Steele’s brother, John Groce.
Groce’s Zips still are terrific, 15-4 overall and 6-1 in league play. Miami’s early January victory was that only league loss for Akron, so if they meet again, it’ll likely be in the conference tournament that conveys the automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.
This Miami team is not as 3-point dependent as the one that came so close to March Madness a year ago. Last year’s RedHawks ranked 339th in percentage of points that came on free throws, according to KenPom.com, and were in the top 35 in scoring off threes. Long-range shots still are huge for them, and they’re 15th in the nation in accuracy, but now they’re up to 165th in free throws.
“I think we’re better defensively than we were a year ago, for sure. I think we rebound the ball better,” Steele said. “And I think we can score in different ways … The three can kind of come and go a little bit at times. We get a ton of paint touches, which results in a lot of free throw attempts, layups and kick-out threes, more so than we did last year. It’s diversified our scoring in a big way.
“The overwhelming theme when you look it us, our identity is our connectivity. We’re super connected, and I think that shows on both offense and defense. Our ball really moves. We pass the ball really well. Our guys have an understanding it’s about Miami getting a great shot, not about them scoring.
“That’s hard to find in this landscape. With the portal and NIL, I think a lot of guys are playing for stats. Our guys just solely play to win.”
It’s all they’ve done so far. There are many games to go, of course, but their coach has the RedHawks in the right place. One could say the same for Steele, as well.