Canes WIN! Advance!

In front of a pro-Tiger crowd in St Louis, Miami dominated the boards to beat Missouri, 80-66, on Friday night in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

Miami (26-8) won its first NCAA Tournament game under new head coach Jai Lucas, who continued to guide a remarkable turnaround from last season. The win against the Tigers tied a Division I record for a plus-19 win turnaround.

The Canes were led by seniors Malik Reneau, Tre Donaldson and freshman Shelton Henderson. Reneau scored 24 points, 19 coming in the second half. Donaldson pumped in 17 points, with 14 also coming in the second half. Shelton chipped in 15 points. The Canes shot 43.3 percent (26 of 60) from the floor and had 16 offensive rebounds, which led to 19 second-chance points.

Missouri shot 35.1 percent (20 of 57) from the floor including 10 of 28 (37.0 percent) from 3, but had just two second-chance points.

The big story of the game was Miami’s domination on the boards.

"What I'm most proud of is we talked about the glass and our identity showing, 46 rebounds, 16 offensive rebounds, 19 second-chance points, getting to the line 29 times and then we took care of the ball in the second half, and that's why we were able to generate the separation we did," said head coach Jai Lucas after the game. "It was a team effort. I'm just really proud of them.”

"We've been emphasizing offensive rebounding since we got here, since the summertime that's all we've been doing, just every day, we offensive rebound," Reneau said. "We do box-out drills, rebounding drills. So it's just drilled in us to constantly keep pushing the rebounds on both sides of the end.”

Miami advances to the second round to take on #2 seed Purdue (28-8) on Sunday. Tipoff is set for 12:00 ET, with coverage on CBS.

GO CANES!