How Miami came together just in time for a historic March

GREENVILLE, S.C. — Miami had 15 days between the end of the regular season and the start of the NCAA Tournament.

Fifteen days for the Hurricanes to flush their worst performance of the year. Fifteen days to put a 26-point loss behind them. Fifteen days to forget how they had shot just 24 percent against Virginia Tech in the ACC tournament quarterfinals.

Fifteen days isn’t much time to fix big issues, but it also feels like a lifetime when the last impression left on the floor looked like it needed major fixing. But as players returned to Miami and went into the gym together, in practices and player-led workouts, they knew they had better in them.

When senior Destiny Harden considered Miami’s potential as she entered the final stretch of her college career, she thought about how she and her teammates took down then-No. 22 North Carolina and then-No. 9 Virginia Tech in four days in early January. She was on the bench for those games, but her teammates stepped up, and she figured if they could play like that when she returned, together they could do something big. But the problem was, that identity never stuck long enough. It would show up in games here and there, sometimes long enough for Miami to grind out a win at the end, but other times, it would disappear. January and…