CORAL GABLES, Fla. – There were team bonding sessions during fall ball. Dinners out.  Time by the pool. They grilled burgers, watched college football and bit by bit, got to know each other.

With more than two dozen new faces on the roster, every bit of those offseason team activities felt essential and now, months later, the Hurricanes feel like, together, they’re ready to conquer the start of a new season, a new season that begins Friday.

“It’s been incredible,” said Hurricanes pitcher Brian Walters, a redshirt junior. “We have a lot of new guys, right? All new faces and those that know me [know] I love my team. I love my teammates … they all came in with the right mindset and I couldn’t be happier for a group of guys, a loving group of guys, an excited group of guys and a culture of a team that’s going to be incredible both in the dugout and on the field. We’re really stoked. … There’s something about the game of baseball that brings people together and we have the best fans in college baseball. They’re going to really rally around us. So, when our guys get to see that, it’s going to be incredible.”

All of those newcomers will have their first chance to experience those fans, Mark Light Field and everything else that comes with Miami baseball this weekend as the Hurricanes host a three-game series against Niagara to open the 2025 season.

Right-handed sophomore Nick Robert, who posed a 4.79 ERA last season for the Hurricanes with a 5-4 record, will get the first Friday start of the season, while Griffin Hugus, a right-handed junior who transferred from Cincinnati, is set to start Saturday. Walters, who is transitioning out of the bullpen for the Hurricanes, is scheduled to start Sunday’s series finale.

All three will be filling new roles for the Hurricanes, who are looking to improve on last year’s 27-30 record, and head coach J.D. Arteaga is eager to see how each responds to the challenges they now face.

“Nick Robert had a really nice year for us last year. I’ve always said he was kind of pitching out of position. He’s more of a starter, as far as his repertoire … We put him in a situation where it wasn’t probably the best situation for him to succeed, but he dealt with it with a great attitude and he [gave] us a great effort and did a good job,” Arteaga said. “But he’s more fitted to be a starter, and he’s got the most experience. … Griffin’s coming into a new league [after] he had some success at Cincinnati … And then Brian has never been stretched out past four innings. … His stuff’s there and the name Walters, you probably feel like he’s been around forever, but most of those innings were by [his brother] Andrew, not Brian.

“They all have their own obstacles to go with, but that’s just what we felt was the best rotation to go with in the beginning.”

Offensively, the Hurricanes will be led by one of the top young hitters in the country, sophomore slugger Daniel Cuvet, who last season, put together a record-breaking performance during his first year of college baseball.

Cuvet, who hails from Fort Lauderdale, hit a pair of home runs during the Hurricanes’ season-opening series against NJIT last year and never looked back.

He finished the season with 24 home runs, a new Miami freshman record, and led Division I freshmen nationwide with 75 RBI.

He earned Freshman All-American recognition from Perfect Game, D1Baseball and the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association and has already garnered his fair share of preseason recognition, with those same three organizations all naming him to their preseason All-America teams.

He’s also earned a spot on the watch list for the Golden Spikes Award, which each year recognizes the nation’s top player.

The sophomore expects opposing pitchers are going to do their best to limit his impact at the plate, but he’s confident he can rise to the challenge and continue being the dominant force the Hurricanes need him to be.

“I think it’s about handling the situations that come my way and understanding how the game’s going to change for me this year. People are going to game plan for me more and I have to figure out what other people are trying to do, so I can attack them based off that,” Cuvet said. “I mean, they might try to come at me a little differently, but at the end of the day, pitchers aren’t perfect. Neither are hitters. But they’re going to make mistakes, and my job is just to make them pay when they make those mistakes.”

Arteaga said the Hurricanes will do their best to protect Cuvet in the lineup and finding players who could help provide the offensive spark to do that was a priority for him.

To that end, Miami added infielder Jake Ogden, who hit .313 at UNC Greensboro last year; outfielder Max Galvin, who redshirted last season at Oklahoma State, but hit .400 with 41 RBI as a sophomore at Miami-Dade College in 2023; and catcher Tanner Smith, who had a .423 slugging percentage last season at Oregon State.

“Another thing we set out to do this offseason is to bring in some offense to protect Cuvet and hit around him, so teams couldn’t pitch around him,” Arteaga said. “We feel that we’ve done that as well. We’ve addressed a lot of holes that we felt we had. I think we’ve done a great job, and credit to my staff [for] going out this summer and being able to plug those holes and improve the team and the program the way that we did. So, very excited about the season.”

The upcoming weekend will give the Hurricanes their first opportunity to see how all the offseason work – and bonding – they did has come together.

And that opportunity has given coaches and players – both those who have been at Miami for years, and those who’ve just arrived – plenty of reason to be excited about the season that awaits.

“It’s a dream come true. As a kid growing up, I came to a couple games here and saw the fans here and saw the support that they had and it’s just pretty awesome to be able to come back and play in front of these great fans,” said Hugus, who hails from Wellington.

Added Walters, “J.D. was on a mission this offseason and he fulfilled that mission, bringing in the guys that want to be Hurricanes; bringing in the guys that want to take this team to the next level and the goal is Omaha, right? That starts now. That starts each and every single game. We’re going to start small. We’re going to start by winning each and every game and that gives us the best opportunity to get there. In the clubhouse, it starts there, right? When people show up to the field excited to play, excited to lift, excited to run, excited to do every little thing it takes to be a baseball player, and I couldn’t be [more] grateful for a better group of guys.”