CORAL GABLES, Fla. – Malik Reneau wasn’t quite sure what to expect when he arrived at Miami ahead of last season.

He was one of several new faces on the Hurricanes’ roster. Miami was picked to finish eighth in the ultra-competitive Atlantic Coast Conference. And he was set to play for a first-year head coach, one who had been on staff at some of college basketball’s top programs, yes, but a first-year head coach, nonetheless.

What a difference a year makes.

As Reneau and the Hurricanes prepare to tip off a new season, they do so with a better knowledge and understanding of what Hurricanes head coach Jai Lucas expects of them – and what they expect of each other after a turnaround season that ended in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.

“Just the standard that he sets and knowing what that standard is, just getting everybody to that level,” Reneau said of Lucas. “I mean, we still have a lot of stuff that we need to work on, but just keeping everybody at that standard and that level every single day is huge. And that’s just the starting point to making a good team and having huge runs.”

The Hurricanes have plenty to build on after last year.

Miami finished the season with a 26-9 record. The Hurricanes’ 19-win improvement from the 2024-2025 season tied the NCAA record for largest turnaround. Lucas, who became the fastest first-time head coach in the ACC to post 20 wins since Bill Guthridge at North Carolina did the same in 1997-98, was named both the Joe B. Hall National Coach of the Year and the Clarence “Big House” Gaines Coach of the Year.

Not a bad list of accomplishments considering all the preseason uncertainty Miami faced.

“It wasn’t easy at all. It wasn’t easy at all, but it was just the blessing of having the group we had last year and their ability to get better throughout the year and their ability to gel and buy into the plan and buy into what we were talking about,” Lucas said. “And it’s the same thing with this group [this season]. Hopefully we’ll get better throughout the year and being able to plan and gel and then by the time we get to conference [play] and getting into hopefully January, February, and March, we’re where we need to be. That’s the goal every year as a coach.”

This season, there’s no doubt the Hurricanes, ranked 14^th in the preseason AP Top 25, face a different set of expectations.

Reneau, a Miami native who joined his hometown program after spending the first three years of his collegiate career at Indiana, is back after earning first-team All-ACC honors and averaging 18.9 points and 6.5 rebounds per game while totaling 72 assists.

Also back are sophomores Shelton Henderson and Dante Allen, who averaged 13.7 and 6.6 points per game, respectively. Henderson, a preseason All-ACC first-team honoree tied the school’s freshman record for most points in a game when he poured in 30 against FIU. He also became the first Miami freshman since at least 1996-97 to have 18 points, nine rebounds and five assists in a game when he did so at Ole Miss.

To that mix, the Hurricanes added forward DeSean Goode, last season’s Horizon League Player of the Year, who averaged 15.2 points and 8.7 rebounds at Robert Morris; All-MAAC first team honoree Brent Bland, who averaged 13.9 points at St. Peter’s; BIG EAST All-Freshman Team selection Acaden Lewis, who set Villanova freshman records last season with 176 assists and 63 steals and Somto Cyril, who earned SEC All-Defensive Team recognition after averaging 9.3 points, a team-high 5.4 rebounds and an SEC-leading 2.2 blocks per game last season at Georgia.

Miami also had success recruiting from the high school ranks, signing three-star prospect Christopher Birden Jr. out of New Orleans and McDonald’s All-American Caleb Gaskins out of Miami’s Christopher Columbus High School.

Gaskins, ranked the second-highest recruit in program history, helped lead Columbus to a fifth consecutive state championship earlier this year and the national title in 2025.

For him, choosing to stay in South Florida and close to his family seemed a natural option, especially given the potential he sees in the Hurricanes under Lucas.

“I don’t think there’s too many guys who can say that they can stay at home, close to family. I think that’s a big thing for me,” Gaskins said. “I’m not saying it was the reason why I chose to stay here, but family being close, everybody wants to come to games and attend those. That made it easier for my family, but it’s truly a blessing because I can put on a show for myself, but also for my loved ones.”

The Hurricanes will, no doubt, be tested early and often this season.

After an exhibition game at the Watsco Center on Friday night against 24^th-ranked Vanderbilt, Miami will get its season started in Tampa on Nov. 2 against top-ranked Florida.

Non-conference matchups against the likes of TCU, No. 20 Alabama, and seventh-ranked Texas await before the Hurricanes begin conference play against N.C. State on Dec. 29.

After that, they’ll host the likes of Syracuse and ninth-ranked Virginia in January. Miami will also travel to face 11^th-ranked Louisville and No. 2 Duke, where Lucas served as an assistant just before coming to Miami.

There will be a pair of rivalry matchups against Florida State, and road trips to Stanford, California, and Chapel Hill to face North Carolina.

All of that, Lucas hopes, will prepare his team for another potential NCAA Tournament run.

And the coach isn’t shying away from any of the expectations he and his team – which was picked to finish fourth in the ACC – will face this year.

Instead, they’re embracing them.

“This is a situation we want to be in every year. This is why I took this job. This is something I want to be, where we have these expectations to be really good and have expectations to compete for championships,” Lucas said. “That’s the whole point of why I do this as a coach and why we do this as a program. Moving forward, this is something we have to get accustomed to. And this is just our next step with this program. …

“Now, it’s getting them to understand that, but not add pressure. Just getting them to understand this is what we want. This is why we did the schedule the way we did the schedule, and why we have these kinds of markers throughout the preseason as checkpoints … For me, it’s just all about getting better and how do we get better from game to game? How do we get better from practice to practice and week to week? And for them, it may be that expectation early, but as long as we’re there by the end of the season, that’s all that matters to me.”