Mario Cristobal reacts to Miami's comeback victory against Cal

Miami is no stranger to late-game drama this season, but Saturday’s roaring comeback against Cal might have taken things to a new level.

The Hurricanes fell behind 35-10 in the game but somehow managed to get back into it. Eventually, the entire deficit was wiped out and Miami emerged a 39-38 winner, staying unbeaten on the season.

“The best way to sum it up, it’s the best example of resiliency and toughness and just no-quit mentality that I’ve been fortunate enough to be a part of,” coach Mario Cristobal said. “The game was 35-10 at one point and all that you saw was guys saying, ‘We’re going to do this because we can do it.’ And they did.”

So what went wrong for Miami? Simply put a handful of busts on defense and a couple unusual mistakes on offense piled up quickly.

Cal took a 35-10 lead in the middle of the third quarter when Chandler Rogers scored on a nine-yard touchdown run.

Cristobal explained where his team went wrong.

“Look, I’ll hold by this and I’m sure it will show up on film: We did a lot of routine things wrong today,” he said. “We dropped a lot of routine passes. We had some routine reads that we weren’t following through on. We started running the ball well, started establishing that and then we had some eye discipline issues on defense where I think the first half they had half the amount of plays that we had, half the amount of yardage but were beating us by a couple of scores.

“So we did a lot of routine things that require discipline, technique and fundamentals — we did those wrong and it led to us being in a hole. So we had to do a lot of things right and still did some things wrong to fight out of it.”

Miami slowly started chipping away.

Damien Martinez scored on a 1-yard touchdown run. That cut it to 35-18. After Cal added a field goal, Cam Ward found Isaiah Horton for an 18-yard touchdown hookup, making it 38-25. Ward punched one in with a 24-yard run. 38-32. Then finally, Ward found Elijah Arroyo for a 5-yard Miami touchdown with 26 seconds left on the clock. 39-28.

“Just kept clawing and scratching,” Cristobal said. “The defense started holding up, getting us the ball back. And well, you guys saw the rest.”