Mario Cristobal shares Miami's mindset on being able to clinch ACC Championship game spot

The Miami Hurricanes have a chance to clinch a spot in the ACC Championship Game in the final week of the regular season. Standing in their way is a challenging ACC test against the Syracuse Orange.

Ahead of that game, Mario Cristobal shared Miami’s mindset going into the final game. In particular, he emphasized that the focus is on the task at hand and not the big picture. That’s something that weekly upsets have reminded the Hurricanes to be wary of doing.

“I think just the college football landscape has helped us with that because every week you watch somebody focusing on the big picture and stumbling,” Mario Cristobal said. “It’s hard. When was the last time we’ve seen so many Top 25 teams just week by week by week succumb to whatever be media pressure, program expectations, or whatnot.”

To this point in the season, Miami is 10-1 with their only upset loss coming against Georgia Tech. It was that loss in conference play that put the Hurricanes in a battle to make it to the ACC Championship Game at this point.

“So, it’s almost like our process has been really good for so our guys believe it. They regurgitate it. They flat out, speak it and live it before we even get to them,” Cristobal said. “And I think the part of the best way to put it is like our team, like in our team, the clear understanding is this is Miami against Syracuse. This is not Cam Ward against Kyle McCord. This is not [Oronde] Gadsden‘s records versus [Xavier] Restrepo‘s records. This is not Akheem Mesidor and [Rueben] Bain‘s sack record against Fadil Diggs. No. This is Miami against Syracuse in the most important game of the year. So the 1-0 process of mentality continues.”

Mario Cristobal also made it clear that when he addresses the team, it’s not in hypothetical situations. It’s in what they know to be true.

“I would say that just the posturing of our words are very different,” Cristobal said. “We don’t talk much in ifs. You know what I mean? We address more in absolutes, like, ‘This is what we’re going to do. This is how we’re going to do it. This is how we’re going to approach it.’ Like hypotheticals and maybes and probably they’re just, are just not part of dialect when we’re approaching a contest.”

Miami and Syracuse are currently scheduled to kickoff at 3:30 p.m. EST on Saturday, November 30th in the JMA Wireless Dome.