Mario Cristobal shares how familiar he is with Manny Diaz

Miami head coach Mario Cristobal has led the Hurricanes to an impressive 8-0 start to the season in his third year with the team. It’s an undefeated record he’ll look to protect this weekend against Miami’s former coach, current Duke head man Manny Diaz, who led the program for three seasons prior to Cristobal’s arrival.

Diaz and Cristobal both got their start in the coaching game in the ACC during the 1998 season as graduate assistants at Florida State and Miami, respectively. But since those teams faced off 26 years ago, their paths have not crossed as much as one would think.

“Not much,” Cristobal said Monday about crossing paths with Diaz. “There’s been some games where I was an offensive line coach at Alabama and Coach Diaz was a defense coordinator at Mississippi State and Middle Tennessee when I was at FIU. But aside from that, not much.”

Miami was Diaz’s first head coaching gig, leading the program to a 21–15 record before being fired and replaced by Cristobal, who spent six years as the head coach at FIU and four at the helm for Oregon before taking over at his alma mater.

Between his time with the Hurricanes and Blue Devils, Diaz spent two seasons as the defensive coordinator for Penn State. Diaz was a semi-finalist for the Broyles Award in 2023 with one of the best defenses in the country that he’s translated to Duke, a program overachieving in his first season with a 6-2 record.

“Really impressive, they force a lot of turnovers,” Cristobal said about Duke’s defense. “Besides the turnover margin, third down they’re excellent, red zone they’re excellent. Tackles for loss, I believe they’re second or third in the country, if not first. Very disruptive, they play really hard. I think the fact that they have had that type of production is part of it. They have really good players, but they scheme it up really well and the guys play really really hard.”

Cristobal and Diaz’s first head-to-head matchup kicks off this Saturday at noon ET in Miami, representing the past and present of Miami and the potential future of the ACC.