PORTLAND, Ore.
The TV cameras focus on Virginia coach Tony Bennett and the invariable comment is, “He’s one of the top young coaches in the game.”
Tony Bennett was born six months after Sean Miller. He is 45. Miller is 46. And yet the cameras focus on Miller and the announcers say, “He’s all business.”
Nothing about young.
Business.
Miller is viewed as the dean of Pac-12 coaches, not because he’s older, but because his Arizona teams have been better longer. Maybe “dean” is a word that doesn’t fit. Maybe it should be “lion.”
He is prowling. Feeding the beast.
Miller was still in a Pennsylvania high school when UCLA coach Steve Alford, a senior point guard, led Indiana to the 1987 NCAA championship.
People are also reading…
Miller is younger than the Pac-12’s hot shot rookie coach, Oregon State’s Wayne Tinkle. Miller is younger than Colorado’s Tad Boyle and Utah’s Larry Krystkowiak, men viewed as rising stars in the game.
But you don’t think “young” when you see Miller because he’s on duty, almost on edge.
“He’s a few steps ahead of you,” Arizona point guard T.J. McConnell said Friday. “He’s always on.”
Miller’s like the guy in your neighborhood when you were a kid. You would see him leave for work early in the morning and come home when the sun went down. You would ask yourself if that’s how life would be as an adult.
Is that what it takes to get it right? All that work?
Miller doesn’t golf or fish or hike the mountain peaks. His office is his getaway. None of his Pac-12 rivals can find an edge because he won’t give them one.
You want to beat him at recruiting? Good luck.
“He’s straight business,” UA forward Rondae Hollis-Jefferson said. “There’s no need to change.”
In May 2011, after Miller entertained an offer to coach Maryland, he returned to McKale Center and said, “I’m here for the long haul, unconditionally.”
The long haul is good. Unconditional is better.
Miller enters today’s game against Ohio State with 15 NCAA tournament victories. Lute Olson didn’t win his 15th NCAA game until 1991. He was 57.
Miller is so far ahead of Olson’s timeline that Tucsonans picture an extended period of bliss. How long will he go? Will he truly stay at Arizona? How much better can this get?
Here’s a number that will hit you between the basketball eyes: Miller has won 75.9 percent of his games at Arizona. Olson won 75.9 percent of his games at Arizona.
When UA athletic director Jim Livengood hired Miller away from Xavier six years ago, it was unimaginable to think that the new guy would match the legend’s winning percentage to the decimal point.
Expectations have not only been restored, but perhaps increased. Is that possible? Nothing short of a Final Four was ever satisfying in Olson’s prime years, 1988-2005, and now it is the same with Sean Miller.
This isn’t just a good run or good luck.
When Arizona arrived at its downtown Portland hotel this week, Miller’s support staff tacked up large posters of each Texas Southern player on a ballroom wall. It looked much the same way it looks in those TV shows when the FBI agents put up posters on the Most Wanted.
Under all of those posters was a world of information on each Texas Southern player. Trends, statistics, dimensions, strengths, weaknesses. This was Texas Southern, not Ohio State or Wisconsin.
“I love it,” said UA center Kaleb Tarczewski. “I love the attention to detail and the focus. It makes you a better player and a better team.”
Immediately after Arizona beat Texas Southern, the UA dispatched a manager to the media control center to retrieve the full DVD of the game. Of the eight teams to play in Portland on Thursday, only Arizona and Georgetown pursued and obtained that vital piece of scouting video.
Little things. Big things. Add it up.
At the same time, assistant coaches Joe Pasternack and Book Richardson sat courtside, watching Ohio State and VCU go through warmup drills. They didn’t stay in the locker room and enjoy postgame snacks and mug for the TV cameras.
“If you’ve done things the right way, there’s time to be happy when you win,” Hollis-Jefferson said. “But you also need to know when it’s time to stop being happy and move on to the next game.”
This is Miller’s way.
A month ago, Miller permitted CBS a rare glimpse of his personal life. It filmed him at home, playing pingpong, barbecuing on the patio, and driving a Jaguar to the office.
It was the first time most Tucsonans saw evidence that Arizona’s basketball coach does more than go to the office and figure out a way to beat Ohio State.
Business has been good at McKale Center. Because of all that work, it can get a lot better today.
