(Marana, AZ) All day long friends and followers of 520 Sports Talk have been blowing up my phone on the dismissal of Coach Sean Miller.
We don’t actively cover Arizona men’s basketball, but here’s my opinion.
I liked the hiring of Sean Miller twelve years ago. He did a great job with Xavier taking that program to a higher level.
Early on at Arizona, he had a lot of success going deep in the NCAA Tournament. Even with all that talent, he and Arizona seemed snakebitten by the likes of Wisconsin and UConn.
I always felt he was a great recruiter, always being in the Top 20 nationally with the players that came to the U of A.
One of his downfalls in my opinion, he was stubborn in what offensive sets he ran and the fact he never changed up his defenses.
Opposing teams would always played a 2-3 zone and make Arizona beat them from the perimeter.
In the last five years or so, often times he would be out coached because his offense was so predictable.
He really didn’t embrace the community because of his stoic personality. I don’t compare coaches, so the fans that are always drawing parallels to Lute Olson I don’t feel is fair. It’s very difficult to follow legends like Olson, Wooden and Dean Smith.
College basketball is a different game now then when Coach Olson was in charge. Players seem to be more difficult to manage and coach.
Athletes today want “instant gratification” rather than earning their way to the top. The NCAA has made it much easier with the transfer portal for disgruntled players to leave their teams. It’s like college free agency.
With always recruiting “one and done” type players, it made it very difficult to form any continuity in the program because he basically had a new team every year except for the role players that remained from the previous year.
Other teams like Kentucky, Kansas, Duke and North Carolina also went the route of the one year players, but had more success than Miller.
One thing I rarely saw, was most players that stayed had little improved development.
Miller was a control freak, so I don’t buy the excuse of, “I had no knowledge of any infractions in my program.” Yes, two assistant coaches took the fall, but when you’re the head coach, it’s your responsibility of what goes on in your program. The NCAA may hammer the program for “lack of institutional control.” It’s unknown the severity of the penalties that will be forthcoming.
It may come out in the next few days or in a week or so, that Robbins and Heeke have been told what the findings of the independent council have passed on to the NCAA the penalties that will be assessed to the program. This may or may not be the reason for the timing of Milers dismissal.
He may not have been directly involved in the infractions, but neither was Charles Manson if I can make that parallel in example only.
College Athletics is a “what have you done for my lately” mindset. With the early exits from the NCAA’s to far less talented but better coached teams, this didn’t sit well with fans and the athletic department.
Fans I’ve spoken to have mixed feelings. There were “ride or die” Miller fans, and there were other fans that wanted him run out of town.
The fear of the loyal “Millerite’s,” is that the program will be non competitive for the near future under a new coach.
A lot of fans also for some reason feel Robbins and Heeke should hire a former player just as they screamed for when Kevin Sumlin was let go in football.
History is not kind to schools that follow that thought process. Yes, before you bite my head off, Michigan with Juwan Howard is a notable exception.
I feel Arizona will be fine and it still is one of the better jobs in the country. Maybe not to the extent of when the search committee was looking for Lute Olson’s replacement more than a decade ago.
I’m sure the Athletic Department will do an broad and extensive search for the next coach, and I would bet there will be some high profile names wanting to be in the mix.
Remember the fan apathy that gripped the community over the Jedd Fisch hiring, which now looks like a genius move on the part of Robbins and Heeke at least on the surface. Time will tell as the games are played on the field and the hardwood.
The Wildcat Men’s athletic teams outside of the baseball team need to regain their competitiveness within the conference and nationally.
The Women’s programs are all in good shape with golf, gymnastics, volleyball, basketball, softball, tennis, beach volleyball and soccer all being in the top half of the PAC-12 and many who are or were nationally ranked during their seasons.
There have been far more high profile coaches than Sean Miller let go at institutions and they are still competitive and play at a high level. UCLA and Southern California come to mind. Especially the former where coaches are still under a microscope because of the success of John Wooden more than fifty years ago that still looms over Pauley Pavilion.
The PAC-12 did exceptionally well in the recent NCAA Tournament. Teams like Colorado, Oregon State and USC who are not “regulars” to The Dance showed that team play and continuity is the recipe for success.
At the end of the day, the sun will rise again in McKale Center and Arizona Basketball will again take its place among the nation’s best.
