For most of his six seasons as the head coach at Arizona, following a successful stint at Xavier, Sean Miller has done a fine job of building upon the famously good 23-year run headed by his legendary predecessor, Lute Olsen.
After guiding Xavier to three straight conference titles and four consecutive NCAA tournaments, while making Elite Eight and Sweet Sixteen appearances in his first stop as a head coach, Miller took Arizona to the Elite Eight in his second and fifth seasons at the school, while reaching Sweet Sixteen during his fourth year.
Off to a 14-1 start this season, Arizona is ranked 10th in this week’s Associated Press poll and poised to make another deep run in March (and perhaps April).
While the 46-year-old Miller is regarded as one of the nation’s better coaches, his brother Archie, a decade younger, isn’t yet thought of in the same vein during his young coaching career.
But maybe he should be, given the job he’s doing with the Dayton Flyers.
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Yes, not only in Arizona, but in Dayton, too, it’s Miller Time.
Following a couple of nondescript seasons that included only a first-round NIT exit with Dayton in 2012, Archie Miller made some big headlines during his third season as a head coach, when he took the Flyers as far as his brother’s team went — all the way to the Elite Eight.
The key difference was that Arizona, the top seed in the West Region, was supposed to go at least that far, if not reaching the Final Four or even winning a national title. In contrast, 11th-seeded Dayton was supposed to lose in the first round.
However, Archie Miller’s Flyers showed resolve and toughness in knocking off sixth-seeded, intra-state rival Ohio State before solving the patented 2-3 zone of coaching great Jim Boeheim, just enough, to squeak by third-seeded Syracuse, in the East Region.
They took care of upstart Stanford next, while adjusting their style and netting 82 points, before finally bowing out to the tournament’s overall top seed, Florida, by only 10 points, only a win shy of the Final Four.
Although Archie garnered his share of attention from that run, he fell back into relative anonymity as the current season began, in terms of being thought of as one of the country’s best coaches.
What he’s doing this year, though, might change that opinion and could be considered even more impressive that what the Flyers accomplished last year.
That’s because Archie and his staff had to drastically change on the fly and still make it work.
So far, they have.
Devon Scott, originally penciled in as the Flyers’ 6-foot-9 junior starting center, and his backup, fellow 6-foot-9 junior Jalen Robinson, were removed from the program after allegedly committing thefts in in a dorm room on campus.
Three other big men were lost due to reasons ranging from health issues to NCAA ineligibility.
Forced to play small ball, the Flyers are down to only a mere half-dozen scholarship players, none taller than 6-foot-6.
Yet Archie has them persevering, atop the Atlantic 10 standings, at 4-0, ranked 27th (in the AP poll), tied with 17th-ranked Virginia Commonwealth, and somehow, 14-2, with a win over the same Ole Miss team which recently took top-ranked Kentucky to overtime on its home floor.
As Archie told CBS Sports’ Gary Parrish, “What we’re doing right now is a byproduct of the culture that we have here… the people in this program are… playing together, and they’re playing the right way. And good things can happen when you do that.”
With a rising star like Archie Miller at the controls, Dayton might keep flying high enough that many others may soon take notice that Arizona doesn’t have the only Miller brother who is capable of becoming one of the country’s top coaches.