Sean Miller back in the NCAA Tournament with Xavier, but Vanderbilt loss with Pitt sticks with him
Share this post:
GREENSBORO, N.C. — Sean Miller turned 54 years old this season, with almost that many years of basketball fame, fortune and success behind him.
At present, Miller is consumed by the 2023 NCAA Tournament, bringing his No. 3-seeded Xavier team to Greensboro, N.C., to meet No. 14 Kennesaw State at 12:40 p.m. Friday in a Midwest Region first-round game.
As a player, head coach and assistant at six schools, he’s been part of 17 NCAA Tournaments (five Elite 8s) since he was a freshman at Pitt in 1987-88. But it was that first one that haunts him to this day:
March 20, 1988, Lincoln, Neb., NCAA Tournament, second round: Vanderbilt 80, Pitt 74,
Vanderbilt’s Barry Goheen sent the game into overtime with a last-second shot. A Pitt team, featuring two-time All-Americans Charles Smith and Jerome Lane and Miller as the freshman point guard, lost in overtime.
“It’s the most difficult experience in sports of my life. It really is,” said Miller, speaking Thursday to reporters at Greensboro Coliseum.
“It’s funny because somebody was asking me about the tournament. Unfortunately, on YouTube, you can really capture anything these days, and you can really watch those last couple of minutes.”
Just the other day, Miller was with his team at the Big East Tournament at Madison Square Garden. Guess whom he ran into? None other than Smith, who is Pitt’s all-time leading scorer (2,045 points) and was a senior on that star-crossed 1987-88 team.
“We were getting ready to play Marquette in the championship. I talked to him,” Miller said. “When I walked up to him, all I could think about was that game. I mean, we were a 2 seed.
“I’m an old guy now. That’s been a long, long time ago, but if you are in the tournament, you remember the great moments, and you also remember the others. That’s what’s so amazing about the tournament: the drastic difference between advancing and your season ending.”
Miller was a high school sensation playing for his father, John Miller, at Blackhawk. Before that, at the age of 14, he appeared on “The Johnny Carson Show,” showing off his ball-handling artistry. Despite the passage of more than three decades, he remains No. 2 on the school’s all-time assist list (744), tied for 21st in scoring (1,282 points).
For Miller and his brother, Archie, the head coach at Rhode Island after previous stints at Dayton and Indiana, basketball was as much a part of family life as the dinner table.
“I think the first thing my dad instilled was a love for the game of basketball in our house,” Sean Miller said. “I mean, we grew up, I don’t know if there were too many conversations growing up really as a family where basketball wasn’t a topic of conversation.
“He is one of the most passionate people that I have ever met about this game. He loves it himself, and it’s contagious.”
Miller is paid handsomely for his services, but he has seen the dark side, too, when he was fired at Arizona in 2021 after the NCAA charged the school with five Level I violations.
Now, he’s back at Xavier for a second time — he also was there from 2001-04 — after 12 seasons at Arizona, where he brought the Wildcats to three Elite 8s and two Sweet 16s.
“I think the first thing is, it was never a job,” he said of his coaching career. “It was a game that you fell in love with, whether you played it or coached it. I think that’s something that, you know, I have with me from now until the end.”
Miller’s approach to the game is something his players have noticed. When asked what he has learned from his head coach, graduate student Jack Nunge said, “The way that he feels about basketball and how much he loves the sport and loves coaching us. I think that that’s really brought me to appreciate it more.”
Senior Adam Kunkle added, “He pretty much talks about how if you treat the game the right way, you play the game the right way, it will come back to you.”
Colby Jones, a junior, said he has learned from Miller how to be a tone-setter.
“Not cruising through the game,” he said. “That’s something (we) have talked about a lot throughout the course of the season.”
Miller sought to toughen up his players this season with a grueling nonconference schedule that included back-to-back-to-back games against Florida, Duke and Gonzaga, losing the latter two.
The Musketeers responded by winning the next 11 in a row, reaching No. 13 in the Associated Press Top 25. Not bad, considering Xavier (25-9, 15-5) lost Zach Freemantle and his 15.2 points per game to a season-ending foot injury in late January.
Xavier lost the Big East championship game to Marquette, but he said there’s nothing to match the NCAA Tournament.
“I may have lost perspective on a couple of things over the years,” he said, “but I have never lost the perspective of how special it is to be a part of the NCAA Tournament.
“I go back to my playing days. If you asked me in order who did you play, first time ever in the NCAA tournament, Eastern Michigan. After that game who did you play? Vanderbilt. How about the next year? Ball State. I can rattle them off.
“It’s something that sticks with you forever. I think it’s why you play the game, why you want to be a part of it, be a part of March Madness.”