The play of Arizona Basketball ultimately falls on Sean Miller

With the Arizona Basketball team off to a decent start, Sean Miller feels the team has much more potential, and a lot of that falls on him.

It’s been a rough past few weeks for the Wildcats, as they are in rare territory having lost three of their last four games. Granted the level of competition has increased, but regardless Arizona and Sean Miller are going to need to find answers and quickly.

If you had caught any part of his press conference from earlier this week, Miller talked at length  covering topics such as; the overall play of his team, playing with pride, as well as the upcoming conference slate of games.

Arizona Wildcats

It was straight-forward, and Miller didn’t mince words by saying his needs to improve in several areas if they are to improve.

Among those areas he addressed are; his team taking poor shots, not rebounding as well as they are capable of doing on defense, as well as fouling too much. All fundamental and correctable things, but what really stood out more was his analogy of Alabama Football, and applying it to Arizona.

Now let’s not get the facts twisted here, in no way was Miller calling Arizona the equivalent to Alabama, but more so drawing examples from the Crimson Tide, that the Wildcats should take to heart in order to improve their play.

In the press conference Miller cited his interest in watching the college football bowl games simply for the new narrative of “who’s playing in the bowl game?”, he said. “It’s like for the first time some of college basketball has trickled into college football.”

Relating and magnifying that point to the point Alabama’s head football coach Nick Saban made after their bowl win this past weekend, saying that Bama’s kids seem to play for Alabama and wanting to make an impression rather than playing for selfish reasons.

Now if that’s what Miller is wishing he has at Arizona, then he is not fully succeeding as a coach. Despite going 274-92 at Arizona thus far, he still has yet to make a Final Four, and the play of the team has seemingly diminished since they lost to Wisconsin in the Elite Eight during the 2014-15 season.

Since then, the team has gone a collective 111-39 (even including the rough year last season), with three NCAA Tournament appearances in the last four seasons, with two First Round exits.

Now granted, winning in the Tournament isn’t easy, but with expectations being incredibly high coming into this year even, the team still doesn’t look dominate and has struggled against the “better competition”, and that is concerning.

So to relate that back to Miller’s comparison to Alabama, it seems as if he is perhaps insinuating he has guys that are not playing for the right reason. If that’s the case, then he’s still straying from the style and play that has made him successful here.

This is just from an outsiders perspective who doesn’t have anywhere near the amount of basketball knowledge that Sean has, but the play of his program and the players not responding falls on him. It’s his job to find the right guys and get them to buy in, and if they’re not then he’s only hurting himself and the program.

While I do think he is a pretty good coach overall, I still think he and this team still have a long ways to go in order to get to that next level. And for Miller, he is going to need to continue to figure out how he can get the most of his group year in and year out.

Here was his press conference:

At Zona Zealots, we’re hoping this team can get it turned around and put together another strong season of Arizona Basketball. As always, Bear Down, Arizona!