By Seth Davis
Things looked bleak for Xavier throughout much of its First Four game against Texas on March 19 in Dayton. The Musketeers trailed by seven with just under 10 minutes remaining in the second half. The contest was nip and tuck down the stretch, and Xavier capped it with a 16-9 run that delivered an 86-80 victory. It was the Musketeers’ biggest comeback win of the season.
The result was a triumphant moment for Sean Miller, who was at the end of the third season of his second stint as the Musketeers’ head coach. “I’ve never been more thrilled with a win,” he said.
Little did Miller realize the ironic turnabout that would follow that moment. Two days later, Xavier’s season ended with an 86-73 loss to Illinois. Two days after that, Texas fired the coach Miller defeated in that First Four contest, Rodney Terry. One day after that, Miller was announced as the new head coach at Texas.
Miller had never set foot in the city of Austin, much less toured the Texas campus, before he accepted the job. He had done some Googling back home in Cincinnati, but that did not prepare him for the scale of the city, the UT campus and the athletic department’s expansive facilities. “It’s beyond impressive,” he told Hoops HQ. “It reminds you very clearly of the expectations for this program that I’m now in charge of.”
When a coach takes a new job in the portal era, there’s no time to rest or even look for a place to live. So while Miller’s wife Amy is in Cincinnati trying to sell their house, Miller has been living with one of his assistants in a rented Airbnb and spending most of his time working the phones and hosting visits. It helps that he was able to retain five scholarship players, including two returning starters….
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