Coach's corner: Dayton's Archie Miller

DAYTON, Ohio — Snow has blanketed the picturesque Dayton campus on a blustery single-digit-temperatures late February afternoon. As coach Archie Miller thumbs through last year's practice plans and pores over this year's, he's amazed at the difference.

He could ride his guys nearly double the amount of time he's riding his guys now. Ninety minutes last year, just 45 right now. It makes sense; he had a lot more players back then. Right now, his roster is down to six scholarship players (seven, if you add walk-on Bobby Wehrli, who was given a scholarship last month). None are taller than 6-6.

Entering the season, Miller's squad had already lost quite a bit from a team that reached the Elite Eight. Players graduated; a couple transferred out. And then in mid-December, forwards Devon Scott and Jalen Robinson were dismissed from the team for violations of team rules.

Instead of folding, the Flyers shifted gears and tweaked their style of play. They kept winning games.

Meanwhile, the coaching staff began paying extra attention to the lengths of practice and the amount of physicality; the team can't afford serious injuries. In games, Dayton can't afford serious foul trouble, either. Miller jokes that the best part about college basketball games are, well, you only need to put five guys out on the floor at one time. Five? He's definitely got five.

Miller says he constantly runs into folks around town and on campus, congratulating him for an incredible regular season. It's been a strong one by any measure — the Flyers are 21-6 and tied for first place in the Atlantic 10 heading into a marquee matchup at Virginia Commonwealth on Saturday — but all Miller can think of are his practice plans, more in-game adjustments and keeping his guys healthy enough to compete, and compete well. That's how coaches operate, he supposes, worrying about what's next and how to prepare for it.

Miller sat down with USA TODAY Sports national college basketball reporter Nicole Auerbach this week to talk about the unique challenges this season has brought, a reflection of last year's Elite Eight run and why he's so happy in Dayton.

Q: I want to start with the most obvious story line with your team this year — your lack of scholarship players, and your size. You don't have a player over 6-6. What is this experience like? What are the challenges?

A: We basically have three sophomores and a freshman in our top six. Our seventh guy is sort of a scholarship guy, he won't be on scholarship again next year. That's been difficult. I think the hardest thing is trying to make them better without killing them. There's the constant balance of injury. The most important thing about game day is you only have to play five at a time. But in practice, typically most teams that play six or seven, they still have six or seven guys to practice with every day so their repetition is there.

We have to be really careful to make sure those guys are at the game, and that they're feeling good. The size thing, there are two ways of looking at it. I think the elite teams in college basketball, they get the best big guys. Then, I think there are a host of other guys who have big size and impact the game in a certain way, but I don't know how great of players they are. I think in some cases, sometimes being undersized and skilled, you can sort of combat the size on the other end of the floor — which is what we try to do. I do think our two forwards that we play, (Dyshawn) Pierre and (Kendall) Pollard, if you watch us or play against us, I think you start to realize how hard they are to deal with for other people.

We've had to change up some schemes defensively. The biggest thing is we can't foul. You almost have to — you don't want to say, play flawless — but you have to be lucky a little bit but you almost have to be flawless about where you are on the court at certain times. But the size thing, it's one thing to use it as a negative. But if you can turn it into an advantage — I think we play with the advantage most of the time.

Q: Talking about keeping guys healthy, have you guys changed the length of practices?

A: (Flips through binder) I can go a year ago, and I guess this page is February 18 a year ago. This is last year's book of practice plans, whatever. 1:30 on February 18th, that's sort of reasonable. We're going about 45 minutes today. There's really a lot less playing, which I don't like. We like to play in practice. There's a lot more 2-on-2, 3-on-3, 4-on-4. We do get the competition.

We do get to work. I think we lose sometimes the effectiveness of playing together in practice every day and taking that into a game because most of the time, the five guys we play in the game aren't on the same teams in practice. That's changed. We changed our philosophy in January of really keeping it short, non-contact. Then, I felt like we started to lose some of the physical stuff that I think you need to have to play in a game. Then, you start to wear and tear on guys' bodies. It's been a lot of balancing. ... We've just got to make sure we're being smart.

Q: You've said there's no manual for this type of situation. Has any other coach dealt with anything similar? Could you call anyone?

A: I think every coach has probably dealt with numbers issues. You've got injuries, transfers, whatever you have. I'm not sure anybody's ever had six people available for practice that actually play in the game. You can make up a scout team all you want, but I think eventually some of that stuff starts to catch up to you a little bit. I think getting the guys to understand that it's going to feel funny, but we're fine. Like, when we go on the road, none of the guys travel, the guys who are sitting or transferring. So, we'll have warm-ups and warm-ups will literally take, in some cases, you can't do a layup line.

Q: Or you could even take a car to a game instead of a bus.

A: The pregame meal room? Trimmed by three tables. Player table, coaches' table. That stuff feels a little funny. But I will say on game day, when coaches see us and prepare for us, they think we have a pretty good unit.

Q: Was it particularly difficult to go through all this because of the timing — to lose two kid bigs in mid-December?

A: Yeah. I think sometimes you're accustomed to the unexpected injury. You maybe have to change. To do what we did twice in many ways — lose two players, change 80% of what you do offensively and defensively in a very quick way, and then we lost Ryan Bass right at the beginning of conference play to a concussion. Now we lost our backup point guard, which moves our freshman back over to learning two positions. Two times during the year, we really had to flip how we were practicing, how we were playing.That was hard.

It's hard to recruit a kid and then tell him, 'Hey, you're going to play center for us,' and he's going to say, 'You told me I was a 3-man, a 2-man.' We've really scripted nothing. Nothing like, you're going to do this or that. We've kept things free-flowing. They've learned how to play with one another. We've had some really good moments on both ends of the floor, playing at a very high level. That's a credit to the core group from last year's team, the five guys who were part of last year's run.

Q: You've talked about the resiliency of last year's group, and how it's impacted the resiliency of this year's team.

A: It's helped us. The biggest thing is, when you've experienced winning, like the five guys who were on last year's team, including Bobby (Wehrli), six — Bobby didn't play last year. That team lost four in a row in January last year, dead to rights and found this way to make a run. Part of it was who they were as kids. I think those guys, through all the adversity and all the chaos, they've sort of been iron-fisted guys. We depend on them to do everything.

They've all improved. They all play with the same purpose. There aren't very many days where we show up and it's like, ah, it's not going to be a great day. They have a very good even keel. Jordan (Sibert), a senior, he's really stepped up. He's had a great approach every day. Dyshawn being back, he's played a lot of minutes. As a junior, he's probably playing his career best, numbers-wise. Three freshmen a year ago, Scooch (Smith), Kendall and Kyle (Davis), those three guys were like throwbacks. They were three freshmen who contributed, sometimes more than others. Sometimes they had good games, sometimes they didn't.

They weren't really relied on for heavy minutes as freshmen, but they all sort of helped us get to the finish line at moments to help us win. That carryover to them as sophomores is like not even close. You could make the case they're going to go down as one of the better classes to ever come here. So, I'm happy about where they're at, and I'm happy that the culture hasn't changed through all the change. It continues to set us up, year in and year out, for the same type of ability.

Q: Plus, you have the player with the best name in college basketball.

A: Yes, Scoochie.

Q: Back to last year again and the Elite Eight run, I wonder since I'm sure it's all a blur while it's happening, did you ever take a step back afterward and kind of reflect on what you'd done?

A: We tried to. I think it's really hard while you're going through it to really focus on anything other than what you're doing. I think it really hit home for me when we advanced to the Elite Eight. We'd beaten Stanford. I think the entire city of Memphis (the regional host) was pretty much at that point Dayton. The day in between, when we got ready to play Florida, it really didn't make a lot of sense. Like, how did we get here?

You go play the game, and you lose, and three days later you're worrying about recruiting. It's a vicious cycle. The minute you feel you need to take a minute to reflect, you're worried about somebody not working hard or whatever. I got more gratification out of everyone here in the city and in the school, the alums. I think I got more gratification out of their enjoyment of it than even my own.

Q: I remember all those photos of riots and crowds here, I think after you guys advanced to the Sweet 16? Probably after Stanford, too?

A: They did it after we beat Syracuse, and they definitely did it after we beat Stanford. When we played Florida, I think they hired 100 outside officer units to come to campus because they weren't equipped to sort of handle the student body. It's a basketball town, which I think is good.

Q: Oh, definitely. You can tell that even just with the Final Four. On the subject of reflecting and not reflecting on the run, one of the great story lines was that you and your brother (Arizona coach Sean Miller) both had teams in the Elite Eight at the same time. Did you and Sean ever talk about how cool that was?

A: I don't think Sean and I ever discussed individually how cool that was, that we were both there. When I talk to him, he tends to tell me about his place, and I tell him about our situation. We talk a lot. We pretty much follow every game that we can of each other's. He has a really good perspective on where I'm at. He was at Xavier. The things he was trying to accomplish at Xavier, we're trying to accomplish the same things here. He also has an appreciation because he went up against Dayton so many times; he knows what this fan base is like and what we're doing. He has a lot of respect for this place.

We're talking about last year, but we're like four games away from (the NCAA tournament) again. It's just crazy how fast time goes.

Q: A side effect of last year's great run, too, was all of the sudden, you're being mentioned constantly as a rising young coach or someone associated with other potential open jobs. You obviously announced your extension with Dayton quickly (before the Sweet 16 matchup with Stanford — and it'd been in the works earlier in the season) but was that still a strange experience?

A: It's amazing. In January, you wake up and you feel like death. You feel like you can't even get up and come into this office, you feel so bad; we're not winning. Then, two months later, people would be saying, where are you going next? To me, that doesn't really dial in or make sense. If you're doing it right and you're about the right things, you never want to be looking forward when you're actually dealing in the trenches. I've said this: Dayton gave me an opportunity when I didn't have any wins or losses. So, to me being able to coach here as long as they want me to, that's what I'm happy about. Coming into this season, higher expectations, more awareness. We've been able to play and win games.

We have an amazing fan base. It's crazy. There's a lot of people right now who don't have any of that. I don't think about any other jobs. I never have. We have a good class coming in. I think we can win big here. We're trying to win big, and they want us to win big. They really care about us, from our president to Tim (Wabler), our AD. They really take good care of us, they care about us doing well. To me, it's a great place to coach. I'm not real comfortable with all the outside stuff. I never have been. It's always the question or thing you have to deal with all the time when you're recruiting, or in and around town. 'Hey, please don't go anywhere.' It's kind of like, I've never thought about going anywhere.

In this day and age, it's hard with college basketball in general, the coaching carousel, not to get caught up in it every year, not to be thinking about whatever. I've been at so many places. I know the grass isn't always greener. We can do what we need to do here, and we can be really happy. ​

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