Having started his head coaching reputation at Xavier, and suffering one of his toughest losses to Wichita State, Arizona coach Sean Miller isn’t about to classify teams by the conferences they live in.
“College basketball isn’t college football,” Miller said. “I came from Xavier. Are you telling me that Xavier is not a high major program? Gonzaga. Dayton. Wichita State — playing them last year (in the NCAA Tournament) — they were as good a team as we’ve played in several years.
“So I think you have to judge the team by how they’re doing, not by the name or what once was. College basketball has really, really changed over the last decade.”
Arizona’s relationship with New Mexico, which will be renewed for the first time in 17 years Tuesday, is changing again, too, much for that reason.
The Lobos may exist in a non-power conference, the Mountain West, but they’re coming to Tucson and then hosting the Wildcats in Albuquerque next season.
As equals, in Miller’s mind.
“I think we’re well aware New Mexico is real excited about the opportunity to play us but I’m telling you we’re really excited about the opportunity to play them, too,” Miller said. “This isn’t a one-way street. We’re not the high-and-mighty and the other guy is trying to climb the hill. They’re good. We know they’re good. That’s why we scheduled them.”
That they haven’t played each other for so long stems from several reasons, the first of which was that former UA coach Lute Olson said he would never schedule the Lobos again following a controversial 1998-99 loss at Albuquerque.
And he didn’t. UA and New Mexico played a final time during the 1999-2000 season in a game that was already under contract when Olson made his declaration — the Lobos won that game, too, by the way – and that scheduling philosophy was in place until Miller formally took over for Olson in 2009, after two years of interim UA staffs.
Miller said he didn’t schedule New Mexico early in his UA tenure, since he was already lining up multi-year series with San Diego State and UNLV. All three schools are in the Mountain West and Miller said he didn’t want to play too many teams from the same conference.
Meanwhile, in the years that passed, high-major, Top 25 teams such as Arizona more often were shying away from a home-and-away arrangements with teams in the mid- or lower-major tiers of college basketball’s bloated Division I.
New Mexico coach Craig Neal knows that trend well.
“We’ve had problems scheduling Power 5 teams,” Neal said. “We really appreciate their willingness to play us in The Pit. Sean sees it as a bigger picture for his program, that playing in (New Mexico’s) building will be good for his team.”
In the long run, maybe. But in the short run, playing a game at the The Pit next season won’t be fun for the Wildcats, a chore possibly more intimidating than playing one of the many neutral-site games that are proliferating throughout college basketball.
Last weekend, for example, UCLA was playing Ohio State in Las Vegas, of all places, while the Wildcats have played four neutral games already and also met Texas A&M in the semi-neutral site of Houston’s Toyota Center on Saturday.
But all those neutral games, Miller said, weren’t about avoiding anybody. They were about building his own team’s RPI, since the Wildcats say they had trouble bringing in top nonconference opponents to McKale Center.
“This year we have played more nonconference games in neutral venues than maybe we would have liked, but that allowed our schedule to be really good,” Miller said.
“I’m really happy with the way we scheduled; I just wish for our fanbase we would have had maybe one or two more here at home, and I would love if we didn’t have a 9 p.m. start (as UA did with Grand Canyon last week) or if we had maybe a couple more weekend home games. That’s how it felt this year.
“Next year it returns back to maybe how it used to be. But even next year, it’s not easy to get these home and away series. The marquee programs are playing more neutral games than before.”
In the face of all that, Miller has tried to pull in one or two home-and-away series every season, playing at Missouri this season and lining up future deals with UConn and Baylor.
In addition, UA has also lined up regional home-and-away deals with UNLV, SDSU, UTEP, New Mexico State and even Texas Tech.
Also, the Wildcats have gone out of their way to find Gonzaga in one form or another just about every year.
To Miller, all that makes sense. Even if, by some standards, hitting the road to Las Cruces or El Paso might appear risky.
“You have to take care of your side of the United States,” Miller said. “Not playing Gonzaga doesn’t make a lot of sense to me because Gonzaga is one of the elite programs in the game and they’re located on this side of the country.
“And then the region ... I think there’s a responsibility that you want to play those universities and basketball programs that are in the Southwest, and obviously New Mexico is a program that speaks for itself
“So to renew it, it’s not necessarily a favor to them. It’s in our team’s and program’s best interests to play them. The travel that’s involved, and the (low) cost for both teams makes a lot of sense. So it’s something we’ve had our eye on for a long time.”
