Wildcats ready to count on Brandon Williams, who is feeling better — and playing more

While saying guard Brandon Williams has felt “zero pain” since playing 18 minutes against Stanford, Arizona coach Sean Miller appeared pretty upbeat during his news conference Tuesday.

“I think that we’ll be able to count on him a little more,” Miller said. “That’s our hope.”

But when another barrage of off-court questions flared up again, well, he wasn’t quite as enthusiastic.

“No comment,” Miller said repeatedly, when asked about the reported subpoena he faces for an April trial into college basketball corruption.

When a television reporter from Phoenix asked a follow-up question about all the scrutiny that has followed him and the university, Miller interrupted the question with another no-comment.

“You can drive back to Phoenix,” Miller said.

And so Miller’s Wildcats head off to Oregon this week under circumstances that may not really be all that different than when they headed there almost exactly at the same point a year ago.

Not only are OSU and Oregon both difficult to deal with on their home courts — OSU took UA to overtime last year and Oregon beat the Wildcats in overtime two days later — but Miller was involved with high-profile off-court issues then, too.

ESPN reported between last year’s two games in Oregon that Miller had discussed a pay-for-play scheme with aspiring agent Christian Dawkins, prompting the coach to sit out the Oregon game and spend five days away from the Wildcats while UA administrators looked into it.

Standout guard Allonzo Trier spent the Oregon trip ... by not actually being in Oregon. He had to fly to Salt Lake City to take another urine test to show that the PED ostarine was out of his system, after which he successfully appealed his suspension.

This time, Miller reportedly faces a subpoena that could force him to discuss college basketball recruiting and his dealings with Dawkins, who is now facing federal bribery charges and is expected to try to show he was not bribing the coaches. A jury already found Dawkins guilty of fraud charges during an October trial.

Just three weeks ago, Miller also lost assistant coach Mark Phelps when the UA said it was moving to fire him based on what ESPN reported was an academic-related NCAA issue.

With all that, Miller was asked if he looked forward to facing less adversity. He responded by speaking of more personal issues.

“You know, I have a 4-year-old nephew who had open heart surgery two days ago, my sister’s son,” Miller said. “I’m really concerned about that. Ryan Luther and Justin Coleman are seniors. I want them to have the best experience that they can have finishing up their season at Arizona. It’s their one and only season here.

“For both Brandon Williams and his family, I want to make sure that everything that we do with him is in his overall best interest and hopeful that he can have a great ending to his freshman year.”

Miller then spoke of finishing the season strongly and added this:

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“Like everybody in this room, I have a family — wife, three kids. I love them dearly and I think about them every day,” Miller said. “That’s my focus and that focus hasn’t changed and will not change.”

Meanwhile, Miller also was asked how much he talks to his team about the off-court issues, whether he tells them it doesn’t concern them.

“They’re used to it,” Miller said. “We don’t. We just move on.”

Appearing later on the interview podium, forward Ryan Luther seemed to agree.

“We don’t really pay too much attention to that,” Luther said.

At least the Wildcats will get to move on this week with an increasingly healthy Williams, who missed six games with a flare-up of the congenital right knee issue that led him to have surgery in January 2017 and sit out the following 10 months.

Although the Wildcats had not practiced yet at the time of Miller’s press conference Tuesday, Miller said Williams was likely to play more Thursday at Oregon State.

Williams averaged 30.9 minutes in Pac-12 games before his injury. He appears likely to creep back toward that amount this week.

“I’m not the doctor here, but it’s a pre-existing condition, it’s not an injury and it’s something that Brandon has dealt with and will continue to deal with,” Miller said. “He’s young and from a strength and conditioning perspective, he is the best of everything, and (we’ll work) towards strengthening his hamstrings and making sure that his body fat is as low as it can be.

“And sometimes it’s avoiding different things. It doesn’t make sense for Brandon to do, for example, deep squats. Doesn’t make sense for him to do anything on that second go-around. So I think those are the things that we’re aligned to make sure that we protect him and we’re hopeful that he can have the longest career that he possibly can have.”

Of course, the more success Williams has, the more the Wildcats are likely to have, too. Williams is still the team’s top scorer in conference games (12.7 points) and even though he scored only four points Sunday, Miller said he made a notable difference in many ways.

“Statistically, his game doesn’t jump out at you,” Miller said. “I do think that he gives us much-needed depth, which has plagued us during his absence. … And he’s very talented in terms of being able to get other people shots, so it was nice to have him back. I felt like it was a big lift for our group.

“Especially as he continues to develop and grow — hopefully he’ll have no setback — we have more firepower and, as everybody in this room knows, we’re not a blessed offensive team even with Brandon. But I do think we have much more of an ability to score and be efficient when he’s a part of our team.”

Rim shots

• Acting assistant coach Austin Carroll will not rejoin the Wildcats at least until next week, Miller said. Carroll remains in the Boston area with his mother and hospitalized father, Rhode Island assistant coach John Carroll. “His dad’s recovery is moving in a positive direction,” Miller said. “It’s not up to me to get into what he’s dealing with ... but it is certainly serious enough where he’s been hospitalized and Austin’s priority right now is his dad and his mom.”