LAHAINA, Hawaii — Fourteen-year-old Charlie Abreu didn’t know it at the time, but she had an ace up her sleeve once pairings were set for the Maui Invitational’s annual charity free-throw competition Sunday at Kaanapali Beach.
Her partner was Arizona coach Sean Miller.
You know, the guy who became one of the best NCAA free-throw shooters of all time at Pittsburgh in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and the one who hit 96.7 percent to crush fellow coaches during a season-long 2011-12 “Shots From the Heart” charity competition.
Abreu said she doesn’t really follow UA basketball, but after she hit all three of her free throws, she quickly learned what her partner was capable of doing. Miller, of course, hit all three of his and their combined 6-for-6 effort easily won the field of eight teams.
The victory earned $300 for Abreu’s Kalama Intermediate School and left Miller with a little extra dose of confidence as he enters his second Maui Invitational today when the No. 2 Wildcats will face Missouri.
“You know, I’m a repeat winner,” Miller said, smiling. “I don’t know how many repeat winners there are in Maui, but I’ll take it.”
Despite squinting his way through a morning press conference on the Sheraton Maui lawn, Miller was in a good enough mood Sunday morning that he joked about the “advantage” he had when the sun also affected his coaching counterparts from cloudier climates.
“Just looking up at the sun, I felt at home,” Miller said. “Whereas some of these other guys who don’t see it very often, you could tell they were affected.”
On Saturday, when the Wildcats had a full day on the island because they opted to charter into Maui on Friday afternoon, the mood outside of practice and study hall was also light. The players had a few hours of open time Saturday afternoon and then attended a players’ party Saturday evening in which the freshmen were essentially picked on.
Each team had to pick two players each to participate in a Hula competition and a corn-hole bean-bag toss game, and the Arizona upperclassmen weren’t about to be embarrassed.
So Dusan Ristic and Parker Jackson-Cartwright were forced to dance, while Craig Victor and Stanley Johnson tossed the beanbags.
“The team picked them,” Miller said. “They wanted the freshmen to do it.”
None of them were exactly impressive, especially Victor and Johnson.
“They did terrible,” said Ryan Reynolds, UA’s director of basketball operations.
Meanwhile, Missouri finished second in corn-hole tossing, just behind BYU, thanks to the efforts of Tigers guard Wes Clark and center Ryan Rosburg.
“Ryan and Wes were phenomenal,” Missouri coach Kim Anderson said.
Of course, those results are not likely to be any sort of omen for today’s game.
The Wildcats are deep, athletic, long and experienced, while Anderson has some athletes but also seven newcomers in his first year as the Tigers’ head coach.
For Missouri, the game is mostly a barometer of sorts. Win, lose, or get crushed, it’s about the future for Mizzou, which lost to UMKC in the season-opener but has since beaten Valparaiso and Oral Roberts.
“I think our guys are excited to have an opportunity to play the No. 2 team in the country and see where we’re at and where we need to go,” Anderson said. “Obviously, when you take over a program the magnitude of the University of Missouri there’s a lot of responsibilities, so I’ve spent a lot of time trying to reach out and promote the program.
“But the bottom line is you gotta coach your team, and we’ve got so many new guys that we’re kind of up and down.”
Oh, well. It’s early in the season. And it’s the Maui Invitational, arguably the most prestigious and consistently competitive early-season events in college basketball.
You do what you can, and hope for the best. Even San Diego State coach Steve Fisher, who was a Michigan assistant when the Wolverines won the 1988 title of what was then called the Maui Classic, knows that much.
Not only did the Wolverines win the 1988-89 Maui event but also, after Fisher replaced ASU-bound Bill Frieder as head coach later in the season, the NCAA title.
“My first (experience) — Glen Rice was a rookie, and his first shot against Mitch Richmond of Kansas State was an 18-footer that went 12 feet,” Fisher said. “We went on to win the tournament that year.”
Rice was actually a senior all-American in 1988-89, having faced Kansas State three years earlier, but you get the point.
It’s tough. And it’s fun.
That’s what the Maui Invitational is all about.
“This is the tournament,” Fisher said. “This is the tournament that we all pine to be a part of, for a whole host of reasons, starting with the competition, with the ambiance and where you are, the hospitality and the professionalism it’s run with.
“All eyeballs in America will be on this tournament. You know that. We know that. Our players know that, and they’re very excited to be to be here.”
