Sean Miller's new Xavier staff will have a distinct Arizona flavor, with former UA assistant AD Ryan Reynolds making an expected move to rejoin him as director of basketball operations and two other former UA staffers serving as assistant coaches.
Miller also reportedly hired former Stanford associate head coach Adam Cohen, a former UA aide under Lute Olson and Kevin O'Neill, along with David Miller (no relation), who served as UA's director of on-campus recruiting and analytics before becoming an assistant coach at San Jose State last season.
However, it does not appear that Miller will retain Danny Peters, who was an assistant on his final UA coaching staffs before becoming an assistant coach under Travis Steele at Xavier last season.
According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, Miller will retain Dante Jackson while Cohen and Miller will take the other two assistant coaching spots, Cohen as associate head coach. Jackson played under Miller and two recruits he helped land recommitted after Miller was hired.
Reynolds served as Arizona's director of basketball operations during Miller's entire UA tenure, from 2009-10 to 2020-21, then moved to a general assistant athletic director role in 2021-22.
I look forward to being a part of the Big East Conference and seeing Xavier Nation in the Cintas Center for years to come! #LetsGoX And yes, I already have @bengals season tickets #WhoDey
— Ryan Reynolds (@RyanJReynolds) April 12, 2022
David Miller joined Miller as a manager in 2010, then became a graduate manager before joining UC Santa Barbara as its director of basketball operations from 2017-19. He returned to UA in 2019 as its director of on-campus recruiting for two seasons before leaving for San Jose State, a job he said Miller and UCSB coach Joe Pasternack recommended him for.
A 2008 graduate of Arizona, Cohen was a manager and assistant video coordinator under Lute Olson who served during the 2007-08 season when O'Neill was the Wildcats' interim head coach. He then served a year as a graduate assistant at New Orleans before rejoining O'Neill, who was hired as USC's head coach in 2009.
Cohen also was an assistant coach at Rice (2012-13), Harvard (2013-14) and Vanderbilt (2014-16) and before spending the last six seasons at Stanford. When former UA standout Allonzo Trier was in fifth grade, Cohen coached him and encouraged him to someday play for Arizona.
