Even in normal times, Arizona doesn't really hold any sort of men's basketball season wrap-up news conference, at least until its annual spring roster turnover season is finished sometime in late May or June.
But in a videotaped talk this week with UA announcer Brian Jeffries that represented coach Sean Miller's first public comments since the season was canceled on March 12, Miller made it clear he considered the Wildcats' 21-11 (10-8 Pac-12) season a success.
By beating Washington in the first round of the Pac-12 Tournament, the Wildcats appeared to cement a potential NCAA Tournament bid, likely in the 6-9 range.
Miller indicated that isn't something fans can take for granted. Here's how he ended his conversation with Jeffries:
"The one thing that I hope everybody can take a deep breath and realize -- please don't ever put us in a category to judge this past season as a failure or incomplete," Miller said. "Because making the NCAA Tournament has never been more difficult than it is in today's game.
"I'll use North Carolina as an example. North Carolina has been just a standard of excellence for generations and decades. They had a losing season this year. All you have to do is just look, each and every year, there's that program that you never could ever imagine not being a part of March Madness. And yet because of so much turnover and parity that every once in a while that happens to programs where, decades ago, it would have been in impossibility for them not to be a part of March Madness.
"We were in this year's NCAA Tournament. And because of our youth, and because (we played) a brand of basketball in March that I believe could have allowed us to win in a tournament setting, that the best could have been right around the corner for us.
"The disappointment lied in losing so many one-possession and heartbreaking games. If we would have broken through in some of those one-possession games, we would have won the Pac-12, or we would have finished neck-and-neck with the actual winner of the Pac-12 (Oregon), instead of winning 21. Maybe we'd win 24 games or 23 games.
"We don't know what would have happened but what I do hope is that when you have as many newcomers as we had on this past year's team, and you watch Chase Jeter leave with his degree and Dylan Smith leave with his degree. I've talked about (graduate students) Stone Gettings and Max Hazzard, those guys, leaving with their with their degrees, and you have three players that I think could be picked in this year's NBA Draft -- Nico Mannion Zeke Nnaji and Josh Green. Zeke was the Pac-12 Freshman of the Year. Three one-and-dones.
"It's just hard to say, 'Boy, you guys really laid an egg.' The expectations here are so high -- and thank goodness they are, it's what makes our program so great. We always want to do more, but I leave this season with my head held very high, because I think in some ways it's a bridge from a couple years of uncertainty, to a bright, bright future and we're looking forward to a lot of newcomers again in a staff that can bring in a class of 2021 that I think could really be one of our finest classes in years.
"We're looking forward to being able to do that the challenges that lie ahead. To all of our fans. I know there's some uncertainty, but there will be a day we'll get back together in McKale, and we look back to bringing you a great team, and continuing to improve and getting back to competing for a fifth Final Four and a second national championship. I think it's something that motivates us every day."
Earlier in his address, Miller said part of the reason he considered the season a success was the Wildcats' defensive improvements. Arizona finished 14th in Kenpom's adjusted defensive efficiency rankings, which are generally considered a good measure of a team's overall defensive ability.
(Specifically speaking, the Wildcats allowed 91.4 points per 100 opponent possessions, the 14th-lowest rate in the country).
The Wildcats hadn't finished with that good of a defensive rating since their Elite Eight team of 2015 was third nationally. UA ranked 63 in 2018-19, No. 83 in 2017-18 (despite winning the Pac-12), No. 29 in 2016-17 and No. 29 also in 2015-16.
The defense helped offset UA's mediocre 3-point (35.2%) and two-point shooting (49.6%) last season.
"It was a great challenge because we were coming off of back-to-back seasons in which our defense has slipped," Miller said. "I think if you look at our 2018-19 season, we may not as been as deep or as talented as a normal Arizona roster was a year earlier. Deandre (Ayton) was here, we were very talented, but we were much more talented on offense than than we were defensively.
"I think as a coaching staff and as a program to return back to being a good defensive team in Kenpom -- which we really look at because I think that it is by far the most efficient statistical analysis of college basketball -- and with as much change as we had from one season to the next, I think it gives us a lot of optimism and hope that although we change quite a bit from one year to the next with our roster, that what we do works and that we can maintain a team that can get stops.
"Because as you know, Brian ... sometimes in your best attempt, you have to win in an ugly fashion, when the ball doesn't go in and you have a bad shooting night or sometimes you're injured or if you have that (bad) free-throw percentage night but can you still win when that happens. Some of our biggest wins in the Pac-12, some of the wins that allowed us to be an NCAA tournament team, happened because we were tough to score against. So we look forward to continuing that."
Behind the scenes, the Wildcats were also getting strong practice contributions from redshirts Jordan Brown and James Akinjo. We posted Miller's comments on Brown here, while here's what Miller said about Akinjo, who transferred from Georgetown in December and will become eligible this December (or earlier if he gets a waiver):
"I know a lot of coaches in the Big East and when we reached out to check on James, in addition to what we already knew, I think we were getting a guy that's experienced, that brings in toughness, who can play both defense and offense, and is just a terrific point guard," Miller said. "The fact that he was able to learn our system and practice with us after Christmas -- he played against Nico Mannion and Jemarl Baker every day. There were there were days when those guys really battled.
"I love James in practice because he came at a time when he was able to make Nico and those guys better. He pushed him every day in practice. So, again, he's experienced, a little bit older. And I believe that we're getting a point guard who will come into the Pac-12, and really settle in and be a very good player.
"The other thing I like about James is he doesn't have to be the one and only point guard on the court. We could play a number of different combinations this coming year. We'll play a lot of three-guard lineups because James also can play off the ball and score. And that's something that I think we're excited to utilize with him as well."
Miller mentioned more about his three-guard possibilities as documented in our story posted Thursday night and in Friday's print edition.
And while the unusual ending to the Wildcats' (and everyone else's) season has long passed, Miller also told that story in his chat with Jeffries.
"I think it'll be unforgettable where we all were when things started to be canceled and we've gone into the kind of the new COVID-19 phase that we've been in for a while," Miller said. "Our staff, we were in in a hotel suite coming off of a big win for us, Washington, (which) was really dangerous team to play in March. I thought they really hit their stride at the end. But we had one of our, I believe, season's best performances against them and we were hard at work preparing for (a quarterfinal game against) USC, scouting, going over the game we just played and really getting everything organized for that night to prepare with our team."
Miller left once the Pac-12 tournament was canceled later that morning of March 12 and, by the time he had flown home, the NCAA Tournament was also called off. The rest of the Wildcats scattered that afternoon from Las Vegas, with only a handful taking a bus back to Tucson.
Miller said he felt "really bad" for his three one-and-dones that they didn't get a chance to compete in an NCAA Tournament. Then he detailed what the team has been doing since then.
"Through the first two to four weeks it was a matter of safety: What is it that we're all doing, allowing each of our players to get home, making sure that in their own right, that their own families are safe and healthy, that they had a safe place to go to.
"Phase two was making sure that academically they were able to finish what they began (in the) spring semester, working from home, everything online, the checks and balances and making sure that they had all the support they needed to be successful to finish the spring semester.
"That phase ended and then I think the third phase that we went through is just kind of an encouraging phase that, `Look, at some point, we're going to return back to school, at some point, we're all going to be allowed to leave our house. This will not last forever, and just hang in there.'
"I think now that phase is ending, really what we're starting to do is have more direct talks to make sure that those guys are a finishing up academically, that they are in fact we're really starting to work towards getting back here this summer, and be the best basketball player that they can be as well.
"Now, each one of them has different resources. We have certain players that have a basket in their driveway or backyard. We have certain players that had to search out a basketball -- not only do they not have access to the hoop in their own yard, but they don't even have the ability to dribble a basketball. Same thing with weights -- we have certain guys who have dumbbells or an in-house setup. We have others who just have to do push ups and sit ups. But by NCAA rules we're not able to keep track of what they're doing. We can encourage them.
"Certainly we can't tell them what to do because each one of them is aligned differently with their resources so as we move forward, I think we're looking forward to that date whenever it is that we can reconnect and I think until then, communication is everything. Our assistant coaches, our staff, our strength conditioning coach, our trainer, team doctors if needed, (staff) in charge of our team's academic well-being, all the tutors. And then our team communicating with each other.
"We're just trying, each Sunday through Saturday, to have a communication network where we're talking to each other, to make sure that we're all on the same page as best we can. It's in our best attempt to be efficient. We're doing the best we can, that's the truth."
