SAN DIEGO — Sometimes Act II works in sports and going home isn’t an unfamiliar or unsuccessful route. Sean Miller is not the first coach to retrace his steps and start over.
Before Miller returned to Xavier on Saturday, TCU coach Jamie Dixon was college basketball’s most recent high-profile coach to rediscover and embrace his basketball roots.
When TCU last won an NCAA Tournament basketball game, 1987, Dixon was the Horned Frogs star point guard. He scored 11 points in the ’87 victory over Marshall. After that, for more than 30 years, TCU was perfectly awful.
It didn’t win an NCAA Tournament game. It went through five coaches. Worse, it went through four conferences, unable to find a suitable home, unable to create a basketball identity. TCU has had just four winning conference seasons in 28 years.
But in 2016, at 51, Dixon left Pitt to return home and coach his alma mater. In Year 6 — in an Adia Barnes-type climb from nothing — the Horned Frogs set a home attendance record (5,926 per game) as TCU’s re-energized fan base now refers to remodeled Schollmaier Arena as “Fort Dixon.”
Welcome home, Jamie, we luv ya, man, right? After TCU beat Seton Hall Friday at Viejas Arena, Dixon became emotional when a TV interviewer asked him what it was like to have ended the school’s 35-year winless streak in the NCAA Tournament.
He didn’t cry, but he struggled to say “it’s nice to be home.”
The Horned Frogs are not a basketball blueblood. They haven’t had a first-team All-American since 1952 and have produced just one first-round NBA draft pick (Kurt Thomas) ever. But when Dixon’s rejuvenated alma mater plays Arizona on Sunday night in the Round of 32, the Horned Frogs will be cast as one of the most dreaded opponents of March Madness: A Team You Don’t Want To Play.
TCU has never won Game 2 in the Big Dance.
When TCU guard Mike Miles Jr. was asked what it would mean if the Horned Frogs beat Arizona to reach the Sweet 16, he had a ready answer. “We’re trying to make history,” he said. Motivation won’t be lacking.
If Dixon can be such a quick success at TCU, the odds of the 53-year-old Miller restoring Xavier to the Top 25 are strong. Put it this way: Miller’s Xavier teams won 72% of their games; his Arizona teams won 73%.
So what if the IARP panel rules that Miller must serve a five- or 10-game suspension to start next season? He’s taking charge of a Musketeers team that has gone 31-37 in the Big East the last four seasons. The first time he beats loathed rival Cincinnati no one will remember what the IARP is.
Besides, Miller isn’t one who enjoys being on stage. At Xavier, he’ll be no more than a sports co-star, if that, far behind the Cincinnati Bengals, Cincinnati Reds and Luke Fickell’s Cincinnati Bearcats football team, which has gone 44-7 the last four seasons and made the playoff last year.
No one will whine if Xavier averages just 66 points a game and is bounced out of the NCAA Tournament in the first round periodically. Miller’s move is no more high-profile than four or five other Act IIs.
USC football coach John Robinson coached the Trojans to a 67-14 record from 1976-82, winning three Rose Bowls. He left to make more money coaching the Los Angeles Rams, but when USC fired Larry Smith in 1992, Robinson returned to USC.
In Act II, Robinson struggled a bit. USC went 37-21 in five years but the last two seasons of 6-6 and 6-5 ended his relationship with the Trojans.
Oregon State’s Mike Riley took over the Pac-12’s most woeful football program ever in 1997. He righted the ship, an almost impossible job, and was hired away by the San Diego Chargers. But that gig went bust after three seasons and Riley returned to OSU from 2003-14 to become a Top 25 coach, a local legend qualifying for eight bowl games.
Basketball?
Hall of Famer Lou Henson coached little ’ol New Mexico State to the Final Four in 1973, was hired away by Illinois, where he went to the 1989 Final Four and finally flamed out in 1996. Henson then went back to NMSU and coached, successfully, for the first six of his eight years before retiring under pressure.
Now comes Miller’s second act at Xavier.
“He’s going to be smiling,” Arizona sophomore guard Dalen Terry said Saturday. “I’m happy to see him happy again.”
Perhaps Miller will someday be smiling as much as Dixon is now. Dixon’s decision to leave Pitt for his alma mater has been six years in the trenches, but he is now seeing sunshine again.
There are Arizona roots all over Dixon’s return to TCU. He was hired by longtime Arizona associate athletic director Chris Del Conte, who has since become the AD at Texas. It was considered quite a coup for a basketball graveyard such as TCU to get Dixon away from Pitt, where he won 73% of his games.
“People thought I was crazy for coming here,” Dixon said Saturday. “But I believed in them and they believed in me. But there’s still work to be done, still another step to make.”
That step would be an upset over Arizona. The Wildcats may need to bring their ‘A’ game to avoid being on the wrong side of history.
