On Tuesday at Atlantic 10 Conference Media Day at the Barclays Center, Miller was again asked about playing at UD Arena, and even now it’s hard for him to imagine how it will feel. He coached the Flyers to a victory against Virginia Commonwealth that clinched the outright A-10 championship in his final game at the arena more than six years ago.
“I have nothing but positive memories,” Miller said. “Going back, it will look different and feel different, but the minute you pull up to the place and you see it, you’re going to think about all the guys that played in there and the games and the good experiences. More than anything. It’s going to be a tough game. It will be really hard sitting on the other end and getting that feeling of, ‘This is what everybody else has to go through.’ But you’ve got to do it.”
Rhode Island finished 9-22 and 5-13 in the A-10 in Miller’s first season, though one of those victories came against Dayton in Kingston, R.I. The Rams were picked to finish 14th out of 15 teams in the preseason poll this season. They return only three players from last season.
“I think there’s a lot of unknowns about our group, but we’re going to surprise some people,” Miller said. “I have been to a lot of places and I’ve been doing this long enough to know that we have a lot of talent, but the individual accolades and all the things that guys want don’t come without winning. There is no individual success or accolades without team success, and I think that’s the thing that we’re trying to really beat down right now with our team. How you have to work every day, what you want to do as a group has to trump the individual.”
UD Arena history: George Mason’s new coach, Tony Skinn, was the second-leading scorer on the 2006 Patriots team that made the Final Four. That run began with victories against Michigan State and North Carolina at UD Arena.
Skinn was suspended for the first-round game but scored eight points in 25 minutes in the second round.
“For me, not having the chance to play that first game, I was trying to be the best teammate possible,” Skinn said. “When you go into a game like that, you’re excited to be there. But you know as a mid-major 11 seed you don’t know what the outcome is going to be. As the game progressed, I just remember having just a bunch of ‘we might actually win this thing’ moments, which gave me the confidence to continue to cheer my teammates on. It was an unbelievable game. I remember it like it was yesterday. The rest is history.”
State of the A-10: The A-10 failed to send two teams to the NCAA tournament last season for the first time since 2005. St. Bonaventure coach Mark Schmidt, whose team was picked to finish third, is optimistic that was a blip and not a trend.
“We didn’t do a good job in the non-conference from from top to bottom,” Schmidt said. “We don’t have a lot of opportunities just because of how all this has played out now with the Power Fives playing 20 (conference) games, but when we get our chances, we’ve got to cash in. Last year, we didn’t. And I think we have the talent in this league to be able to do that. That’s our job. I think we can do it.”
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