Thamels take:
https://sports.yahoo.com/coaching-carou ... 46911.html
1. Has Sean Miller coached his last game at Arizona?
This is considered a 50-50 proposition. The confluence of looming NCAA sanctions, pedestrian performance (17-9, 11-9 Pac-12) and a looming decision on Miller’s future with just one year remaining on his contract have created a pressure point. Here are the options: the school is going to decide to fire him, there will be a mutual parting of ways or some type of toothless extension lacking significant guaranteed money that would enable the fifth season of this awkward tap dance. (Predictably, there’s no imminent clarity on the severity of NCAA sanctions in sight.)
Miller’s ability to navigate the self-inflicted mine-field of both the federal investigation and subsequent plodding NCAA investigation have been more impressive than anything the Wildcats have done on the court since 2017. Arizona hasn’t won an NCAA tournament game since the federal investigation went public, although it was projected as a No. 5 seed before the 2020 tournament was canceled.
If there weren’t diminishing returns on the court, the argument for Arizona to muscle through another year with Miller may be more prominent. But Arizona’s middling program trajectory and the school’s decision to self-impose an NCAA ban this year are signs the Miller era is sputtering to an unsatisfying finish. We should know better in the next few weeks where that finish line is, as Arizona’s season is already over.
Miller, 52, looks exhausted by it all. Could he expedite his inevitable spin through the NBA — a la Kelvin Sampson — and return to college basketball as a rehabbed commodity? Or does he return and risk facing the NCAA comeuppance that’s long considered an inevitability?
The Athletic has reported five potential Level I NCAA violations in a case that’s currently amid the Independent Accountability Review Process. (That IARP process projects to somehow make NCAA investigations even slower, a nearly impossible feat achieved by the champions of bureaucracy.)
The outcome there is expected to be harsh when it does arrive. The variable will be if Miller is around when the NCAA finally decide