Archie in the mix after all?

[GooooMarquette]

Depends.... how is his team looking for next year?  To me that's a great indicator of how well someone manages a program. 

Just did a quick search - the 4 seniors on this season's team scored only 27.2 of the team's 72 ppg.  Their leading scorer is a junior, and their third leading scorer is a soph.  I'd say they have reason for optimism.

[muwarrior69]

YES




'Always sort of an ornery little guy'

There are families of doctors, families of attorneys and families of educators.

At the Miller home in Beaver Falls, Pa., basketball was the family business.

When John Miller retired in 2005 at age 62 after 35 years coaching boys basketball at Blackhawk High School, his résumé included a 657-280 career win-loss record, state championships in 1992, 1995, 1996 and 1999, and eight Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League titles in its classification. For 21 consecutive seasons, Blackhawk was a fixture in the state playoffs, and the program went 104-29 in postseason play.

John Miller and his wife, Barb, had four children, Sean, Dana, Ryan and Lisa. Of the 40-plus players Miller sent to college basketball programs through his work at Blackhawk or other coaching experiences, Sean, Ryan and Lisa have made him the most proud. Dana, the second-oldest of his four children, didn't catch the basketball bug but was a skilled high school tennis player.

As for the third child, only Barb, Dana and Lisa use the name "Ryan" when referring to him. He's "Archie" to the men in his family, his wife Morgan and everyone else he's encountered in his basketball career.

It's a nod to the crotchety nature of the Archie Bunker character in the 1970s television sitcom All in the Family, as John Miller said that Ryan was "always sort of an ornery little guy." The nickname stuck, and that's the reason why the Flyer Faithful will cheer for Archie, or "Arch," despite his possession of a driver's license that reads "Ryan Joseph Miller."

That ornery little guy enjoyed being around his father and Sean, who's 10 years older, when they went to the gym, and John took Archie along when he traveled to coach at clinics across the region. Archie carried the bag of basketballs and other equipment for his father, and as his reward for being such a good helper, he earned a front-row seat to watch the winning process in action.

Sean, at 6-foot-3, left Blackhawk High to become one of the most popular players in University of Pittsburgh history and from there began taking the steps that would help him launch a successful coaching career. Although also a point guard, Archie was smaller at 5-foot-9, a measurement that created more adversity as he attempted to follow a similar path.

It might have been a blessing in disguise.

"He was undersized, so when he began to play, he became sort of that tough-nosed player that battled for everything," John Miller said. "He's always had that bit of aggressiveness. I don't think losing ever enters his mind."

As Blackhawk High's point guard, Archie led the Cougars to back-to-back state titles in 1995 and 1996, his sophomore and junior years. That's two more state titles than Sean can claim.

College coaches were noticing. Herb Sendek, a Pittsburgh native who attended rival Penn Hills High School in the 1970s and early '80s, was well acquainted with the Miller family through the high school and Amateur Athletic Union coaching circuits. He attempted to recruit Sean in the late 1980s when he was an assistant coach at Providence College in Rhode Island.

In 1994, Sendek snagged his first head coaching position, getting the call at age 30 to lead the Miami (Ohio) program. Sendek hired Sean Miller to his RedHawks staff, and two years later he moved south, taking over at North Carolina State.

Sendek hired Sean again as an assistant and recruited Archie to play for the Wolfpack. Sean was there for most of his brother's college career, leaving after the 2001 season to become an assistant at Xavier.

For Archie, the connection with Sendek was the beginning of a relationship that would transcend its initial incarnation as coach-player and eventually become one of professional colleagues and even friendly rivals when Sendek landed at Arizona State and Archie became an assistant on Sean's staff at Arizona.

"Basketball was coded in Archie's DNA," Sendek said. "He grew up with it day in and day out. I have great respect for him. He was a self-made Atlantic Coast Conference player who overcame a lot and did it through hard work. He was one of the best shooters I've ever had the chance to coach."

Sounds like Al.