Sonoran Hot Reads: Sean Miller right back in the national spotlight

The yearly stories of heartache are back

It’s that time of year...when everyone remembers that Sean Miller has never been to the Final Four. And this year, it’s even more of a thing considering that he and Mark Few are the top two seeds in their particular region, and that region also only has one coach that’s ever been to a Final Four in Bob Huggins.

So here are some of the best things from around the internet that have been written about Miller this week:

- Washington Post’s Chuck Culpepper - How it feels to lose one game short of the Final Four — over and over again

Some of the quotes in here are phenomenal, but this is probably my favorite section:

“When you’re in that locker room, the only thing that you hear is the other team on the court, because they’re getting to cut the nets down,” Miller said. “They’ve made it to the Final Four. There is a big difference between being in the losing locker room and listening to that crowd, and then, inevitably, it always comes to the NCAA. At some point, they have to come in and say, ‘Hey, this is when your plane is leaving.’ You almost feel like you’ve been kicked out of the tournament, because they have to — they have to logistically work it out to get you home.”

- USA Today’s Dan Wolken - Arizona, Gonzaga on collision course to break each other's hearts

This one makes the Arizona/Gonzaga tie even stronger since they also both happen to be playing in Salt Lake City this weekend, a place that has former Zags guard John Stockton’s number in the rafters.

“The success of the entire journey, the entire regular season has to be taken into consideration,” Miller said. “But at the end of the day, you know, all of us are judged by what happens in March and for us to duck that or look at that as not being the case is somewhat unrealistic. For us, you want to take advantage of a good seed, you want to play your best basketball in March and if that happens and you still don’t advance, all of us walk away with our head held high and we’ll put our ball away and come back next year. But clearly, the goal is to get all the way to the end.”

- Grand Forks Herald’s Tom Miller - Legendary coach Lute Olson on UND-Arizona: 'That's going back in time for me'

You may or may not know that Arizona’s legendary coach actually grew up in North Dakota, and was actually offered by UND out of high school.

"When I finished high school, they had interest in me coming to the 'U,'" Olson said of UND. "I had only been in Grand Forks for a year. Being from Mayville, a town of about 1,500 at the time, my interest was going to a smaller school; that's what I had grown up with."

- USA Today’s Nicole Auerbach - A basketball widow: Sean Miller's wife creates amazing online brand

You also may or may not know that Sean Miller’s wife Amy has the Twitter handle @abballwidow. She tells the story behind it, and apparently Sean doesn’t care about it anymore.

"He thought it was cute when I first did it,” she says. "Now, he’s over it.”

- AZCentral’s Dan Bickley - Time for Arizona's Sean Miller to break through

It’s also a pivotal time for the program’s reputation. Miller has restored the recruiting standards that existed under Olson, but Wildcats fans are delusional if they still think Arizona is a top-tier program. That won’t be the case until they reach another Final Four, which hasn’t happened in 16 years. And in Miller’s tenure, they’ve never had a better draw or the allure of something close to a home-court advantage in the Final Four, which commences on April 1.

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