For Sean Miller, the Final Four has become less of a daily obsession and more of a destination he’s still trying to reach the right way.
That’s a notable shift for a coach whose résumé already stretches across more than two decades and three programs. Miller has logged two separate runs at Xavier, 12 seasons at Arizona and now a season at Texas, and the body of work is hard to miss: a 508-211 career record, eight regular-season conference titles and four conference tournament championships.
The postseason numbers are strong, too. Miller has made 14 NCAA Tournament appearances and gone 25-14 in those games, with four trips to the Elite Eight and eight to the Sweet 16.
But the biggest line on the coaching ledger still hasn’t been filled in. A Final Four appearance - and the chance to play for a national championship - has remained out of reach.
In August, on CBS Sports’ Inside College Basketball Now podcast, Jon Rothstein revisited an old comment from Miller, one in which the coach had said he thought about the Final Four every 10 minutes. Miller’s answer this time reflected a different perspective.
“When you start to reflect on the end, … you’re not paying attention to the details that you do every day,” Miller said. “So if I think about things every 10 minutes, I’m still consumed with the game of basketball.
I try to focus more on what it is we’re doing and how we could be better at it. I think that’s a much healthier approach to getting to the end result.”
Miller has had his share of near misses. At Xavier, he took a team to the Elite Eight in 2008 during his first stint. At Arizona, he got within one game of the Final Four three times, with the last of those runs coming in 2015.
Texas is chasing that same kind of breakthrough. The program hasn’t been to the Final Four since 2003, and in Miller’s first season in Austin, the Longhorns got to the Sweet 16 before falling one possession short in a 79-77 loss to Purdue. That defeat kept Texas from reaching the Elite Eight for the first time since 2022-23.
As Miller heads into year two with the Longhorns, the goal hasn’t changed. The approach has.
“My response wasn’t a good one,” Miller said. “It was honest, but it really wasn’t a good one because it’s inevitably what can do you in. You’re fixated on the result, something that is a byproduct of your every day (life), your staff, your team, who you are, the perfection of practice and all the different things that are meaningful toward the end result of winning a championship.”
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