Sunday is a big day for Sean Miller. In the first season, during his second stint at the school, head coach Xavier guided the show to the first Sweet round of 16 since 2017. And to get there, Miller had to beat a school close and dear to his heart, the University. of Pittsburgh – his alma mater where he acted as a point guard in the late ’80s and early ’90s. But this isn’t about the 3rd Musketeers coming up against No. 2 Texas. It’s about Miller – who is white – and his former assistant Book Richardson – who is black – and about who goes to jail and who resumes coaching in March.
Apologies if this much-needed history lesson is about to rain on Xavier’s parade – they know who they’ve hired.
“I have a great team to work with. There are a lot of coaches who can win with this team and I realize that.” Miller said when he returned to the Sweet 16 since he last played for the Arizona Wildcats in 2018. “My hope is that we have more energy, that we can have a great week and make it happen. what we feel satisfied is even better. “
Arizona is the key to everything.
“Book [Richardson] Loyal to Sean [Miller],” said mediator Christian Dawkins in HBO documentary Plan. “Arizona has certainly been more open to getting some of the bad work done.”
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“But look, your boy [Miller] promise that he will let [us] working on that deal,” Dawkins told Richardson in a call the FBI was recording. “So we’ll see how Sean plays it out. You know what I’m saying? We’ll see if he’s a man of his word. Because he brought it to me.
“Yes, because he needs help,” Richardson replied. “Do you know what he does every month? I already told you. Ten.”
“Yes, that’s what I’m saying,” Dawkins said. “He is donating some real money to them [players]. He told me he was about to be killed.”
Dawkins then went on to say, “I learned that Sean was the sponsor of the Deandre Ayton case.” Ayton was the #1 pick in the 2018 NBA Draft after spending a season playing in Arizona for Miller and Richardson.
“I never have, and I never will,” Miller said about paying players when asked about it at a press conference in March 2018.
Finally, in April 2021, Miller was fired at Arizona with one year remaining on his contract, which the school still honors. In 2019, Richardson pleaded guilty to a felony conspiracy to bribe after being accused of accepting money from Dawkins to send players to Arizona to play for Miller.
Richardson sentenced to three months in prison. Miller is hired by Xavier in 2022 after also being the target of South Carolina. The Black Assistant went to prison. The white head coach took a year off and took a new job. Think about that for a second.
“For the past five years, I have spent too much time in my head,” Richardson said last summer in an article. The Athletic’s Seth Davis story. At the time, Richardson was coaching The Gauchos, a popular New York youth junior program that, for some reason, he doesn’t get a second chance like Miller. “Am I happy? I don’t know what happiness is anymore. I woke up and I was grateful that God breathed into my body. I’m just not sure. I miss (college) coaching. It defines me. It probably shouldn’t have, but it did.
At the beginning of this season, ESPN reported that the NCAA had handed Richardson a 10-year sentence for his role in the FBI’s bribery investigation into the sport. That’s weird, the white trainer (Miller) has been cleared by the NCAA about everything that happened in Arizona.
The two spoke for the first time in December since Richardson was arrested in 2017.
“He said, ‘I love you,’ and I said, ‘I know,’” Richardson said.
On Friday night, Sean Miller will try to get his team into the Elite Eight while Book Richardson will most likely watch on TV. And if you don’t think race is the reason Miller got another job while Richardson was in jail, you are why “not seeing color” hurts and matters. so. This is the real madness of March.
