NCAA Bracket 2011: Sean Miller of Arizona Takes Undertaker Role from Coach K

Despite the smiles on one team's faces toward the end of any college basketball game, there is a funeral sort of atmosphere on most basketball courts where Duke is playing.

Assuming the game face of their coach, as if they can laugh or smile only on rare occasions after perhaps an especially great play, most cannot consider a happy moment. The game of college basketball is too serious.

In fairness, only some teams seem to enjoy themselves on the court. The Fab Five comes to mind. So do the teams on which Magic Johnson played. In fact, Michigan State does seem often to enjoy itself. Let's give that to the coach.

In the end, coaches seem to get players who are like them. Want to smile? Do not go to Duke. Go to Carolina, or Michigan State or to Florida State. (Florida State is the exception that proves the rule. Although their coach, Leonard Hamilton, is a real pill, the players he recruits seem much looser.)

When you look at drab, sour coaches, they seem to take on various types of personae. In some, they seem to be more like the preacher variety. Lute Olson (more about him in a minute) was that type. Imagine him in a pulpit on Sunday. Roy Williams, despite his outburst, gives a preacher-like sheen that attracts players whose morality is generally beyond question.

On the other side of the spectrum, we have coaches who seem like ex-cons. Did these guys ever spend time in the slammer? I confess, I include Jerry Tarkanian and Jim Calhoun in this group. Calhoun. The con from Conn.

These guys had many players who were great and had no stigma attached—do not get me wrong. And they are clearly not convicts. Just that if you cast a group of convicts in a movie, Calhoun could be the head guy and Tarkanian his sidekick. They look the part.

So we get to last night's game. Arizona against Duke. Mike Krzyzewski of Duke against Sean Miller of Arizona. I defy you to pick a better profession for these two than undertaker. They both dress in black suits, sit on the bench without much motion and periodically console those who come to them.

Sure, they may use bad language on occasion and fill out the other college coach requirements that even the preachers do from time to time. But their transgressions are done in a pious manner. Full of self-assurance and gravitas. As if they are seeing someone, usually the other team, off to their singular trip to the great unknown.

What has kept Krzyzewski alive as "the Coach" through the years is not just the Duke PR mill, which has done a pretty good job making Krzyzewski the "best coach in the country" whatever the real facts happen to be, but also because he wins against lesser foes. In general, the way to a coaching legacy is both to win and to have the appearance of a sage in doing so.

Sean Miller, on the other hand, has had to work on this persona. No longer a part of a coaching springboard like Xavier, where so many great coaches begin their careers, Arizona was the logical place for Miller.

In the Pac-10, where another dynasty is still trying to return to greatness, Arizona was the fertile ground of former preacher-coach Lute Olson. Even the name conjures up the Midwest. In fact he came from the University of Iowa when he decided he would coach where he would retire.

Olson's quintessential college basketball game was against Duke in the 2001 season. Duke and Arizona were loaded, and Olson was deemed due by the betting public. Yet the end was not sweet, with Duke winning by 10.

In looking at Olson, interviewed during the game last night, it seemed as if he was a coach in the game. Eyes twinkling so much, he may have helped Miller after all. We will probably never know.

On the other hand, Miller has done something with the Arizona program that Olson was unable to do: smash Duke in an unforgiving win.

Too bad Miller did not do what Krzyzewski has done on occasion in the past and keep his starters scoring at will until the very end of the game. The play deserved it, with one elbow flying around the out-of-bounds with the future of the game still uncertain, and another forearm shiver draining down on the head of an Arizona player. The physical fireworks we foresaw did come to happen. Just no broken noses this time.

After all was over, however, and the coaches shook hands, you had a faint suggestion that Duke's best days were behind it. Despite a fortunate national championship, their players were not quite as superior acting during the game. They seemed defeated early. In addition, their audience was as unfriendly as any west regional has ever been to an ACC team.

On the other hand, Arizona has assumed the mantle of leader of the Pac-10. Fewer California stars go to UCLA these days, and few want to do so. The Wooden tradition is a thing of the past. Arizona's future seems very bright indeed.

It will be interesting to see if Sean Miller really becomes the Undertaker, a much better moniker for Krzyzewski than the Coach. If he does, look for him to continue to dress in black, to be serious on the bench and to develop a group of kids who act superior to the rest because their coach is the best.

The jury is out with so many great coaches coming up the ranks. Still, Shaka Smart with VCU and Brad Stevens with Butler have neither the demeanor nor the attitude of Krzyzewski. Only Miller seems to fit the bill.

And why not? Krzyzewski looked meek and downtrodden when watching his team be dismantled by Miller's Arizona team. Looks like there is a new Undertaker in town—and that he could become as famous and successful as Krzyzewski.

We will see. For now, all Krzyzewski can do is head back to the mortuary to see what he can do about his next great recruiting class and study his failures over two of the last three years.