CINCINNATI — Sean Miller had time on his hands. So much time. More time than he can remember having since he picked up a basketball. Not the sort of time you seek, the quick recharge of a vacation or a mental health day; the kind that’s forced on you, in this case via a dismissal from the University of Arizona during an NCAA investigation. Miller, who has known nothing but a calendar stuffed with college basketball since he was a freshman at Pitt in 1987, suddenly went from 100 to zero. The age-old lament that there wasn’t enough time in a day to accomplish all that needed accomplishing became what do I do with all this time on my hands? How can I make the day go faster?

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So he did what he always did. He watched basketball. Except he did it differently. For the first time since he became a grad assistant in 1992, Miller did not break down a game to search for a flaw in an opponent’s defensive scheme to expose or an offensive weakness to double down on. He just sat back and watched, often with his brother, Archie, who was also between jobs. They flipped through college games and NBA games, frequently tuned into FIBA.

Freed of his coaching tunnel vision, Miller saw the bigger picture of college basketball, where it was going and more importantly, where he wanted to go if he got back in.

The result is this: Xavier is the sixth-leading scoring team in the nation, averaging 82.1 points per game, and boasts the seventh most efficient offense according to Ken Pomeroy. The Musketeers rank in the 95th percentile in pace, 92nd in field goals attempted per game, and stand behind only Marquette in Big East offensive firepower.

More critically, the Musketeers head to New York for the Big East tournament as the second seed and are locked in for a return to the NCAA Tournament after a four-year hiatus. “It is 100 percent a dynamic shift for me,’’ Miller says. “I made my mind up very early on that, if given another opportunity, this would be the change for me. The way we play now, the tempo, our offense, I just think this is the future of basketball.’’

Miller was never exactly a grinder. In both his previous stint at Xavier and his 12 seasons at Arizona, no one would accuse his teams of being allergic to offense. But Miller came up under Herb Sendek and Thad Matta, and tilted toward their defensive approaches. As a head coach himself, he built teams that averaged 58th nationally across 17 years in defensive efficiency and four times were top 20. It suited him, his temperament more in line with the side of the ball where you could menace and muscle your way to victory. Freewheeling offense required a little more give and freedom from a tightly-wound coach who grimaced his way through even a good game.

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The evolution of the game, however, waits for no one. It is not a static being. It’s fluid, and what worked once doesn’t work forever. Miller points to Ben Howland’s old UCLA teams as a perfect example. “They were feared,’’ he says. Howland once had Russell Westbrook and Darren Collison in the same backcourt yet consistently won games in the 60s, preferring to hard-hedge his way to victory. In the 2008 national semifinal a Bruins team with Westbrook, Collison and a screen-setting Kevin Love bowed out after scoring only 63 points against Memphis. They won a game in that same NCAA Tournament run, 51-49. “You couldn’t do that now,’’ Miller says.

West Coast basketball gave Miller a glimpse of the future before he was even let go at Arizona. He played against Mark Few and eyed Gonzaga’s potent offense with curiosity. But then he went back to his bunker, too worried about the next game to ruminate on philosophical shifts. The hamster wheel provides little respite, games bleeding into recruiting followed by summer workouts, preseason and then tip off again. Wholesale changes require more than just declaring intent. An entire plan needs to be executed — from how to approach conditioning to a shift in drills and practice plans, who to recruit and who to pass on. Miller had no time for that.

Until he did. The son of a coach, Miller has been schooled on basketball since childhood. His dog-and-pony ballhandling tricks earned him an appearance on Johnny Carson and a spot in “The Fish that Saved Pittsburgh,” but it was his IQ that landed him the starting point guard spot at Pitt as a freshman. On April 7, 2021, when he was fired by Arizona, Miller went back to the basketball classroom. Along with watching games with Archie, he watched what Tommy Lloyd did with mostly the same roster at Arizona, saw how the Few disciple flipped the switch and made the Wildcats one of the best offensive teams in the nation. He’d exchange ideas with Archie, chat about European ball, and scratch notes feverishly on a legal pad, plotting a renaissance for a team that he didn’t yet have.

He’s in the same office in the same building at the same university as he was 18 years ago. But not everything is as it was at Xavier. The Musketeers have jumped class since Miller’s last tour here, joining the Big East in 2013. The move made philosophical sense and didn’t require a whole lot of heavy lifting for Xavier. The Cintas Center got some sprucing up, but already was on par with Big East facilities, and the fan base could more than match the fevered devotion of its new rivals.

The Musketeers transitioned easily, making a regional semifinal in 2015 and an Elite Eight in 2017, but then Chris Mack left for Louisville, and Travis Steele, a former Miller and Mack assistant, couldn’t keep up the trend. Late slides in each of his final three seasons cost a team that had made 16 of 18 NCAA Tournaments before he arrived, and sealed Steele’s fate. He was let go in the middle of the Musketeers’ NIT run.

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Despite Miller’s bona fides — three Elite Eights and five Pac-12 titles at Arizona — hiring him was risky. The NCAA (via the Independent Accountability Resolution Process) had yet to rule on an investigation stemming from the FBI’s prove five years earlier, and Miller faced a possible suspension. Athletic director Greg Christopher, who once served on the Committee on Infractions, stood by his due diligence and was rewarded when the IARP finally ruled in December, opting not to penalize Miller at all.

Miller inherited a roster with five players from a team that won the NIT championship, able to convince all but Dwon Odom to stick around for a reset under the new coach. The Musketeers are wizened — 14th in the nation in experience per KenPom — and the experience allowed Miller to be choosy as he reinvented the way he wanted to play. He didn’t need a lot, but to play the way he wanted to play required a point guard who could score.

Souley Boum scored 16 in a loss to Arizona as a sophomore, connecting on just 4 of his 12 shots from the field. But Miller saw more of Boum than in just those 40 minutes, spending hours poring over scout film and prepping for Arizona’s game against UTEP in 2021. At the end of his senior year, Boum put his name in the transfer portal, hoping to latch onto a team that would help him realize the March dreams he’d harbored since picking up a ball as a 6-year-old in Oakland, Calif. He knew James Akinjo, who played for Miller at Arizona, and Akinjo vouched for the coach. Boum, who had never considered snow in his forecast, relocated to Cincinnati. “I was looking for a coach who believed in me,’’ Boum says. “I came here to be the point guard, to play on a winning team, do all the things I dream of.’’

Boum doesn’t so much enter a room as he bounces, a basketball Tigger. High energy, big personality, he slid in seamlessly with the otherwise set roster, making it clear from the jump he wasn’t here to get his; he was there to get theirs. “I can’t imagine a better situation,’’ Colby Jones says. “Souley, he’s the guy on the days when you don’t feel like practicing, he brings that energy. He’s always smiling but from day one, he got here ready to work.’’

There was a lot of work to be done. Transitioning coaches is never easy, and with Miller anxious to up the tempo he needed to work quickly. His proven track record and familiarity with Xavier gave him instant credibility in the locker room and his demands for accountability registered immediately. Miller brought new zeal to the weight room and stressed the need for extra workouts. He emphasized fundamentals, and sets aside practice time even now, late in the season, to work on the basics. The Musketeers do not walk through practice, they practically sprint, one drill feeding into the next, everything moving at a pace that matches the way they play. Go. Don’t stop. Push. “I wouldn’t say we have the ultimate green light or freedom,’’ Jack Nunge says. “But as long as you’re making plays within the flow, you’re OK. Having that trust from your coach, someone who believes in you, it’s a great thing to have happen.’’

It is easy to give trust when you have a group that earns it. Miller’s older roster picked up concepts quickly, and he never had to worry about them getting lost in the weeds of learning while adjusting to college ball. They came with their own impressive credentials — Zach Freemantle was last year’s Big East Most Improved Player, Jones was named Most Outstanding Player of the NIT, and Nunge was honorable mention All-Big East.

Boum is the seasonal revelation. Except really he’s not. “I’ve been doing this my whole career,’’ he says. He’s averaging fewer points now than he did in the last two years at UTEP, but his efficiency is so much better, the byproduct of a marriage of between player and system. In order for this to work, Miller had to let go. “There are just some things you can no longer do,’’ he says. “If you’re going to commit to a fast tempo and to concepts with a lot of movement, you just can’t call a lot of set plays.’’ That means he needed someone to cede the reins to. Boum has been near flawless. He ranks in the 94th percentile in assist-to-turnover ratio, dishing out 4.5 assists per game to just two turnovers. Take the statistics out and it boils down to this: He makes the right decisions.

There is, of course, always a give and take. Lean in too hard on offense and defense can become a weakness, if not an all-out liability. Their KenPom efficiency rating puts them 83rd in the nation, which isn’t horrible, but it’s the worst of a Miller-coached team in 13 years.

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Not having Freemantle hasn’t helped. The team’s leading rebounder has been out since the end of January after reinjuring the foot he had surgery on in 2021. The original hope was to have him back for the Big East tourney, but instead, he’s reportedly having season-ending surgery.

Regardless, the exchange is almost inevitable, and a large part of why, during a recent practice, Miller harped on closeouts on 3-point shots and fast feet movement on defense. There’s been improvement. Since Feb. 4, they’ve improved their defensive efficiency on KenPom from 104th. It bears repeating that, in the last 10 years, no Final Four team has had a sub-top 50 defensive rating.

At this point in the season, Miller also has had to guard against worn-out bodies. “The iron seven’’ is how he refers to his rotation, a group that’s more like an iron six without Freemantle. In conference Boum averaged 37 minutes per game, followed by Jones (34.5), Adam Kunkel (31), Nunge (29.9), Jerome Hunter (24.2) and Desmond Claude (20.7). All of that, frankly, should be computed in dog years considering Xavier’s pace of play, and will be compounded this month as the games come fast and furious, with little rest in between.

But standing at 23-8 with nearly double the Big East wins the Musketeers had last year, Miller is not about to part with his experiment anytime soon. “It’s like a merry-go-round and sometimes you don’t realize that you just keep going in a circle,’’ Miller says. You never take time to understand and appreciate the game of basketball. That year away, it allowed me to form a future in my mind and see things differently. I don’t plan on changing.’’

He wouldn’t have the time to, anyway.

(Illustration: Samuel Richardson / The Athletic; Photo: Justin Casterline / Getty Images))