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Friday, March 27, 1998

Miller leads Utah Final Four bid

By HAL BOCK AP Sports Writer

SAN ANTONIO (AP) - Utah's chances in the Final Four depend in large measure on point guard Andre Miller, who took apart defending national champion Arizona with what is believed to be the first triple double in school history.

The Utes are a halfcourt team, rarely playing the racehorse style that leads to individual boxscore blastoffs. So when Miller scored 18 points and added 14 rebounds and 13 assists to knock off Arizona, it was something of an anomaly. Utah's fistful of NBA players like Bill "The Hill" McGill, Danny Vranes, Tom Chambers and Keith Van Horn never hit double digits in three categories.

What made Miller's performance more surprising was that it came against Mike Bibby, called the best point guard in the West by Utah coach Rick Majerus. Second best did just fine, though.

"I was confident," Miller said about the Utes' chances against Arizona. "All our players were confident."

Majerus is fond of saying that he never coaches a game he expects to lose. And with Miller running the offense, he'll take his chances.

For Miller, the performance against Arizona made him the MVP of the West Regional and a centerpiece of Utah's run at the Final Four. This has been going on for a while. In the first round of the NCAA tournament against Arkansas, he wore out the Razorbacks with 28 points. Fourteen of the points came in the final seven minutes, when Arkansas kept fouling him because the scouting report said he was the man to foul.

A year ago, when he was a 58 percent foul shooter, that was true. But 200 free throws a day over the summer fixed the problem, raising him to 75 percent. Miller made eight of nine foul shots down the stretch, six of them in the game's last minute.

So when the Utes play North Carolina on Saturday, the ball will belong to Miller, a longshot from the tough side of Los Angeles, who didn't even know where Utah was when Majerus arrived to recruit him.

In fact, Majerus might have been more impressed with Miller's mother than he was with the point guard, who had only two other schools - Long Beach State and San Diego - recruiting him.

Miller's mom saw that scholarship offer as a lifeboat that would rescue her son. Why else would an inner city kid from LA wind up in Salt Lake City, surrounded by Mormons and missions? It was an escape hatch for Miller, a place to survive.

Andrea Robinson is so supportive of her son that she frequently shows up at home games. When the Utes played in the Midwest Regional at Dallas, two years ago, she took a bus 29 hours each way to be at the games. And she was at work in LA the next day.

"Basketball kept me off the streets," Miller said. "I didn't see the gangs as a problem. The gang bangers like to play basketball. They knew who I was, that I was a basketball player. I learned a lot of skills playing against them. That's where I learned to be physical."

Still, it was a giant challenge for an African-American youngster to opt for Utah. Majerus is blunt about the problem the setting presents for recruiting.

"It's tough to get the black athlete," he said. "The Mormon religion is a tough religion in terms of perception, People go out of their way to welcome you, but the perception is still that it's an environment that is not conducive to a black person."

The only other black player on the team is David Jackson, who one day could inherit Miller's post. He will have to go some to replace Miller, though.

"Andre is the best point guard I've ever coached," Majerus said. "He is very tough-willed."

It probably comes from his old neighborhood.