Archie Miller has one goal when it comes to visiting his hometown of Pittsburgh.
Someday.
“I’ll be honest with you, I’d love to come back one time and never have to coach,” Miller said.
Just not this time. This time, the Beaver Falls native wants to coach as many games as possible.
Miller is leading his Rhode Island Rams into PPG Paints Arena for the Atlantic 10 Tournament. The team has a second-round game against Duquesne at 5 p.m. Thursday. That will be the third of four games that day.
Riding the momentum of their 30-point comeback over Richmond on Saturday, Miller is aware of what that emotional component can do for the Dukes.
“That shows those guys have the ability level to find a way during a game to compete and play hard. They did that. And they completely turned that game all the way around,” Miller said. “Duquesne was as hot and as good as any team in our league in February. As they play in Pittsburgh, I’m sure there will be a great excitement level for those guys to advance and stay in.”
Miller is hoping his team’s run in Pittsburgh this week will last longer than his previous visit to PPG Paints Arena. The last time the building hosted this tournament was in 2017. That year, Miller’s top-seeded Dayton Flyers were upset by Davidson in their first game.
Ironically, Miller’s current team ended up winning the whole event and going to the NCAA Tournament in ‘17 when current UConn coach Danny Hurley was on the bench.
“Yeah. It was a quick trip to Pittsburgh for me last time,” Miller lamented. “But Pittsburgh is a great site. The city is fantastic. It’s actually a great location for all the fan bases in the league, whether it’s Midwest, Northeast or the mid-Atlantic. You can move around relatively easily. The facilities are top-notch. NCAA Tournament games are there. It’s a really good feeling coming back. Pittsburgh is one of the better places that we have an opportunity to host.”
The 10th-seeded Rams (16-15, 7-11) and seventh-seeded Dukes (17-14, 9-9) split a pair of games this season, with each team winning on its home floor. After a 76-61 Duquesne victory Feb. 1 on the Bluff, the Dukes went to URI and lost 64-52, a season-low scoring output.
“Archie and I are about the same size. We both played the same position (point guard). We’ve got some similarities,” Dukes coach Dru Joyce III said. “I don’t even need to talk to him about it. I know how he was as a player. He fought for every inch of space in any way that he had to. I can tell he has that same fight through his teams as he coaches them. I enjoy Archie as a coach. We know we are going to get a big-time fight from Rhode Island.”
During his playing days as a standout at Blackhawk, PPG Paints Arena was far from being built. But Miller never played in the old Civic/Mellon Arena either.
“I may have performed a couple of halftimes growing up. A couple of dribbling exhibitions with the little Panthers back in the day,” Miller laughed. “But I never had a game there.”
However, Miller certainly remembers watching plenty of games in the old Igloo. Most of them involved watching his brother, former Pitt guard Sean Miller.
“When Sean was playing at Pitt, the old Civic Arena was (for) Georgetown and Syracuse. Growing up as a kid, if you got a Saturday afternoon and you had a chance to see John Thompson coach against Jerome Lane, Brian Shorter, Sean and Jason Matthews, that was my dream — those big-time Big East games. Growing up, the Igloo, to me, was Big East basketball and the Dapper Dan (Roundball Classic).”
The Millers were coached by their father, John, a WPIAL Hall of Famer. Up until this year, he still showed up for Archie’s URI games when they visited Duquesne. But his parents won’t be in attendance for the tournament this week, as they have relocated to Texas with their daughters. Sean is also the coach at the University of Texas.
“This will be the first time I come back to the city of Pittsburgh, and I don’t have any immediate family living there anymore. It’s kind of odd going home and not having my mom and dad there,” Miller said. “But we’ll have a laundry list of friends, former coaches and former high school players that will be asking for tickets. A dozen or so.”
And Miller is hoping the Rams’ stay in his hometown will be long enough this time around that he has plenty of tickets to hand out.