Miller said the team has changed a lot in the last four games since the loss of Josh Cunningham
“The team that took the floor against Saint Mary’s was a different team than the one took the floor two days earlier against Alabama,” Miller said. “You lose Josh. You’re already down Kendall (Pollard). Immediately, your front court becomes three. Then you say we need to get Trey Landers moved over to the right, and Trey and Xeyrius (Williams) have to learn a position they’ve never played in a game. Then you take the floor. Immediately, there was a lack of confidence in playing with one another that day.
“As we approached Nebraska, I didn’t think that our problem was their lack of confidence playing together. The game against Nebraska was much more of an identity game for us defensively. We took our lumps. In a short turnaround, you build toward getting better, and I thought we were much better against Portland. We moved the ball much better. We played a lot harder. I thought our third game in four days (against New Mexico) was our best performance — maybe not our best offensive performance; it was tough to shoot in that arena at 11 a.m. as cold as it was — but defensively we were very tough minded. As we came home, we improved greatly. You saw a team that worked very hard in the Winthrop game.”
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