Archie Miller hilariously falls for Internet troll, questions SEC's dominance in basketball
Rhode Island basketball coach Archie Miller unfortunately made headlines for the wrong reason on Monday afternoon, falling victim to a troll on Twitter.
In a press conference discussing how hard it is to win games, Miller referenced a stat questioning the SEC’s dominance this season that had gone viral on Twitter.
Only one problem: The tweet with the stat was entirely tongue in cheek.
“Wow. The ‘best conference in the history of college basketball’ is 54-54 since January 4th,” wrote a user named Jacob Pickle on Twitter. “ESPN once AGAIN showing their SEC bias for some teams that can’t even get above .500.”
Take more than a brief second or two to evaluate the content of the message and it should pretty quickly become clear that the tweet was a joke. The SEC is 54-54 in that span because it’s only playing against itself — by definition, it would have to be .500.
To his credit, Archie Miller seemed to immediately question his own reference.
“I heard somebody say the other day like the SEC’s the best league in the country,” Miller said. “But in all games they’re like 54-54. Somebody said that. I don’t know if that’s even accurate, but like do you know how hard it is in every league to win? It’s just hard to win any game.”
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In Archie Miller’s defense, college basketball coaches are dealing with a lot this time of year. Conference play is a grind, and Rhode Island has been under a lot of pressure.
Miller is in his third season and having the most success he’s had so far. His team is 14-6 but has gotten off to a slow start in Atlantic 10 Conference play, at just 3-5.
Still, probably best not to use stats unless you’re reasonably confident in them going forward. That’s what sports information directors (SIDs) are there for.
In any case, it’ll probably provide a bit of a laugh for Archie Miller once he gets over the fact that he went viral for a bit of Internet shenanigans.