Archie Miller was down in Florida for the Atlantic 10 meetings, going through security at the airport and about to board a flight home three Thursdays ago when his cell phone rang. Dayton assistant Allen Griffin was the person calling.

"Usually, that's just a normal call," Miller said. "But when I heard his voice I knew something wasn't right."

Indeed, something wasn't right. Something was very wrong.

And what came next were words no coach is prepared to hear. Griffin relayed the news that Dayton center Steve McElvene was gone. Collapsed at home. Dead at 20 from an apparent -- and previously undiagnosed -- cardiac issue. And the subsequent three weeks have reduced one of college basketball's top young coaches to somebody dealing with grief and juggling questions without answers.

And that's the hardest part, really.

Miller is now guiding a program through something for which there is no real map.

When a player gets injured, a coach can call any number of other coaches and ask for advice. Same for when a player gets arrested. Or suffers academically. You just pick up the phone and ask, "Hey, how did you handle this when it happened to you?" But having a player die is something so rare Miller isn't sure whom to lean on.

"It's an odd feeling," Miller told me this week. "Most of the time, as you know, there's some experience that you've gone through that sort of gives you the path of how to speak to your players and keep your staff going. But this is something different."

Miller said he got a nice message from former Dayton coach Oliver Purnell, who lost a player, Chris Daniels, to a sudden death in 1996. And he's been trading texts with Illinois State head coach Dan Muller, whose staff lost a member last year when assistant Torrey Ward died in a plane crash while returning from the Final Four.

"He just told me I have to understand there's no real reason," Miller said. "And he told me to just take it one day at a time."

So that's what Miller is doing.

He's taking it day by day.

He still hears things that remind him of McElvene and sees things that remind him of McElvene, and there are still moments when Miller thinks, "Is this real? Did this really happen?" But he's mostly holding up OK, he said, and looking forward to getting his team back on campus later this month so that they can heal together.

"This is something I never imagined I'd be a part of," Miller said. "You never think tomorrow you're going to wake up and deal with this. So it's tough. You're always looking for the right move or the right word. But I'm not sure what's right sometimes."

FIVE OTHER THINGS ON GP'S MIND

1. John Calipari's plan to move the SEC Tournament from March to November would -- as we discussed on the Eye on College Basketball podcast -- cause more problems than it solves. And his belief that SEC fans would travel to watch basketball in a dome during football season is far-fetched bordering on silly. That said, Calipari's larger point that it's counter-productive to play the SEC Tournament title game so close to the NCAA Tournament selection show is a sensible point that the SEC should address because there is reason to believe the committee doesn't always properly consider the results of games played on Sunday afternoon. So if the SEC can move its title game to Saturday, I agree with Calipari, it should.

2. That the starting backcourt for a team now just three wins away from taking back-to-back NBA titles came from Davidson and Washington State will forever be amazing and a great recruiting pitch for non-powers in college basketball. It's a reminder that stardom can develop anywhere and that, if you're good enough, the NBA will find you no matter where you're enrolled.

3. The odds of Brad Stevens someday replacing Mike Krzyzewski at Duke, Roy Williams at North Carolina or Tom Crean at Indiana decreased drastically this week when the former Butler coach signed a lucrative extension with the Boston Celtics. Prediction: Stevens never coaches in college again. My guess is he's with the Celtics for a long, long time. But even if things turn the wrong way in Boston, Stevens' reputation is so good with NBA people that he'd have multiple NBA job offers the second he became available. Combine that with the fact that he prefers the NBA lifestyle -- i.e., all coaching and no recruiting -- and the days of seeing Stevens at the Peach Jam are likely gone forever.

4. Jarrett Allen's commitment to Texas on Friday was huge on multiple levels for the Longhorns. It added a possible one-and-done forward to UT's roster and, by extension, kept one off of Houston's roster. And it also represents the first five-star signing of Shaka Smart's coaching career and gives the Longhorns a recruiting class that's ranked sixth nationally and first in the Big 12, according to 247 Sports.

5. Speaking of recruiting rankings, they're now basically set thanks to Allen's commitment. And five of the top 15, according to 247 Sports, belong to ACC schools -- specifically Duke (No. 1), Virginia (No. 7), North Carolina (No. 11), Miami (No. 13) at Florida State (No. 14). No other league has more than two of the nation's top 15 recruiting classes. So, yeah, the rich are getting richer.

FINAL THOUGHT: The Marquese Chriss phenomenon is remarkable and could lead to him becoming the first one-and-done player to be a top-five pick in the NBA Draft despite not being a top-50 prospect coming out of high school.

Whether Chriss will actually be a top-five pick is up for debate. But DraftExpress.com's Jonathan Givony is projecting the forward from Washington to go third to the Boston Celtics. And, if that happens, Chriss would've gone from somebody ranked 60th in his high school class, according to 247 Sports, to a top-five pick inside of a year. Again, that's literally never happened before.

So did anybody see this coming?

I called Washington assistant Raphael Chillious this week to talk about Chriss, and he shared some interesting memories about Chriss' recruitment. As the story goes, former Washington assistant T.J. Otzelberger was the first staff member to hear about Chriss. The staff then watched clips. He looked OK. And, eventually, Washington head coach Lorenzo Romar and Chillious traveled to LA to see Chriss play AAU.

"And he only scored six points when we watched," Chillious said. "I looked at Lorenzo and said, 'Lo, that dude only had six points.' Then we both got quiet. And then I said 'But that dude could be a lottery pick one day.' ... And Lorenzo said the same thing. It was just the way he ran and the way he moved. ... The only issue was that he was Bambi. He had not played a lot of basketball at that time. But every month we went back to see him, he had made a big jump."

So will Chriss actually go in the top five?

That's the final question I asked Chillious.

"He could," Chillious answered. "And this is me being conservative -- but I'd be shocked if he makes it past the sixth or seventh pick because there are teams that think he is probably the freakiest athlete and best long-term prospect in the draft."