Gregg Doyel

gregg.doyel@indystar.com

BLOOMINGTON – He doesn’t drink fancy coffee. He tried to get into something stronger at Starbucks, ordered a cappuccino once, but then he saw how long he had to wait for his drink.

And new IU basketball coach Archie Miller is in a hurry.

“Dark roast bold,” Miller was telling me Wednesday inside the IU locker room, where he met with a handful of local sports writers. He had a paper cup of coffee, holding it by its brown sleeve.

“The mobile order,” he says, referring to the Starbucks app that allows you to order by cellphone and pick up your drink at the store. “The mobile coffee is as fast as you can get in and out. Bold coffee, and choo-choo: You’re gone.”

Starbucks coffee in the morning, Mother Bear’s pizza at night. Delivery, because Archie Miller isn’t leaving Assembly Hall for something as silly as sustenance. For a week after being hired at IU, Miller was leaving the Indiana Memorial Union’s Biddle Hotel and heading to Starbucks, where his mobile order — dark bold roast, choo-choo: he’s gone — is ready. He’s at Assembly Hall by 8 a.m. Gone at 10. That’s 10 at night.

These are long days, but this is a big job. And Archie Miller came here to win big. At one point Wednesday he is talking about the national championship game, and how North Carolina won it, and how “there’s no reason Indiana can’t be UNC,” and by that he means a national champion. IU has been that before, been a national champion multiple times and Archie Miller knows that, but he didn’t come to IU to bask in those memories. He came to IU to create more.

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And so it was that I asked the new caretaker of IU basketball the question IU fans have been wanting to know more than all others: How soon can he have Indiana being Indiana?

“A lot of people have different philosophies on this,” he says. “Expectations are something that a lot of people want to temper. If you get off to a slow start, obviously people are going to give you the cushion to build.

“I don’t operate like that. I want to win now.”

He has no idea what his first roster will look like, though he thinks there will be no transfers. “Everybody’s on board,” is how he put that, while knowing his best three players have NBA decisions to make. He expects some combination of that trio — James Blackmon Jr., Thomas Bryant, OG Anunoby — to test the waters. Some could stay in the draft. He doesn’t know.

Nor does Miller know which of the three recruits signed by IU’s previous coach, Tom Crean, will stay in the fold. Two (6-4 guard Al Durham and 6-10 forward Clifton Moore) have requested a release from their national letters of intent, and Miller says the third (6-7 forward Justin Smith) is considering it. He will speak with all three this week. Says he’ll have a better idea of their future by Sunday.

“All three guys are going to be 50-50,” Miller says.

So the chance is there for massive turnover on a team that dressed no scholarship seniors during its 18-16 season of 2016-17, and massive craters to be filled on the roster. Given that, I’m asking Miller, what’s realistic to expect from your first team?

“The highest starting point that Indiana University can have, that’s my goal,” he says. “That’s what I have to do. If that doesn’t work out the best in my favor, so be it. No excuses. We’re trying to start at the highest possible place we can.”

Trying to win that big, that fast, doesn’t allow for free time. Or lunch. Miller has been making do at midday on protein bars, though he has been doing this transition differently than at Dayton, when he became coach of the Flyers in April 2011 and immediately left campus to meet high school coaches, to pursue potential assistant coaches and more.

“I felt like I was overwhelmed six years ago at Dayton — to the point where I didn’t really know which way was left or right,” he says. “If I could have done it all over again six years ago I’d have spent the first couple of weeks doing what I’m doing now, which is spend time on campus with the team, dealing with their families, kind of learning them. Getting on the court with them a few times a week.

“Getting the lay of the land (here) has been a lot more important to me than starting off: ‘Hey I’ve got to do 9,000 different things the next four days and make sure I'm the best at all of them.’ I’m just going to stink at everything if I do that.”

Miller already has won a big recruiting battle, convincing Collin Hartman to return for his fifth year after he missed what would have been his senior season in 2016-17 with a knee injury. For months Hartman has been working toward a possible return, but as Miller understood it, “he was on his way to his future.”

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Now Hartman’s future includes one more season at IU, one more year on a roster that Miller was describing on Wednesday as “beautiful to watch on offense.” When asked how long it would take for IU to be beautiful to watch on defense — to be “nasty,” he was asked — Miller exhaled a short burst of laughter.

“We start tackling each other tomorrow,” he said. He was kidding, unless he wasn’t. This is a serious guy, in a hurry but trying to take his time, but he won’t bog himself down with too much film study of his current roster. Or any film study of his current roster.

“What’s done in the past won’t resonate with me,” he says.

Miller can use that time to put together a staff, which he says “will have a flavor of Dayton.” So much to do, so little time. He wants to invite state high school coaches — all of them, he says, “whether they have a player (we want) or not” — to campus. He wants to work on future schedules, knowing there will be a home-and-home series at some point with big brother Sean’s team at Arizona, but unsure about a resumption of the Kentucky series.

“That’s bigger than me,” Miller says.

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If the Hoosiers are leaving Assembly Hall, he says, it has to be “to play the best,” which for now absolutely includes Butler and Notre Dame in the annual Crossroads Classic.

“Both programs right now are on a level where there’s nothing wrong with playing them,” Miller says. “I‘m not going to act like we’re bigger or better than anybody. To me, if we’re playing Butler or Notre Dame every year in Bankers Life (Fieldhouse), that’s a great environment to play against a great team.”

As for recruiting, I asked Archie Miller one question on the topic: Is there time to get in on the recruitment of Romeo Langford, the state’s best recruit in years, who will be a senior next season at New Albany? Look, I know the rules: Coaches can’t speak about any unsigned recruit, and Miller didn’t even acknowledge the name. But I think he answered the question.

“I do know this,” he said. “There’s a faction in Southern Indiana that really, really resembles and respects IU. There’s a passionate fan base down there. There’s a surrounding and supporting cast in every pocket of the state with IU. We’re going to hit every corner. When the best players in the state are in those corners, it’s our job to figure out what we have to do bring (them) to Bloomington. We may not get ‘em all, but it won’t be for a lack of effort.”

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He’s in a hurry, the Hoosiers’ new basketball coach. He’s been back to Dayton just once since being hired, to see his wife and daughter and to do his laundry, and after 10 days on campus he’s ready to get going. He’ll leave Thursday, leave behind his favorite Starbucks and his delivery pizza, for parts unknown.

As for Wednesday, he left behind an empty cup of coffee. Dark roast. Bold. The brown sleeve had long since been removed, making its way into Miller’s hands as he was visiting with us. At one point Miller looks down, sees what he’s been doing, and stops. He releases the brown sleeve onto the table, crumpled into a tiny little ball.

Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter:@GreggDoyelStar or atfacebook.com/gregg.doyel.