Arizona Wildcats Basketball: Miller tweets his idea of team concept with practice starting Oct. 3

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There is only one starting point with every team that I have coached. It is, "Be All In or Get All Out, There is no Halfway."

— Sean Miller (@UACoachMiller) September 4, 2014

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Unless BELIEF in each other and in our program is in place from every player, nothing else matters.

— Sean Miller (@UACoachMiller) September 4, 2014

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Sean Miller appears ready to start the 2014-15 season in earnest (YouTube video capture)

Arizona Wildcats coach Sean Miller begins his sixth season in Tucson — has it already been that long? — in only 70 days (see accompanying countdown clock) and it’s obvious he is ready for practice to begin judging from his Tweets yesterday.

Practice begins in less than a month — on Oct. 3 — 42 days before the opener against Mount St. Mary’s on Nov. 14 at McKale Center.

Players are in school and working out individually at the Richard Jefferson Gymnasium in preparation for those intense sessions with Miller.

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All of them know about the coach’s unrelenting style and his bold idea of what it takes to win.

“There is only one starting point with every team that I have coached,” Miller stated in his tweet. “It is, “Be All In or Get All Out, There is no Halfway.”

Notice the capitalization of the words in the quote.

“Unless BELIEF in each other and in our program is in place from every player, nothing else matters,” Miller later tweeted.

The messages can be interpreted different ways. Are they because some players or a player needs reaffirmation of what Miller and Arizona basketball are all about? Or are they comments Miller felt the need to make to show his opinion of effort and teamwork?

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Arizona’s roster is intact for the upcoming season, one in which the Wildcats are considered a national title contender. The players appear ready to start judging from a tweet by freshman sensation guard Stanley Johnson of Santa Ana (Calif.) Mater Dei High School:

Links of interest:

— T.J. McConnell’s brother Matt McConnell, a guard at Chartiers Valley (Pa.) High School near Pittsburgh, has made a commitment to play at Robert Morris. Matt first consulted with his dad (the Chartiers Valley coach) and his older brother before making the decision.

— Johnson has the potential to be a lottery pick in the NBA draft next June depending on how his season develops. DraftExpress.com offers the following video on Johnson’s game from a scout’s perspective. Johnson’s strengths: Physical tools, offensive versatility, defense and intangibles. His weaknesses: Shooting consistency, decision making and creating his shot at the pro level.

— Former Arizona forward Kyryl Natyazhko played on the Ukrainian national team that has been eliminated from the FIBA World Cup in Spain. He scored six points and had two rebounds in 12 minutes in a 95-71 loss to USA yesterday in Bilbao, Spain.

Natyazhko blogged about the conflict in Ukraine while at the World Cup last week.

“The truth is there’s actually not much trouble in the country outside of the Eastern regions,” he writes. “Although we went to Lithuania for a while, we spent most of training camp in Ukraine. It’s all peaceful and normal in most of the nation and that made preparation for the World Cup pretty standard given the circumstances.”

ALLSPORTSTUCSON.com publisher, writer and editor Javier Morales is a former Arizona Press Club award winner. He also writes articles for Bleacher Report and Lindy’s College Sports.