Arizona coach Sean Miller already had his Thomas Welsh story prepared.
When asked about the UCLA sophomore center at Pac-12 media day in San Francisco last month, Miller took only a second to gather his thoughts.
“You’ve been around a lot of kids for brief periods of time, sometimes guys you’ve coached or even going back to when I played the game, teammates,” Miller began. “I don’t know if I’ve been around a nicer kid.”
Miller led the U.S. team at the FIBA U19 World Championships in Greece last summer, giving him a chance to tutor Welsh and the rest of a squad of college freshmen and high school upperclassmen that eventually won a gold medal.