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6) Arizona is positioning themselves to fire Sean Miller

This has been a long time coming but, with the FBI investigation still looming and the Wildcats struggling on the court this season, it seems that Sean Miller will not be back on the sidelines in Tuscon next year.

Arizona will fire assistant coach Mark Phelps due to an NCAA issue with Shareef O’Neal’s transcript. O’Neal decommitted from Arizona after the Deandre Ayton scandal last year and ended up at UCLA.

Though the matter was not related to Arizona’s role in the FBI investigation, this is now the second assistant coach to be fired in the last two seasons, which does not bode well for Sean Miller.

Miller was already in some hot water with school officials due to the investigation and then the Ayton matter, and terms of his contract were made more strict regarding NCAA violations.

Now, the school can point to NCAA bylaws – particularly bylaw 11.1 – to potentially fire Miller with cause. That bylaw reads:

"“A head coach is presumed to be responsible for the actions of all staff members who report, directly or indirectly, to the head coach…the head coach will be held accountable for violations in the program unless he or she can rebut the presumption of responsibility.”"

Further hurting Miller’s case is the fact that Arizona is only 14-10 on the year after losing to Washington State over the weekend. Barring a Pac-12 tournament title, will not make the NCAA Tournament. Those struggles, coupled with the off-court problems, have led to decreased fan support and a different atmosphere at the McKale Center – a place where empty seats have become more common than any time in recent memory.

All signs seem to be pointing to Arizona letting Miller go at the end of the year.