SPOKANE, Wash. – Adam Miller had a humbling welcome to the kennel.
“After I turned it over, they go down and they throw a lob to Khalif battle, and he catches that thing, and I don’t know how he caught it,” Miller said. “I got fouled on that play too, we gotta go back and watch the tape, you know, they don’t call too many fouls when you’re on the opposite side in here.”
The at-the-time Arizona State Sun Devil couldn’t upset Gonzaga a year ago and now caps his career in Spokane.
“I knew coming here edge would help us so much, and I try to bring that and remind these guys every day, me there at the end of my college career, that, hey, this goes really, really fast,” Miller said.
The guard started his career playing for his home state Illinois after winning Mr. Basketball and state player of the year in high school.
He spoke about his immensely supportive family guiding him.
“They really, really helped me stay focused in times and in an area where sometimes it’s easy to defer into other things with other kids who may not see their future being so bright or may not understand what they could possibly get into, but, luckily, I had people around me to help me keep my head on straight,” Miller said.
He then went to learn under coach Will Wade at LSU and Bobby Hurley at ASU with a gnarly ACL tear to bounce back from in between.
“I think the mental aspect was the hardest part for me that I didn’t understand and maybe wasn’t prepared for, so, like I said, it happened, and everything happens for a reason,” Miller said.
Now he’s finding a vital role at Gonzaga, specializing in knocking down threes as one of the best on a team coming off a poor year firing deep shots.
“It’s not like they didn’t have anything good going last year, but we just amped it up,” Miller said. “And we made something new, and it’s not like we’re doing anything different at Gonzaga, but we’re doing things our way.”
“Making plays on defense, and that kinda got his offense going, too,” Gonzaga head coach Mark Few said. “It’s good to see some of his threes going down now, too. It’s a huge weapon for us.”
Miller says he’s grateful for his final ride at the college level and looks for a title in the distance.
“To do something like that, I feel like would be so deserving of this team and this coaching staff, because we work really, really hard, and that would be a picture-perfect ending,” Miller said.
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