Former UNCG coach Miller will look to raise bar for UCincy basketball
GREENSBORO, N.C. (BVM) — In 2010, coach Wes Miller began his time at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro as an assistant. Within only a year, Miller took over the position of head coach for the Spartans and began his overhaul of the program.
Prior to Miller’s arrival, UNCG basketball was in large part mediocre. The last conference championship they claimed, either as regular season or tournament champs, came a decade earlier. When Miller took over the reins of the program, he faced a daunting task as a 28-year-old rookie head coach.
Miller rose to the challenge and revamped the UNCG program and brought it to a place it had not been in years. Under Miller, the Spartans averaged just over 18 wins a season and had three consecutive 25–plus win seasons from 2016 to 2019. During his 10-year career at UNCG Miller also collected three Southern Conference championships, two NCAA tournament berths and a first round win in the 2018-19 NIT.
Miller leaves UNCG as the program’s winningest coach in history, but faces an entirely new challenge. As the new head coach of the University of Cincinnati Bearcats, Miller is taking over a program that is used to success. The Bearcats have been conference champions as regular season winners or tournament winners seven times in the last ten years.
The Bearcats have also qualified for the NCAA tournament for the past nine years. What the Bearcats are lacking, however, is success deep into the postseason. Miller’s job is not revitalizing a program like he did at UNCG, but to push a program over the hump. Miller’s job is not only to keep the Bearcats’ status as a perennial tournament team, but to turn them into perennial contenders.
As a new head coach at a winning program, Miller faces the challenge of not disrupting the winning culture, but also introducing his own style of coaching.
At 38, Miller already has a decade of coaching behind him which allows him to bring a unique combination of youth and experience and should allow him to adapt to his new environment. Miller shows a lot of promise and has already shown his abilities as a head coach.
Miller is also showing early success as a recruiter. Miller brings with him Greensboro native and Clemson transfer John Newman III, who has already helped begin stacking Miller’s recruiting class.
This infusion of youth and experience, along with Miller‘s active recruiting makes the 2021-22 Cincinnati Bearcats a team to keep an eye on this season.
