Mark Miller's Coaching Career at USC Aiken
We dig into Mark Miller’s 39 years of coaching, most recently, as the head coach at USC.
After 39 years of coaching, Mark Miller has stepped down as the head coach at USC, let's get into his awesome legacy for coaching Women's basketball at USC Aiken.
Miller began coaching in 9th grade and wanted to start coaching because of his love of basketball. Here are some of Miller’s great accomplishments in coaching. In 13 seasons as a head coach at the collegiate level, Miller has compiled a record of 261-122. He has led his teams to 12 conference tournaments and seven appearances in the NCAA Tournament. Also, another accomplishment for Miller is how the USC Aiken team faced several top-25 teams, including NCAA Elite Eight participant Carson-Newman, during the 2017-18 season. The campaign was one of the most challenging schedules in recent history for USC Aiken and despite having a team with no seniors, Miller's team knocked off then-No. 25 Benedict and NCAA Tournament participant Lander in Greenwood, S.C. He swept the Jaguars for the second consecutive season, rallying from five down with 62 seconds to play at Augusta en route to an overtime win.
Coach Miller describes his coaching when he coached for 39 years. “Playing Hard is very very important to me. We can win many games if we play hard. Defend /rebound/ don't turn the ball over when you have a chance. I have recently added you must make shots. The game has changed to be more important now than ever, Coach Miller said.” It’s always interesting to see how a day in life is at practice for coaches and players and what they get done. “Practice never goes past 2 hrs....lots of fundamentals and shooting before we go into team defense and offense.
With a lot of scouting along the way Coach Miller said.” People don’t know all of the work coaches put in whether it’s game plan, starting lineups, scouting, etc, so you can get a good idea of how coach Miller runs his practices and how he coaches women's basketball. Team culture is everything for the team and coach Miller said this perfectly, “Team culture is the most important and it is 24/7. Very difficult nowadays Coach Miller said.”
Coaching for 39 years is amazing, especially when you love the game of basketball. When talking about expectations for your players on and off the court, “ Play Hard, Be Coachable, be a great teammate - very simple, but very hard to get players to buy into all 3” Coach Miller said.