How Brandon Miller's Final Home Game Became Part of Alabama Lore

Despite having so much weighing down on him, the 20-year-old freshman forward found a way to help the Crimson Tide clinch the SEC title at Coleman Coliseum.

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — It’s nearly two hours prior to tipoff when the University of Alabama’s most famous freshman stepped out of the tunnel and back into the bright lights.

There was no fanfare. Nothing flashy. Just a basketball player in an unmarked, crimson-colored shirt walking on to a court and preparing to do what he does best.

But hardly anything around him could be considered normal, either in the moment or away from basketball. How could it?

Specific to this setting Wednesday evening, the DJ continued to keep a steady beat. Onlookers reached for their phones. The student section erupted into a standing ovation because to them he’s not just a one-and-done player, but a 20-year-old peer who’s been through an emotional wringer.

With a stoic look, Brandon Miller went straight to the right side of the rim and got to work prior to his final game at Coleman Coliseum, where Alabama had been undefeated this season. There were six people fielding balls, but really only a couple were needed — one to collect the made shots under the net, and another keep feeding Miller.

No one else came out of the Crimson Tide locker room. This was Miller’s time to zero in.

Ball. Shot. Swish.

Ball. Shot. Swish.

Again and again, the routine continued, and then he started backing away. Meanwhile, fans booed the first person who showed up wearing orange. But Miller didn’t seem to notice. They chanted something that used to cause parents to threaten to wash their kids’ mouths out with soap. Still nothing. The DJ switched songs. No reaction.

Ball. Shot. Swish.

With each repetition one could sense a corresponding internal  message brewing within Miller, who tried to blend it and his focus into one as he continued.

Let basketball do the talking.

Ball. Shot. Swish.

Finally, he wrapped it up, thanked the person who had been feeding him passes, and as quietly as he first appeared Miller headed back into the locker room. He didn’t know it, but the session would not be indicative of how he would shoot in the subsequent game.

But what a night it still turned out to be, one that Crimson Tide fans will probably talk about for years, similar to the way they still do about the last time Alabama basketball clinched an SEC title at home. After 21 years, the 2002 win against Florida, 65-64, with assistant coach Antoine Pettway beating the buzzer, finally has some company.

This was against Alabama’s biggest rival, which was desperate for a win to help its March Madness chances, and even went to overtime. Auburn seemed determined to corral Miller as much as possible, like it did at Neville Arena on Feb. 11, when the Crimson Tide pulled out a 77-69 victory, and on face value the Tigers were successful. 

He made just three of 12 shots from the field.

Yet his performance may have perfectively reflective of not only what kind of player Miller has become, but also how good he really is.

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The Rocky Season

If you haven’t heard Miller’s name in the news lately, you either haven’t been paying attention or got fed up with the continual slamming by national media.

Yes, Alabama is on the verge of securing the program’s first No. 1 seeding in the NCAA Tournament, yet it still has to deal with what can only be called the elephant in the room — the Jan. 15 shooting involving former player Darius Miles.

Not all of the facts have come out yet, but it was disclosed during a recent bond hearing that Miller and another teammate, Jaden Bradley, were on the scene when the shootout occurred, resulting in the death of Jamea Jonae Harris, 23.

Miles, who hadn’t been with the team for a while, and Michael Davis, are facing capital murder charges. Miller was implicated because Miles left his loaded gun in Miller’s car when they went out that night. When Miller came back to get his friends, it was retrieved and used.

The attorneys for Miles and Davis claim they shot in self-defense, but their bond was denied. Miller’s attorney issued a statement that his client didn’t know the gun was in the car, and never touched it. 

Police say that Miller has fully cooperated and is not a suspect. The district attorney has said on the record that there’s nothing to charge him with. There’s nothing to suggest that neither didn’t their due diligence in any part of the investigation.

With nothing pending on Miller, the school decided to let him keep playing, and never said anything about his being a witness as the investigation continued. But two public-relations disasters contributed to the outcry from critics. The first was head coach Nate Oats commenting in a press conference without full knowledge of what had been disclosed during the hearing.

The other was Miller sticking to his pregame ritual of looking like he was being frisked during player introductions. No one paid much attention to it until the Senior Night game against Arkansas, Miller’s first home game after the hearing. Oats quickly said it was a mistake and will never happen again.

Meanwhile, Miller had a combined 65 points and 14 rebounds at South Carolina and against the Razorbacks. He was snubbed by league officials for SEC weekly honors, but named the national player of the week by the Lute Olson Award.

That set the stage for the Auburn rematch, with Alabama having a chance to wrap up the league title and top seeding for next week’s SEC Tournament in Nashville if it could pull off the sweep.

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The Player

With 28 minutes until tip, Miller returned for the Crimson Tide’s final warmups. The only thing that appeared to be different were his shoes. Miller had worn black Nikes with neon green rubber on the bottom for his original shoot-around. He switched to crimson-colored Nikes that fit in more with his teammates.

He spent seven minutes with a trainer for some extra stretching, then joined his teammates. At last, finally, there were some smiles and signs of a 20-year-old about to play a game.

Miller still couldn't help but stand out, though. Like when everyone gathered around the free-throw circle for a final pep talk from Pettway, Miller was a full head above anyone he was arm-and-arm with.

Yes, he had been a 5-star prospect, a McDonald’s All-American, and was likely headed to the NBA’s G League when Oats and his coaching staff was able to sign him to Alabama.

But no one knew he’d be this good, or lead the nation in scoring by a freshman by averaging 19.7 points.

“Everyone who watches him play for the first time comes back and says, “Oh my gosh, that guy is so much better than I imagined,” ESPN play-by-play man Tom Hart said.

Even going back to last May, when this team first assembled and started to get ready for a playing trip to Europe, the word leaking out of the closed practices was that there were a lot of good new players on the roster, but Miller was special.

It proved to be true.

“He’s so much better than I thought he would be, and the expectations were high, which made him that much more incredible,” Crimson Tide radio analyst Bryan Passink said. “He’s so talented, so good, so humble. Fun to be around.”

How good?

Heading into the Auburn game Miller was on pace for more than 650 points, 275 rebounds and 110 3-pointers. The only player in NCAA history to do all three in one season was Shane Battier of Duke during the 2000-01 season when he won the Wooden Award.

Miller's up for the same honor, and numerous others. He's also widely being projected to be a top-five selection in the 2023 NBA Draft. It would make him just the third such pick in program history (Antonio McDyess second in 1995, and Leon Douglas fourth in 1976).

“On the court, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything like him,” Hart added. “The combination of the size and the agility, you never see him flushed. Everything seems to move in his space and he lets the game come to him, which is all part of that professional approach.

“There are comps to be made, and I think back to what Jabari Smith was last year and he looks like he’s leagues ahead of that – and that’s an elite player that we’re talking about.”

Smith, drafted out of Auburn, was the third-overall selection by the Houston Rockets. 

Consequently, longtime Crimson Tide basketball announcer Chris Stewart doesn’t hesitate to call Miller the “Best I’ve ever seen in an Alabama uniform.”

But he's also among many who over the year have articulated some of the same words to describe Miller the person, as were used in regard to Heisman Trophy winning quarterback Bryce Young – which is ironic because his play on the football field has been characterized as being like a point guard.

“There have been some great ones,” Stewart said. “I’m not saying it, you know, upon further review. We all can get kind of caught in the moment.

“But for a guy to have the spotlight on him like he’s had on him, and to still respond, and to still be a great teammate in the process is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.”

Butch Dill-USA TODAY Sports

The Game

The sellout crowd went nuts when a video of Charles Barkley was played saying, “Alabama’s the best team in the country,” which you know had to be painful for the Hall of Famer. But then with the tip, Auburn pounced, as Tigers have been known to do. Both of their first two 3-pointers by Jaylin Williams went in, putting the Crimson Tide in an early hole.

Meanwhile, Miller started slowly offensively. Oats rested him twice in the first half as the Crimson Tide looked for an answer or a spark. An early third turnover by the forward didn’t help, but then he quickly drew a charge on a transition play, and another foul bringing the ball up court. 

His first two points of the night were scored at the free-throw line with 9:09 until halftime.

Maybe his best play of the game subsequently followed when Auburn sophomore forward John Broome went for an apparent dunk and Miller absolutely stonewalled him.

Miller’s first field goal didn’t register until there was only 2:24 remaining in the half. With the ball out near the 3-point line, he got Broome leaning the wrong way while anticipating an interior move and Miller blew past him to the left and into the paint. With the basket, foul drawn and free throw, the three-point play pulled Alabama to within 35-26.

For an encore, Miller drained a 3 and helped force a turnover. During a half in which the Crimson Tide offense struggled, Alabama was down just 40-33 at the break, and needed only 1:33 of the second half to draw even at 42.

However, Auburn regrouped and pulled ahead again, to the point that things were looking more than bleak. When Miller finally scored his first point of the second half, on a second free throw after seeing the first clank off the front of the rim with 11:32 remaining, the Tigers were shooting an incredible 81.8 percent from 3-point range, and 56.1 percent from the field.

But even though Miller would finish the second half without making a field goal, Oats never took him out. Not even for a short break.

“We were going to go with our guys at that point,” said the coach, who didn’t realize that Miller played the final 29:41 of game time, including overtime.

Down 66-49 with under 10 minutes to go, Alabama finally turned things up emotionally and got the crowd back into it with a 16-0 run. Even with two teammates ejected for leaving the bench off a controversial play, guard Jahvon Quinerly led the charge and scored 15 of his 24 points in the second half. 

But Miller was plugging away as well, three key rebounds, two assists, a block and a steal.

Those are the kinds of plays that Oats has charted as “blue-collar points,” which are mostly based on pure effort and smart play. The player who gets the most is honored in the locker room with a hardhat, not the player who scores the most.

“Brandon led the team,” Oats said. “We were down 10 in the blue-collar points at halftime, and we finished the game up 15. So we flipped the whole thing by 25 blue-collar points after halftime.

“He found other ways to impact the game other than scoring.”

Thanks to also going 10-for-11 from the free-throw line, Miller finished with 17 points, tying him for second in team scoring with forward Noah Clowney and Mark Sears. Although Auburn was still in it until the very end, despite Broome, Williams and Allen Flanigan fouling out, an exhausted Miller ended up icing the 90-85 victory by scoring the final two points from the charity stripe with six seconds remaining.

“What a game!” ESPN analyst Jimmy Dykes proclaimed before exiting the arena while the Crimson Tide cut down the nets and took a team celebratory photo at mid-court.

In it, Miller was in the middle, in the rear, with a “We are champions” banner draped over this shoulder. He was also among the last to take the scissors and climb the ladder for his turn for his piece of nylon.

In between, there was also a very long hug with Crimson Tide assistant coach Bryan Hodgson. What was said was probably echoed by the head coach during his press conference.

“He’s a winner and I’m proud of him,” Oats said. 

Butch Dill-USA TODAY Sports

See Also:

Beaten But Not Broken: Alabama Basketball’s Heartbreaking Two Months Ends in Emotional Win

Crimson Chaos: Alabama Basketball Downs Auburn in Thrilling Comeback, Clinches Regular-Season SEC Crown

Jahvon Quinerly Etches Name in Alabama Basketball Lore with Second SEC Title

To see the full video of Alabama basketball cutting down the nets, check it out on YouTube