Despite the losing, UNC-G stuck by their young coach. How Wes Miller led Spartans to NCAAs

. UNC Greensboro basketball coach Wes Miller knows he never could have survived being 32 games below a .500 record without great patience from his bosses.

“I think that’s really unique now, in 2018,” Miller, whose contract with the school was recently extended through 2022, said Wednesday. “There were a lot of questions as we (went) out recruiting and things of that nature, (whether) we would have a job the next year.”

Now, the No. 13 seed Spartans are in the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2001, playing fourth-seeded Gonzaga (30-4) in a West Regional game on Thursday (1:30 p.m., TNT).

Miller, at 35 the youngest coach in the NCAA tournament, was 28 when the Spartans hired him as head coach (first on an interim basis during the 2011-12 season) and he was anything but an instant success: four consecutive losing seasons before going 25-10 last season and 27-7 this year.

The Spartans, who upset N.C. State in December, defend hard (allowing 40.6 percent from the field this season) and they make 3-pointers (35.6 percent). Most of all, they are a team that has bought into Miller’s obsession with detail.

“We’re only focused on the process,” said senior forward Jordy Kuiper, who Miller traveled to Spain to recruit five years ago. “Thinking big, but working small. And that was something new to me as a player, and something I really cherish.”

It wasn’t some grand plan (though Miller is, by nature, a planner). But it was a philosophy he inherited from former head coaches, first from New Hampton Prep’s Jamie Arsenault in New Hampshire, and then from Roy Williams at North Carolina.

Miller played high school basketball at Charlotte Country Day before moving to the New England prep school, then later playing at national power North Carolina as a 5-foot-11 guard.

Williams instilled the lesson that doing something right isn’t judged solely on its result, Miller said.

“Coach Williams graded every player on every defensive possession, and how sometimes you could get a good grade even without getting a good result,” Miller recalled. “You could play great defense, and (the opponent) just made a tough shot, and you’d still get a good grade.”

The idea – and it’s served Miller’s team so well this season – is to test yourself and learn. Like Davidson coach Bob McKillop, Miller scheduled aggressively outside the Southern Conference. The opener each of the past two seasons was now-No.1-ranked Virginia.

The Spartans lost to the Cavaliers 60-48 in Charlottesville this season, but that was the foundation of this team’s later success.

“I don’t think there’s any game we’ve benefitted from more,” Miller said of the matchup with Virginia. “We used that game to go to our players and say, ‘Did you think it was hard to get a shot?’…And then we’ve gone through the film and showed them why. (The Cavs) are always in the right place in every possession.

“Our win (over) N.C. State really gave us confidence moving into conference play that we could play with everybody. Or you can really learn (in losing to Virginia) if you struggle."

UNC Greensboro hasn’t been to the NCAA tournament in 17 years, so this team truly walks into the unknown against a Gonzaga team that is a model for non-Power 5 programs.

Miller is trying to avoid a lot of “back-in-the-day” speeches from his time at UNC, where he won a national title in 2005 and was a captain on the 2007 team that reached a regional final. . But he will lean on how he saw William navigate these times.

“I always felt that he let us have fun and enjoy the moment,” Miller said. “But I want to make sure I take it as seriously as he did, to prepare them for every single moment of this, and I don’t shortchange them.”

This story was originally published March 14, 2018 at 8:26 PM with the headline "Despite the losing, UNC-G stuck by their young coach. How Wes Miller led Spartans to NCAAs."