Wednesday, March 30th, 2011 at 11:25 am  |  24 responses

Tossed Aside

How Nate Miles became a casualty in everyone else’s war.

by Nick Piotrowicz | @Nick_Piotrowicz

In the two-horse race that is the 2011 Naismith College Player of the Year Award, one half of the argument is for UConn’s do-everything point guard, Kemba Walker. Walker has electrified even casual basketball observers with his alpha-dog command of his team, his superb body control and handles that have made him an instant SportsCenter legend.

Lost in the hype, though, is that Walker wasn’t even the most coveted recruit in his freshman dorm room. That honor would belong to his roommate, Nate Miles, whose highly-publicized expulsion from UConn and ostracism from the big-time college basketball world is keeping him in the same place he started: Toledo, Ohio.

Connecticut head basketball coach Jim Calhoun said that Miles had “as much basketball ability” as any recruit he’d brought to UConn, a tall statement for a program that has won two national titles and produced the likes of Ray Allen, Richard Hamilton and Rudy Gay.

Miles, a 6-7 guard-forward, is the type of pure scorer that teams build around and college coaches chase after. As a freshman at Libbey (Ohio) High School, Miles ran into St. John’s Jesuit in the Ohio state Playoffs. The area’s most dominant school, St. John’s had a squad that featured 10 future college athletes, five of whom were D-I basketball players. Miles was still the most talented player on the floor. St. John’s respect for Miles was immediately visible. The Titans guarded him with Zach Hillesland, a center/power forward whose M.O. was lockdown D.

“It was just weird because I hadn’t guarded anybody all year as far out as I had to guard him,” said Hillesland, who went on to become a captain at Notre Dame. “He’s one of those guys that you didn’t guard anyone like him all year, with his combination of length, height and his ability to shoot from 30 feet out. You kind of have that nervousness at the beginning (of the game), like, ‘God, I hope he doesn’t put 50 on me right now and totally embarrass us.’”

Even with the city’s best defender hounding him, Miles was exceptional. His game was frighteningly polished for someone so young; his driving, ball-handling, dead-eye shooting and a superb floor presence nearly stole a playoff win for Libbey. But even in a loss, the message was delivered: Miles was Toledo’s next ticket to the Association.

“When you have a player who has a good mid-range game that can attack the basket, you can give him a little bit of space. With a guy like (Miles), you have to be up in him, which opens up everything else, and then he can handle the ball as well,” Hillesland said. “At the end of the game he’ll have 35 points and you’ll be, like, ‘How did he even—I wasn’t even paying attention.’ He scores in so many different ways.”

But whereas scoring on the court was easy for Miles, scoring points on tests was a totally different matter. Miles’ poor grades forced his legal guardian to move him—he attended five schools in four states, to be exact—so that he could stay eligible to earn a D-I offer. In short, it worked. While playing for Texas Cornerstone in 2006, Miles lit up a Chicago tournament with a 40-point performance and a half-court buzzer-beater that earned him the undivided attention of Connecticut assistant coach Tom Moore.

Moore introduced Miles to a man named Josh Nochimson. As a former UConn team manager who was Richard Hamilton’s business manager as well as Luol Deng’s agent, Nochimson being anywhere near Miles was an NCAA violation.

“Right after the game, Tom Moore introduced me to (Nochimson) and got me on the phone with him. Ever since that day, we were just connected,” Miles said.

Eight days after first speaking with Nochimson, Miles committed to UConn.

“Coach Calhoun told me that I had a chance to be a great player,” Miles said, “all I had to do was listen to him.”

Unfortunately for Miles, he took Calhoun’s advice.

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  • burnt_chicken Posted: Mar.30 at 11:54 am
    wow. great read, fantastic article. Truly enlightening. Is Miles banned from NCAA play now, or can he still be a student athlete in the future?

  • airs Posted: Mar.30 at 12:05 pm
    thats so grimey. i hope dude gets a shot a the league

  • Fennis Dembo Posted: Mar.30 at 12:18 pm
    NCAA is a joke. End of story.

  • Johnny Posted: Mar.30 at 1:04 pm
    What a joke of an article. Nate Miles got expelled because he was on thin ice before he ever got to UConn. He basically had a zero-tolerance policy since he went to at least FIVE high schools, was suspended by one, dismissed by another and a whole bunch of other sketchiness. http://articles.courant.com/2009-03-26/news/timeline0326.art_1_cornerstone-christian-enrolled-jim-calhoun I love how the article left all that out and paints Miles as some tragic figure. He’s not. Calhoun was wrong in this situation, very wrong. But Miles was the problem. UConn handled it wrong. In fact, they really shouldn’t have recruited him at all.

  • Nick_Piotrowicz Posted: Mar.30 at 1:05 pm
    @Burnt_chicken, good question. He can’t play in the NCAA because he entered the NBA Draft, but obviously didn’t get drafted. The NCAA has a rule that says if a student-athlete gets expelled from a school, they must sit out a year before being eligible to play somewhere else. Nate went to a JUCO, then tried at the draft instead.

  • Johnny Posted: Mar.30 at 1:06 pm
    There was also the three counts of disorderly conduct he was charged with at UConn that were not mentioned in this article either.

  • Dave Posted: Mar.30 at 3:05 pm
    Let’s face it, UConn and Tennessee are the faces of cheating in the NCAA. I don’t even see how either of these teams were allowed to play in the tourney.

  • BigErn Posted: Mar.30 at 3:52 pm
    This article is a joke. No disrespect to Nate, who’s had a tough life from day one, but Connecticut’s biggest mistake was taking a flyer on a kid that everyone knew was going to be a problem from the jump. Should have learned their lesson from Antonio Kellogg. Incidentally, if this kid can play in the league, why’d he wash out at Southern Idaho? That was probably Calhoun’s fault, right?

  • GB Posted: Mar.30 at 3:53 pm
    You’ve got to be kidding me with this crap. Nate Miles was a thug, and had numerous charges before he got expelled. I know Ben Spencer and you obvioulsy have no clue what your talking about. Ben’s character should not be put anywhere close to a comparison with Nate Miles. Get some facts before you write this stuff.

  • ta Posted: Mar.30 at 4:05 pm
    Some of you are missing the point of this article. Miles may have had issues and probably should not have been recruited by Calhoun. But, he was. Not because of his wonderful character but because he was a great athlete. He was introduced immediately to an agent associated with the program. The heart of the story is how this relationship was fostered until the story was going to break. Then, and only then, was Miles too high a risk to be a part of the UConn basketball program. Calhoun is as dirty as they come yet he still got just a slap on the wrist.

  • Ben Collins Posted: Mar.30 at 4:39 pm
    Great story. You know it’s a great story when UConn donors are coming out of the woodwork to defend their coach using the, “Well, I’ve met this guy once, so you have to be wrong” defense. I don’t get why you had to start using adjectives. Even if three games is paltry, “pathetic” kind of detracts from your story. The facts are good enough. The program is sketchy and needs to be outed. It’s funded by taxpayer money and he refuses to acknowledge this. He makes $2.6 mill. a year and there are 3.4 million people in Connecticut. That’s a dollar per person going to this guy. If he’s a scumbag, he is. Just use your facts, which you have, and don’t let how you FEEL get in the way, even if it’s right.

  • Enigmatic Posted: Mar.30 at 5:06 pm
    Damn.
    This is DEEP.

  • dave Posted: Mar.30 at 6:38 pm
    Miles was kicked off the UConn campus. Not just the team, the school for violating a restraining order a female student had placed on him. Tough to be too sympathetic when a kid behaves like that.

  • Hursty Posted: Mar.30 at 6:54 pm
    Damn…wow.

  • Stephen Posted: Mar.30 at 6:56 pm
    while this article was OK and had some good facts in it. I find it ridiculous and borderline irresponsible as a “journalist” to call into question a man such as coach Moore I am assuming that you have never met him, and therefore it is impossible for you to judge him. welcome to college sports where unfortunate things like this happen every single day. Nate Miles is not a thug he is a victim of a unfortunate circumstance. while he is not pefect he does not deserve to be called a thug. and while the coaches at Uconn Coach Moore included are not perfect they are not criminals u describe them as

  • Ben Osborne Posted: Mar.30 at 10:53 pm
    Thanks for the article, Nick, and thanks for the comment, Ben Collins.

  • Dan Posted: Mar.30 at 11:04 pm
    Piotrowski got sold a load of goods on this one, and he didn’t do his research. He didn’t even bother to read the stories in the Hartford Courant where Miles admitted physically assaulting the girl. He said he was playing rough with her, that he did dig his hands into her arms and demand sex even though she kept saying no. That was totally left out the story. Do better research Nick, this is an embarrassment from you. The phone records thing didn’t even come up until much later after Miles had been expelled.

  • Dan Posted: Mar.30 at 11:13 pm
    “The records Yahoo! obtained showed that Nochimson paid for meals and housing for Miles, and even went so far as paying for foot surgery for Miles before he was on campus—something Calhoun not only knew about but encouraged.” This is an outright lie. Piotrowski is a liary and I’d like to see him sued for slander. There are no records at all showing what this claims to show. And the lies go over the top with Miles claiming that Nochimson paid with Rip’s cards. Unless Rip is totally stupid, he found out about Nochimson in 2007. So you’re telling me he didn’t cancel his credit cards? Yeah right. And the doctor who performed the surgery is PRECISE as to how he was paid, and it wasn’t in credit cards.

  • blakos Posted: Mar.31 at 3:20 am
    Coming from NZ my knowledge of the college scene is limited. I found it a good read, but man Nick you are getting seriously called out in the comments section. Please defend your professional integrity.

  • arthur Posted: Mar.31 at 3:39 am
    Great piece.

  • The Philosopher Posted: Mar.31 at 10:02 am
    Calhoun is a “company guy”.
    You know?

  • sam Posted: Mar.31 at 3:35 pm
    what a joke! are we talking about college basketball or the d-league? this kid playing for a college is the funniest thing i ever heard. 5 schools in 4 years and he was never at one long enough to complete an entire class, just enought to be eligible to play, so the uil is a joke too. if he is so great than make a d-league team but dont pretend to be a student/athlete. should have never been allowed to play high school basketball because he was always living with one coach or another and just moved in, was recruited into, high school districts for the sole purpose of playing basketball, breaking uil rules. i know this kid from aau basketball, “he’s no saint” is an understatement. his life is where it should be, he has never followed the rules once.

  • Polow Da Jon Posted: Mar.31 at 7:43 pm
    Reading this article, I feel torn. I have personally met both Coach Calhoun and Coach Moore, yet I am not naive enough to believe that this is the not uncommon on every campus. Being a lifelong Husky fan and living in the state, the perception was that while he may have had a rough upbringing, Calhoun believed Miles was worth the proverbial risk. Sometimes mortgaging your future on players with unstable foundations does not tarnish or harm a coach’s legacy or program, sometimes it does. Nate Miles’ is unfortunately just a casualty of the “game”. Miles’ situation is more the rule than the exception.

  • Patti Posted: Apr.2 at 11:11 am
    Ok. So I’ve read the article and then the comments. To say that many of you are misinformed is the “understatement”. This kid and his family were guided by someone who claimed to have Nate’s best interest at heart. It is now clear that this was not the case. This person lead the public to believe that his parents were not active in his life. This was wrong. His father was not absent and his mother was not the “missing alcoholic” that he told everyone they were. They made mistakes and are not faultless in this. But no matter how hard they tried to stay prevelent in the decisions of his future, the people giving him everything he wanted even in high school were the ones that ultimately became the ones he listened to. Even in high school, they were fixing his grades and absences. He was never made to be responsible for his actions. I see some of you want to call people liars or not believe the things that are being said about highly respected people, well I’m here to tell you that it is absolutely true. I am someone who is closer than any of you claim to be to this “situation”. While Miles definately has fault in this mess, so do the others mentioned. I mean come on, he doesn’t have enough power to make any of this happen all on his own.

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