Confirmed: Paul Mills to Wichita State

[Keenan Henderson]

Here is an update on the old ball coach: Mills is taking the Shockers to Greece this summer for a 10 day tour.  A good chance to see some of the cities of the New Testament (Corinth and Thessalonica).  He is also scheduled to face his old roommate, Jerome Tang and Kansas State, at home this season along with a trip to Chicago to face De Paul.

[Cletus]

6 minutes ago, Keenan Henderson said:

Here is an update on the old ball coach: Mills is taking the Shockers to Greece this summer for a 10 day tour.  A good chance to see some of the cities of the New Testament (Corinth and Thessalonica).  He is also scheduled to face his old roommate, Jerome Tang and Kansas State, at home this season along with a trip to Chicago to face De Paul.

Taking the team on a Footsteps of the Apostle Paul tour

[Old Titan]

Must say; this would be something if true...

 

[ORUSwagger]

15 minutes ago, Old Titan said:

Must say; this would be something if true...

 

WSU will pull the upset………..

[ORUSwagger]

In other news….

 

[ORUJason]

Personal reasons?  There is definitely more to this story.

[Bogus Smith]

41 minutes ago, ORUJason said:

Personal reasons?  There is definitely more to this story.

Probably found something in his background that didn't come up during the interview and decided to make a change before it became an embarrassment. 

[titansforever]

Latest story.

"How new Wichita State coach Paul Mills plans to win with details, character"

https://theathletic.com/4656060/2023/07/03/wichita-state-paul-mills-basketball/

[Texasgrip]

27 minutes ago, titansforever said:

Latest story.

"How new Wichita State coach Paul Mills plans to win with details, character"

https://theathletic.com/4656060/2023/07/03/wichita-state-paul-mills-basketball/

Paywall...

[titansforever]

6 minutes ago, Texasgrip said:

Paywall...

Full article:

WICHITA, Kan. — New Wichita State coach Paul Mills used to spend his summers working camps for Rick Majerus. He likes to tell the story of Majerus working out Chris Burgess, who had just transferred from Duke to Utah in 1999. Majerus had Burgess do the Mikan Drill, where a player continuously shoots layups — right hand, left hand, right hand, left hand … off the proper foot, keeping the ball high — for 75 straight minutes.

“Every detail, from the eyes to the shoulders to the knees to the feet, the ball to the release,” Mills says. “And I was just like, man, I’m in heaven. Like, all right, how do I learn from this guy? He knows things.”

Mills appreciates an obsession with the game. When asked by a visitor about the 3-point success of his previous program — Oral Roberts ranked in the top three nationally in made 3s each of the past three seasons — Mills launches into a 46-minute clinic on cutting. He plays video examples, from Oral Roberts to European teams and back to ORU. Mills finds every clip he wants quickly. The desktop on his laptop is like an old person’s worst nightmare. The icons are tiny, lined up in neat rows alongside the right half of the screen. Sixteen rows and 11 columns. Mills gives the play-by-play and never stops the video. He weaves it together like a story: The evolution of cutting in the Paul Mills offense. 

“The best storyteller you’ve ever been around,” says Kansas State coach Jerome Tang, who spent 14 years alongside Mills on Baylor’s bench. “When Mills tells a story, he sucks you in.”

It truly is captivating. You feel like an expert after just a few minutes in. You’re convinced he’s unlocked the key to pick-and-roll basketball.

Mills was brought to Wichita State this spring to resurrect what was one of the hottest programs in the country just a few years ago. He made sense as the replacement to Isaac Brown, because the Shockers had slipped on the offensive end and Mills coached one of the best and most aesthetically pleasing offenses in college basketball.

Mills guided Oral Roberts to a magical Sweet 16 run as a No. 15 seed two years ago and reached the NCAA Tournament again in 2023 after a perfect 18-0 run through the Summit League. He comes from the Scott Drew coaching tree, a distinguished designation these days. Tang just went to an Elite Eight in his first season at Kansas State, while Grant McCasland, starting his first year at Texas Tech, won the NIT at North Texas and also knocked off Purdue in the NCAA Tournament in 2021.

Work for Drew long enough, and it’s like you’ve been knighted. Funny, because the reason Mills is here is because he once thought he was basketball royalty, and it left him searching the want ads.

In 2002, Mills had just finished his third year as the head coach at Fort Bend Christian High School, and his team had made it to the Texas state semifinals. He was 28, making $12,000 a year to coach and teach calculus, and he felt like the second coming of Phil Jackson.

“Final Four in Texas,” he says. “I thought that was a big deal!”

A few weeks later, Mills raced down from his business calculus class for his team’s first practice of the spring. He’d built up so much interest in basketball at the small school that 42 players signed up to participate. When he got to the gym, though, the lights were out, the goals were raised and the basketballs were deflated.

The school had just hired a new athletic director to spearhead the start of a football program, which would debut the next fall. The new AD was an old football coach who had won multiple state championships. He told Mills if kids weren’t involved with a spring sport, they were either practicing football or they were off.

Mills resigned, convinced he would quickly land his next coaching job. April passed. May, June … nothing. Eventually, he found a job hanging sheet rock. He was scheduled to start Oct. 14, 2002. That morning he picked up the phone. On the other end was Rice assistant coach Todd Smith, who was looking for a video analyst. It was an unpaid position, but then-Owls head coach Willis Wilson told Mills he would pay him $2,000 to paint the 1,261 steps at Autry Court.

Mills fell in love with studying film that season, and he also got his first taste of recruiting, writing letters to prospects for Wilson. He also got a lesson in player development, starting every day at 5:30 a.m. and helping former NBA coach John Lucas work out some of the best players in the area.

That next spring Mills bumped into Drew, who had just been hired at Baylor, at a coaches clinic. He called Drew on his way home, planning to leave him a message welcoming him to the state. Drew answered and quizzed him for an hour on what it would take to succeed in the Big 12 and recruiting in Texas. At the end of the call, Drew told him he’d done his homework and asked if he’d come to Baylor.

Mills said no. He knew how hard the job was. Plus, Wilson had promised him an assistant job at Rice the next time one opened. Drew asked Mills, who is the son of a pastor, to at least pray on it. “Listen,” Mills told Drew, “I’m quite certain God doesn’t want me there either.”

Drew called the next four nights, talking to Mills an hour each night. “I was like, this dude is relentless,” Mills says. Mills was still unconvinced, but he agreed to visit Waco the next weekend. He’d always been enamored with the Big 12, and when he showed up, he was amazed that C.J. Miles, who would end up going straight from high school to the NBA, was there on a visit.

“Y’all been here three weeks,” Mills remembers saying, “and you’ve got the No. 1 player in the state here? All right, y’all got some pop to ya.”

Mills had a front row seat for what is considered one of the greatest turnarounds in the sport’s history, and he soaked up lessons from Drew, who might be the most curious coach in college basketball. Those who have worked for him remain close and still have an active text chain.

Tang told Mills last season that wherever he ended up coaching next, make sure the school had fan support. The Fort Bend Christian lesson has always stayed with Mills: work at a place that cares about basketball.

There were two reasons Mills could not pass up Wichita State. One was that fan support. (He sends recruits a graphic showing that Wichita State had at least 10,000 fans in attendance for 243 straight games before COVID-19, with this quote from an AAC coach: “Win, lose or draw, there will be 10K in there.”) The other reason? How this year’s first-round NCAA Tournament game against Duke unfolded.

The Blue Devils jumped out to a 15-0 lead en route to an eventual 23-point win over the 12th-seeded Golden Eagles. Mills thought beating a team like Duke required better collective talent than he was ever going to land at Oral Roberts.

This spring, he landed two high-major rotation transfers in former Miami guard Harlond Beverly — once a top-100 recruit — and ex-Oklahoma point guard Bijan Cortes. The Shockers also held onto big man Kenny Pohto, who had entered the transfer portal and received interest from several high majors.

Wichita State’s roster is still not quite strong enough to compete for a league championship, but Mills is not afraid of a build. He lived it at Baylor, and Oral Roberts won eight games the year before he took over in 2017.

Last Monday was Wichita State’s sixth practice of the summer, and for the fourth time it starts late because of tardiness. While he waits on the Koch Arena floor for his players to finish lifting weights, Mills tells his staff the issue is trust. “Are you dependable?” he says. “We don’t have anybody in the locker room to tell them.” He recalls that when assistant coach Quincy Acy came for an interview and toured the locker room, candy wrappers were strewn on the floor.

“You can’t game plan for character if you don’t have character,” he tells his players at the end of the hour-long practice. “Nobody gives you character.”

Mills has three rules: be early, honor your family (the name on the back of the jersey) and honor others. “We’re still on No. 1,” he says.

The standard is establishing a trust level where you know the guy next to you will do anything to win. A few minutes into practice, Mills shows what that looks like. A ball rolls on the floor to his left, and Mills plants off his right foot, takes one hard step and leaves his feet. The 50-year-old is airborne, arms extended and diving onto the basketball.

His players run quickly to help him off the ground. That is how you dive for a loose ball, he tells them. No bracing yourself.

Mills notices later that his dive left a hole in the right sleeve of his shirt and a circular bruise on his thigh. He made the mistake of leaving his whistle in his right pocket.

Later, Mills pulls up the team picture from his playing days at MacArthur High School in Houston. Then he zooms in. There’s a hole in the toe of his right shoe. Mills was poor growing up in the Homestead neighborhood of Houston, and that stays with you forever. He’ll keep wearing his shirt with the hole. It’s his favorite Wichita State long-sleeve.

Under Gregg Marshall, Wichita State developed a “play angry” mantra. That doesn’t exactly fit Mills. Marshall’s veins would bulge and his voice would boom at the slightest mistake in practice. Mills makes his points subtly. The Shockers’ emphasis in two recent practices is closing on shooters with the proper “stick hand.” Each day Wichita State scrimmages, starting with a score of 65-65. Once one team reaches 70, two minutes go on the clock. A turnover is minus one point. An offensive rebound is plus one. And when super senior Jacob Germany big man doesn’t close with a high hand, Mills yells out, “Basket. Jacob, no stick hand.” Two points go on the board for the other team. Play resumes.

He knows players are competitive and want to win those games. It works. Take the turnover rule. Oral Roberts ranked second, 16th, fifth and first nationally over the last four seasons in turnover rate.

“He spends 90 percent of practice teaching guys how to play versus just running plays,” assistant coach Kenton Paulino says.

Pace is important too. ORU pushed the ball whenever possible and finished in the top 50 in tempo the last three seasons. Mills says the goal of halfcourt offense is always to change the side of the floor in order to change the help. “Because everybody says load to the ball,” Mills explains. “Imagine if you could switch help in transition. How good are teams to actually do that? Well, I don’t think the teams are very good.”

Mills gives his teams a number of different actions to run at the start of a possession. The goal is to eventually get the on-the-ball defender to go over the top of the screen, and that’s when the advantage happens. From there, Mills banks on his players knowing how to play in space.

Here’s a teaching point that gets Mills excited. He shows a clip of former Oral Roberts forward Kevin Obanor making a pick-and-pop 3.

“You can see, ball in the air,” he says of the pass, “feet in the air. Catching that loaded. That goes lost on 99.9 percent of people.”

Mills says his goal at Oral Roberts was never to lead the country in 3-pointers; it was to lead the country in dunks. He teaches his players to constantly put pressure on the rim, whether that’s driving or cutting. He often uses NBA clips to hammer home a teaching point to his teams. Last season’s Golden Eagles were elite at scoring off cuts, finishing 1.4 points per possession on plays that ended in a cut, which was third best in college basketball, per Synergy. But he wants it to happen more often. He shows his players a chart made by HoopVision’s Jordan Sperber. Nine NBA teams since 2014 finished more than 10 percent of their offensive possessions with a cut. Five of those teams won the NBA Finals.

All of his lessons come with an example, usually from the NBA, and he’s always searching for an advantage. He once noticed in a NBA shooting heat map by ESPN’s Kirk Goldberry that the best left corner shooter shot a higher percentage than the the best right corner shooter. The reason, he theorized, is that when a right-hander shoots from the left corner, the backboard does not come into play. It’s a tougher angle in the right corner because of the backboard. He had one of his coaches run the numbers on his own team, and ORU was better from the left corner. He wants his player in the right corner to space slightly higher up the floor, so he moved the tape on his practice floor that designates where to go. On the right side, a horizontal line starts at the 3-point line and is even with the block. On the left side, it’s even with the front of the rim.

This is the way Mills is wired. He once taught himself how to count cards in blackjack. He processes quickly. His approach to offense is like blackjack: Don’t play the hand. Play the deck.

His players know what a good shot is because he allows them to learn the math through experience. Over the first six weeks of practice, he tells his players to shoot whatever shots they want. His coaches track everything. The goal, in his mind, is hold opposing offenses to under a point per possession and for his team to take shots with better than a point-per-possession expectancy. He uses the 6-foot-11 Germany as an example. Germany has attempted 16 3-pointers in his four-year career. When he arrived at Wichita State, he was shooting a bunch of 17-footers. He told Germany the best he was going to shoot from there was probably 40 percent, which means that shot is worth 0.8 points. If he stepped back to the 3-point line and his percentage fell to 30 percent, that’s 0.9.

“We’re gonna shoot 10 less percent,” he told Germany, “but we’re gonna win by double digits. Step back six inches and learn how to shoot a 3 ball.”

Mills’ standard line to his players: “I don’t tell you what shots to shoot. You tell me.”

On Monday afternoon, the Wichita State staff meets in a conference room to go over recruiting. Mills lives by an old Homer Drew line: “Recruiting is like shaving. Got to do it every day.”

Wichita State has three scholarships available heading for the 2024-25 roster. Mills plans to take one high school player and leave two spots open for transfers. That could always change, of course, depending on roster defections or if Wichita State lands another player or two late this summer. Mills puts nine of their top targets on the board. He challenges his staff to rank the top six. “Can’t call nine every night,” he says. He’d like to eventually focus in on three. “Not going to outwork me for three kids.”

The key, he tells his staff, is not who you can recruit; it’s who you can get.

Relationships matter, and Mills or someone on his staff has some kind of tie to everybody on that board. He perks up when he recognizes the last name of a player from Houston. “I’m fairly certain his dad lived with me for three weeks,” Mills says. “Bought his clothes.”

Any edge is key. A few years ago he hired a young guy from Serbia to be a graduate assistant. Ognjen Stranjina, Mills was told, knew everything about every player in Serbia. Stranjina had started an NCAA certified scouting service with his buddy Ivan Mitrovic in 2017 when Stranjina was just a college freshman. Mitrovic is now a scout with the Washington Wizards. When Stranjina arrived in Tulsa to work for ORU, it was his first time stepping foot in the United States. He’s now Wichita State’s director of recruiting.

Stranjina has watched film on every player discussed at the meeting. Later, when Mills is making recruiting calls, he shouts out to Stranjina for phone numbers. Stranjina quickly gives him the numbers.

“I’ll follow Coach Mills to death,” Stranjina says.

Paulino wanted to quit coaching until Mills offered him a job at Oral Roberts in 2021. In two years, he’s changed how he feels about coaching by watching how Mills operates, specifically in recruiting.

“It will always be talent, but right after that, it’s character,” Paulino says. “Like, are these guys about winning? Whereas before you focus on talent, talent, talent, and the character piece you might look over if a guy’s talented. With Mills, you absolutely can’t look over the character piece. Whoever we bring in, they have to be about winning.

“It’s changed my perception of the business because he’s done it like that for so long and had success that you feel like you could put your heart and soul into it and not get burned.”

Mills has a theory about the way to build a roster. He showed his staff a graph the other day with talent as the vertical axis and character as the horizontal axis. He said they had to stay away from the lower left quadrant — bad kids and bad character. The upper left — good talent, bad character — is what he calls “get-by guys.” They just get by because they’re talented. Then he pointed to the upper right quadrant and went far to the right on the character metric. You need eight of those guys, he says. Great locker room guys who are contributors. Then you need three players who meet the character requirement and are high on the talent side — i.e., your stars. If you have all that, you can maybe roll the dice with one “get-by” guy, knowing you have a strong locker room and time to change him.

He’s asked who the three stars are for this Wichita State team.

“Kenny Pohto, he’s got to be one of those guys,” he says. “We still need to find a second one, and then I don’t know who the third one is.”

In other words, there’s work to be done — and little time to rest. Mills never used to break for lunch, but he discovered there’s a Fuzzy’s Taco Shop just around the corner from Koch Arena. When he decides to take a guest somewhere else the next day, he calls longtime Wichita State staffer Ryan Hillard for ideas. “All I know is Fuzzy’s,” he tells Hillard.

There will be time to get to know the city. Last Monday, Mills was considering a spur-of-the-moment trip to Greece to see a player who could help the Shockers this season. He spent Tuesday calling a player still available in the portal and the rest of that afternoon talking to high school recruits, parents and coaches. Schemes and details are important, but Wichita State needs players — preferably in that top right quadrant.

 

[Old Titan]

54 minutes ago, titansforever said:

Full article:

WICHITA, Kan. — New Wichita State coach Paul Mills used to spend his summers working camps for Rick Majerus. He likes to tell the story of Majerus working out Chris Burgess, who had just transferred from Duke to Utah in 1999. Majerus had Burgess do the Mikan Drill, where a player continuously shoots layups — right hand, left hand, right hand, left hand … off the proper foot, keeping the ball high — for 75 straight minutes.

“Every detail, from the eyes to the shoulders to the knees to the feet, the ball to the release,” Mills says. “And I was just like, man, I’m in heaven. Like, all right, how do I learn from this guy? He knows things.” 

Wow, what a fantastic article, on so many levels.  Mills is certainly a different breed of cat.

Sounds like he knows he has a bare cabinet, and dismissing one of his new-hire assistants this past week after only a few weeks on campus for "personal reasons" can't be good news.

I found his comment about "never being able to get the kind of talent to ORU that could beat Duke" a little disingenuous in the wake of signing middling transfers such as Bijan Cortes and Jacob Germany.  I'm guessing losing to the Blue Devils by 25 will be a little more palatable now at three times the annual salary.

Looking forward to seeing the Shockers play this year, and how he handles the fans and media.

P.S. an off-color (perhaps apocryphal) but telling story about Rick Majerus' attention to detail involves him running a drill in a camp or practice that involved an up-fake with the ball before driving.

The participants were, in Majerus' view, over-cooking the fake:  "Guys, look, it's subtle - just a few inches," he shouted.

"About the length of the average man's $#%&." 

[Dr. Cornelius]

33 minutes ago, Old Titan said:

I found his comment about "never being able to get the kind of talent to ORU that could beat Duke" a little disingenuous in the wake of signing middling transfers such as Bijan Cortes and Jacob Germany. 

Jacob Germany makes Vanover look like Hakeem Olajuwon  So, I don’t really get Mills’ comment.

 

 

[theeagleman5]

Geez.....what a crock of SH%&*T......so glad this guy is gone.....

[ORUSwagger]

5 hours ago, theeagleman5 said:

Geez.....what a crock of SH%&*T......so glad this guy is gone.....

I wonder what other Oru folks think when they read this. Way to go Mills….

[dbl78]

7 hours ago, Old Titan said:

 "never being able to get the kind of talent to ORU that could beat Duke"

I also struggled with that quote also, remembering that he had the talent as a 15 seed to beat a 2 seed.  ORU just did not seem prepared to play Duke - I continue to wonder if Mills was more focused on other opportunities in the future rather than getting the players ready for Duke.

[GoldenEagleFan]

14 hours ago, titansforever said:

The other reason? How this year’s first-round NCAA Tournament game against Duke unfolded.

The Blue Devils jumped out to a 15-0 lead en route to an eventual 23-point win over the 12th-seeded Golden Eagles. Mills thought beating a team like Duke required better collective talent than he was ever going to land at Oral Roberts.

What a slap in the face to the players that helped get him the job he has now…. If that is truly the case, why did he try to fill his new roster at Wichita with all of these ORU players he thinks aren’t talented enough?

Max, Kareem, Patrick, Connor… not to mention keeping Joy. Pretty interesting he went 0-4 on players he coached who hit the portal… makes you think a little!

[Bogus Smith]

18 hours ago, titansforever said:

The other reason? How this year’s first-round NCAA Tournament game against Duke unfolded.

The Blue Devils jumped out to a 15-0 lead en route to an eventual 23-point win over the 12th-seeded Golden Eagles. Mills thought beating a team like Duke required better collective talent than he was ever going to land at Oral Roberts.

Someone at The Atlantic needs to do a better job with their proofreading of their published articles.  Interesting that the links in their copy go to the Central Connecticut "Blue Devils" and to the Southern Mississippi "Golden Eagles" pages.  Just sayin'......   

[Bogus Smith]

3 hours ago, GoldenEagleFan said:

What a slap in the face to the players that helped get him the job he has now…. If that is truly the case, why did he try to fill his new roster at Wichita with all of these ORU players he thinks aren’t talented enough?

Max, Kareem, Patrick, Connor… not to mention keeping Joy. Pretty interesting he went 0-4 on players he coached who hit the portal… makes you think a little!

Paul obviously didn't choose his words well in this part of the interview.  He recruited Joy (actually Paulino did) and that may be a unique situation.  We lost to Duke because the team was unprepared, not because of the talent.  If our team had executed as it had all year long, we may still have lost, but it would have been a very competitive battle.

Had Mills stayed until after the baseball season, I believe he would have gotten the same bump of publicity in recruiting the portal as he did after his Sweet 16 run. That, and the "free agency" world that we live in, is going to limit what we can do at ORU and we will continue to need to find those "diamond-in-the-rough" type players that will bring us the notoriety that God brings to ORU.  Russell is our Rob Walton for basketball.  He can evaluate and project talent and those players can develop under his tulage.   

In Coach's defense, he didn't have a crystal ball and he knew he would have a hard time (if ever) getting to 30-5 again at ORU as we would be a difficult team to not take seriously.  He also knew that he would never get a contract that paid him his market value at ORU and needed to "make hay" while the time was right.  Given those circumstances, everyone on this board would have made the career decision to move on as he did.  None of us know what was going on behind the scenes with Paul's agent, but as quickly as his move came along, we have to believe that there was some negotiations going on that kept WSU waiting for ORU's end of their season.  We should be happy for Coach Mills that he was able to be another branch in the ORU basketball tree of successful coaches.  We should also hope that Russell Springmann joins another branch of that tree sometime in the future (after a national championship, of course! ).