There are some outstanding point guards in the college class of 2005.
“Mo Williams, Chris Thomas, T.J. Ford … those are just some of ’em. We’ve got some great ones,” Kansas University sophomore point Aaron Miles said, rattling off a short list.
The 6-foot-1 Portland, Ore., native couldn’t help but notice he’d slipped behind the Alabama, Notre Dame and Texas guards in the eyes of the experts after six games of the 2002-03 season.
“I’m not going to lie. I mean, everybody wants to be mentioned. I think every player looks in magazines and hopes to see his name in there,” Miles said. He logged 35 assists against 25 turnovers and averaged 7.5 points a game as KU opened with a dismal 3-3 record.
“Not seeing my name and seeing some others in my class, who I played with were in there, I said, ‘I want to see my name in there.’ Looking back, that was selfish on my part,” Miles added.
Miles had his head down after missing 10 of 11 shots while committing seven turnovers in the Jayhawks’ 84-78 loss to Oregon on Dec. 7 in his hometown. His demeanor changed two days later after an impromptu meeting with KU coach Roy Williams in the head coach’s office.
“I was in the basketball office anyway. Coach saw me and said he needed to talk to me and I said I was thinking the same,” Miles said.
The two met for about 10 minutes, Williams quickly getting to the root of the problem.
“I don’t know if he got caught up in criticism, but he got caught up in thinking about what other people were doing and trying to be somebody else,” Williams said.
The KU coach also noticed Miles had been “forcing it — forcing the shot, forcing the basketball.
“Hearing about T.J. Ford, what a great year he was having,” Williams said, “or the kid at Alabama — particularly kids in his class that he’d played against in high school camps — he brought that up himself.”
Williams, a former point guard during his playing days, had some simple advice.
“I said, ‘Are you trying to do things you can’t do? What are you focusing on?'” Williams said. “He was caught up in what other people were doing. I told him to be himself. I really believe that’s good enough.
“He didn’t have to be Isiah Thomas. He didn’t have to be Muggsy Bogues. He didn’t have to be anybody else but Aaron Miles because Aaron Miles is good enough.”
Miles left the confab realizing that to be himself, he had to slow down, quit forcing his own shot and rediscover his best trait — the intangible of being a winner.
“Before it was like, ‘I need to score more and show people I can score.’ I didn’t need to do that. I had to get back to winning,” Miles said. “I just want to win. People might say, ‘He made a nice pass,’ or something like that, but I only care that they say I won.”
Concentrating on the big picture, Miles has excelled of late. In KU’s eight-game winning streak, he has averaged 9.8 points a game off 50 percent shooting, while totaling 70 assists against 23 turnovers.
He currently ranks third in the country in assists with 97, trailing just Harvard’s Elliott Prasse-Freeman (99) and Marques Green of St. Bonaventure (98).
“You go from the Oregon game on, his stats have been pretty impressive,” Williams said. “I wouldn’t care matching him up against anybody.”
Not even Maurice Williams, Chris Thomas or T.J. Ford.
“I think Aaron will continue to improve his game and be one of those guys that’s talked about a long time, too,” Williams said.
The Jayhawks will play Wyoming at 8 p.m. Wednesday at Allen Fieldhouse. A victory would be the 400th of Williams’ coaching career.
