How Notre Dame freshman Olivia Miles quickly became 'the best point guard in the country'
The quote is as profound as the origin is obscure.
“We are what we continually do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
Rich Leary has recited it often at countless basketball camps he has coached all over the northeast in the last three decades. Hardly any of his young pupils have ever known to whom those words trace back. He’ll never forget when one of them did.
Leary was in Pennsylvania a handful of summers ago teaching the game to upward of 100 middle school girls. He dropped the line on them, expecting the usual: silent yet inquisitive minds wondering why such philosophical sentences reverberated around a gymnasium. Leary contends the man who came up with them is a “life coach.” Leary is a basketball coach. The two go hand-in-hand — in hand.
One rose high in the middle of the crowd.
“It’s from Aristotle,” said future Notre Dame point guard Olivia Miles.
That was all Leary needed to hear. He had already seen enough anyway.
‘Everybody in the gym is talking about her’
Conveniently, Miles and Leary both hail from New Jersey. Miles started playing for Leary’s travel team not long after acing the impromptu philosophy exam. And not long after that, Miles was a household name in the recruiting landscape. It all happened so fast.
Miles was at a tournament the following summer as a high school freshman. The man running the tourney, Tucker O’Neill, approached Leary in the middle of it. There were over 100 teams participating in drills and scrimmages. It’s not impossible for an individual player to get noticed at a camp of that size, but it isn’t particularly easy. Everybody was there for a reason; they could play.
But Miles could play better than any of them.
“Your girl is just blowing up,” O’Neill told Leary. “Everybody in the gym is talking about her.”
Everybody in the country is talking about her now.
Miles is a major reason why Notre Dame is in the Sweet 16. She became the first freshman in NCAA Tournament history to post a triple-double when she scored 12 points, brought down 11 rebounds and distributed 11 assists in a first-round win over UMass then came close to doing it all again against Oklahoma with 12 assists, nine points and seven rebounds.
She was the only freshman to be recognized as an All-ACC First Team member. ESPN tweeted out a graphic of Miles. An ESPN broadcast compared her to former NBA superstars Magic Johnson and Oscar Robertson. Her head coach, Niele Ivey, called her the “best point guard in the country.” That’s coming from a former Notre Dame point guard who guided the Irish to their first ever national championship in 2001.
“I can’t really comprehend that statement,” Miles said. “It’s amazing that she always has my back and is always supporting me. It’s so great to just see it come to life. I’ve always thought that I am, but I feel like I’ve been under the radar a lot.”
‘She was unbelievable”
Miles has a point.
She wasn’t eligible to win any weekly honors from the ACC because she enrolled early and played in six games during last year’s spring semester. Miles’ teammate, Sonia Citron, mopped up the accolades instead. But even Citron, the ACC Freshman of the Year currently averaging 12.0 points and 6.7 rebounds per game, knew if Miles had been eligible she’d have won the award.
“She would definitely deserve this honor,” Citron said. “She’s been doing an amazing job leading our team as a freshman.”
Miles is averaging a team-high 13.5 points, 7.4 assists and 5.7 rebounds per game. It’s the first of those three figures that might have been holding her back from receiving national acclaim. People want to watch scorers, and Miles has only topped 20-plus points four times this season.
But that’s not because she can’t put the ball in the bucket. Leary has seen otherwise too many times. There was a year when his team didn’t have a stacked roster by any means. Miles was the best of the bunch, and it wasn’t close. Leary knew that and took action.
“I forced Olivia to do what she didn’t want to do, which was to be a scorer,” he said. “She averaged 24 or 25 points a game. And in AAU, that’s not common. Usually you have so many good players around you and you’re only playing parts of the game. It’s a hard thing to do. And she was unbelievable.”
After the last game of that summer, an opposing coach again approached Leary.
“I’ve never seen a high school player play the way that she did.”
Miles went off for 34 in similar fashion to scoring 30 earlier this season in a Notre Dame win against Boston College.
“She didn’t want to score 34,” Leary said. “And she didn’t want to have the burden of scoring all the time. She wanted to pass. But for us to win, she had to score.”
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So score, she did. And win, her team did too.
‘Vision from Heaven’
It’s not Miles’ ability to drop 30 on a dime that makes her the best point guard in the game in Ivey’s eyes. It’s the ability to drop dimes. Leary agreed. To him, it’s what sets her apart — from literally everyone.
“She has the best court vision of anyone I’ve seen.”
That includes NBA legend Jason Kidd. Leary’s boys team played against Kidd when he was in high school. Kidd’s vision was spectacular — all the way through his Hall of Fame NBA career. To Leary, Miles — at that level — was just a bit better. Leary said Miles has “athletic eyes.” Those are hard to come by.
“She doesn’t just see the open girl,” Leary said. “Really good players can do that, but her vision is not limited to that. She knows where the girl will be open. She doesn’t pass to the open girl, she passes to the spot she will be open. That’s a difficult process. That’s vision from Heaven.”
Miles has a knack of improving all different types of players’ games.
Sharpshooter? She can get you open with the dribble-drive. Ask senior Notre Dame senior Dara Mabrey. Post player? She’s got a knack for feeding the paint in ways others can’t. Ask Notre Dame graduate student Maya Dodson. Transition track star? Miles can run, and her passing abilities aren’t hampered by being on the move. Ask Citron.
“She can throw passes that other people cannot, and should not,” Leary said. “Someone like Dara might not be open if someone else was handling the ball, but she’s open with Olivia handling the ball. Olivia brings a whole package of things that are unattainable to others through her passing.”
‘Ive required her to do a lot’
You can’t coach Miles’ passing. It’s God-given.
You can show her how to be a leader, though. That has come with more speed bumps. There was the time, for instance, she got tangled up in a post-whistle scrum while Notre Dame was losing by 40 on its home floor against Louisville. Miles show-boated after an and-one layup. A Cardinals player didn’t take kindly to it given the score, and a scuffle of sorts ensued.
She’s gotten into foul trouble, too. That obviously forces Ivey to take her out of the game. When you’re young and gifted like Miles, the bench isn’t exactly a sanctuary. Miles has to learn to control her emotions in those moments. No pouting. That’s not an issue unique to her. A lot of basketball players could stand to subdue their tempers.
That’s because a lot of basketball players are pure competitors. Miles is one of the purest. She wants to dominate, and she wants to win. She’s done a lot of both this season — all while assuming the role of team leader in her first full year at Notre Dame.
“This year I’ve required her to do a lot,” Ivey said. “She’s had to take on carrying a team and carrying a program as a freshman, which is a very hard task. But I knew that she was capable of handling it.”
This is someone who knew the Aristotle quote, after all.
