Competitive Ryan Miller

Getting to Know the Murray State Coach

(St. Louis, MO) – Murray State’s new basketball coach is competitive. He hates to lose and frankly the competitive Ryan Miller has been a part of significant amount of winning during his twenty-two-year coaching career.

During his playing career the North Dakota native won a state championship in high school and four conference titles in college. He was a Division 2 all-American player. While his college coaching journey has led him to places like Memphis, Pepperdine, New Mexico, Auburn, UNLV, TCU and Creighton, he has seen great success at each stop.

Miller-coached teams are regulars in postseason play. Nearly half of his coaching seasons have included NCAA Tournament action and a handful more have concluded in the National Invitation Tournament.

Trying to compare his previous stops, he says while the accomplishments matter, the relationships with people and the memories made are more important.

Known as a dynamic recruiter, Miller has helped nurture numerous future NBA players. Two of those players, Patrick McCaw and Ryan Kalkbrenner are from St. Louis. Miller says those two players each had something special.

Building the Murray State Program

Moving from a high-major assistant’s role to the head coaching spot at a mid-major like Murray State took some thought. While he has had other opportunities, the unique blend of both history and aggressive futuristic thinking by Murray State leadership made this move possible.

He immediately connected with Director of Athletics Nico Yantko. Miller saw the progressive and energetic leadership at every level of Racer athletics. The ‘fit’ just seemed right for the soon-to-be, 50-year-old Miller.

The competitive Ryan Miller went right to work building his roster and coaching staff. He passionately pursued former Creighton players Fred King, Mason Miller and Ben Shtolzberg. Miller knew they could perform at a high level, but also wanted those three to help the rest of the roster learn the way he wanted them to play.

Newcomer Brock Vice also spent a season at Creighton before transferring to North Texas.

Many mid-major programs are mining the overseas basketball mines to find talent and Miller landed three players with international experience. Mathis Courbon and Roman Domon hail from France and Lachlan Crate is a New Zealander. All three players have participated on their respective nation’s international teams. Crate was named to the Asia Cup all-tournament team.

Miller says finding talented and mature foreign players can jump start a program.

During his introductory press conference Miller noted this teams would be committed to ‘unselfishness, toughness and competitiveness’. While admitting it is virtually impossible to turn a selfish player into an unselfish one, the other two ingredients can be trained.

So he recruits unselfish players and works hard at helping them grow in toughness and gaining that competitive edge.

Competitive Ryan Miller

Miller grew up playing basketball in a basketball-loving family. His father (Tom) and two uncles were standouts at Dakota Wesleyan University. While his brother Jared was his college teammate at Northern State, his brother Mike was a two-time NBA champion with the Miami Heat.

He admits, he had no choice but to play and love basketball.

His coaching staff is filled with people he trusts and has worked with at previous stops. Miller seems to be the type of coach that won’t be outworked and is constantly looking for the ‘next best way to do something’.

That’s one of the things he loves about the leadership at Murray State. He believes they will be aggressive and supportive in looking for ways to prevail.

Head to YouTube to see our entire interview with Ryan Miller or to Valley Hoops Insider Podcasts for the audio only version.

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