Miles away from Storrs

By: Kevin Meacham

Posted: 10/7/08

Nate Miles allegedly made some poor decisions and he has been expelled from UConn as a result. And rightly so.

The university, not to mention its basketball program, (or its head coach), has been given a black eye. People have begun to question whether the program is becoming decadent, accepting players of questionable character.

Miles infamously attended five high schools in four years before graduating earlier this year. Just about every newspaper or online story on Miles seems required to mention the words "baggage" or "troubles."

Coach Jim Calhoun fought for about a year to push Miles through UConn's admissions process.

Did he do it because Miles had a shot to be the best wing player at UConn since Rip Hamilton? Calhoun only has a certain number of years remaining in his coaching career and Miles would have fit perfectly in a stacked UConn lineup that should be ranked in the top five of the polls this year.

Did he do it as a sort of reclamation project, a Caron Butler for this era? Butler had a troubled youth - including more than a dozen arrests. But Calhoun took a chance on him, and Butler responded by turning his life around and becoming a wildly successful, model citizen.

Was it a combination of the two? In the end, it doesn't matter - even if you give Calhoun the benefit of the doubt, as I do.

What matters is that Miles, given another chance by a coach who fought through all kinds of red tape for him, blew it in 16 minutes.

I don't know Nate Miles. I've never met him, and it appears I never will. I'm not willing to label the young man a "thug" - like some others have - based on gossip and stories of past transgressions.

The alleged incident which led to a restraining order on Miles is not necessarily the behavior of a thug. What it says to me, instead, is that this is the behavior of an immature 20-year-old freshman. The affidavit tells a graphic and disturbing story, alleging sexual abuse of a female freshman student.

On a campus which experienced a pair of sexual assaults last month - and a university given an embarrassing black eye by a first-hand account of sexual assault in this very newspaper last spring - this is unacceptable.

The university cannot allow any student to feel explicitly threatened by another student. Even ignoring Miles' history, his expulsion was clearly the right call.

But is Nate Miles a trend? That, I'm not so sure about.

Since my freshman year in 2005, there have been three major incidents with the men's basketball team: A.J. Price and Marcus Williams' infamous laptop thievery, Doug Wiggins and Jerome Dyson's alcohol-related bust and now the Miles flap.

In each case, the individuals involved made poor choices and were punished for it. Besides Miles, every player was suspended for a significant chunk of time.

But do these five individuals represent a "win-at-all-costs" mentality?

I think you could make a case that basketball factories embraced this mentality the moment they relaxed admissions standards to allow in supremely-talented-but-lax students. For every Emeka Okafor (3.8 GPA, finance major), there's a half-dozen guys (like Miles) with shaky transcripts who can shoot the "J".

However, it is not a crime to be a below-average student. I won't argue that the university (and others like it) is selling its soul for the glory that comes with national championship trophies. But this is beside the point.

We're talking about the players who supposedly put the "con" in UConn.

Williams is in the NBA and appears to be doing well for himself, both on the court and off.

Price enters his senior season recovering from a torn ACL. I would find it hard for anyone not to root for him as he perseveres through his second career-threatening injury in four years. Price appears to have matured and responded positively to his past mistakes.

As for Wiggins and Dyson, well, it was stupid for two under-21 kids to get caught in a car with alcohol. As unpaid spokesmen of the university, they should have known better.

But in the end, they are two college kids. And college kids drink. They always have, they always will. If you're the parent of a freshman or sophomore, try calling up your kids on a random Friday night at about midnight.

Incidentally, Dyson reportedly failed two random drug tests last season. Face-of-the-university caveat aside, I wonder how well any random dormitory floor would do under a random drug test.

So I reject the notion that these two young men have questionable character because they act like 19- and 20-year-olds do everywhere.

So that leaves us where we started, with Nate Miles. Of the above three situations, Miles' is the most severe. Already on a short leash, Miles blew it in spectacular fashion. But his alleged choices should not indict the other players and coaches on the team.

At some point, college kids - whether they play basketball or not - need to grow up. Most of us do. Some don't. Everyone should get a second chance. And then, most of the rest of us figure it out.

Nate Miles, for whom I wish nothing but luck in growing up, is a sad exception; not the latest in the trend.