Tide Hoops Refresher: Darius Miles
When it comes to Darius Miles, there might not be a more energetic and enthusiastic player on Alabama’s team than he is. He plays with a lot of energy when he is on the court, and he is also his teammates’ biggest fan while he is on the bench. Every team needs a player that will bring it every single night to motivate the other players to be like that as well. It doesn’t matter if he is 0/5 from the field with 5 turnovers, Miles will still play extremely hard, and you wouldn’t be able to tell he has had a bad game.
Miles is from Washington D.C. and went to Theodore Roosevelt High School where he averaged 13 points and 5 rebounds per game. He later transferred to powerhouse IMG Academy where he played on the postgrad team, and he averaged 12 points while playing there. Miles was a relatively lower-ranked prospect across most platforms but was rated a four-star and the 113th-ranked player according to Rivals for the 2020 class. Being 6’7 and 185 lb, Miles is a very lanky kid with long arms. To go along with his size and long arms, Miles is extremely athletic and can jump out of the gym and that is what caught a lot of college coaches’ eye. He was recruited by the likes of Georgetown, LSU, Texas A&M, Memphis, and others, but he had his eyes set on one school.
Darius committed to Alabama on April 4, 2020, to join a top 15-rated class that included the likes of Josh Primo and Keon Ellis. Miles would have to try and carve out his role on what was a very talented Alabama team that ended up coming seconds away from making the Elite Eight. He played sparingly his freshman year, typically in blowout games. However, he made his presence felt in several games with splash plays that would catch your eye. The most notable play his freshman year was his posterizing dunk against Georgia in a 115-82 win over the Bulldogs. He came off the right wing and it seemed like he was flying he jumped so high, and emphatically dropped the hammer on the Georgia player. That got the bench and crowd extremely fired up, and that specific play got #2 on Sportcenter’s Top 10 Plays countdown that night. He started finding his footing in the college ranks slowly but surely with every game he played.
In his sophomore season, he saw a huge uptick in playing time going from 4 minutes to 17 minutes per game. While he only averaged 5 points per game, he saw himself as the energy player off the bench that grabbed rebounds and was fourth on the team in blocks. He had a few double-digit scoring games last season, including a career-high 14 points against Mississippi State on January 15th. A lot of times he would play off the ball and just sit in a spot waiting for a kick-out 3-pointer and he started the season out on fire making his first 6 threes. As the season progressed, he became more of a defender/rebounder when he came off the bench. With his long arms and athleticism, he could play good defense on a team that desperately needed it. Darius is finally starting to find his identity within the team and improving in multiple areas as well.
Looking ahead to his upcoming junior season, Miles will be asked to play a very similar role to last year but play more as well. The one difference will be he will likely be asked to score more than 5 points a game considering how young this team will be, and he is one of the veteran leaders now. He will not be asked to go score 15+ per game, but if he can get his scoring average to around 10 ppg, then that is a huge victory for Nate Oats and Alabama. He has the potential to be that type of scorer off the bench, and this season he will get the opportunity to show it.