The mixtape business starts so young these days that it can be a real shock to see certain viral teen hoopers, their high school exploits teased in seizure-inducing video thumbnails and all-caps YouTube titles for so long, grow up to become actual college basketball players. When she committed to Rutgers this past January as a five-star, freshman Kiyomi McMiller became the program’s highest-ranked recruit under third-year head coach Coquese Washington, who’s been tasked with rebuilding the storied women’s program following some down years before the retirement of Hall of Fame coach C. Vivian Stringer. Rutgers has some ways to go to compete in a tough Big Ten, but one perk of these rebuilding seasons is that a team can afford to hand the keys over to its young talent and let them cook. This is meant as a compliment: 11 games into her college career, McMiller doesn’t look all too different from the high school highlight reel.
At home against Wagner on Sunday, McMiller tried out a move (at the 1:23 mark above) typically confined to parks, driveways, and sneaker commercials. She brought the ball up the floor, tossed it behind her back with her left hand, spun so she could pick it up in stride with her right, and then finished with a floater at the basket.
Because it was a low-stakes matchup between two unranked teams, this Wagner-Rutgers game landed in the hands of Big Ten Plus announcers, who are typically adorably excitable homers or have no idea what is going on. This instance erred on the side of unimpressed—the play-by-play announcer merely noted McMiller's “soft touch” when she made the shot—though the booth seemed pretty taken with her as the game went on. Rutgers beat a weak Wagner team 86-48, but it’ll be fun to see what kinds of answers McMiller has in conference play, particularly against the press defenses of Ohio State and Michigan State, who force opposing guards to be extra shifty.
I first watched McMiller a couple of years ago when she appeared on Overtime’s wholesome Paige Bueckers Film School series, in which the titular UConn star gasses up different high schoolers as she watches their tape. Although McMiller said in her interview with Bueckers that she doesn’t have a “go-to move,” and prefers to keep defenders on their toes, the spin crossover actually seems like a reliable weapon in her bag. In the episode, McMiller sits sheepishly next to a hooting Bueckers. “[No.] 25, I’m sorry, sis,” Bueckers says to one anonymous defender, whom McMiller has turned all the way around.
