Since she was hired as the new head coach of ASU women's basketball in March, Molly Miller and her revamped program have lived up to all expectations.
The team's most recent game also celebrated family day, a theme that holds importance to Miller as a mom as well as a coach. It's always been crucial to Miller that her players feel as though they are a part of a family rather than a roster.
Her basketball operations coordinator, Daejah Bernard, who also played under Miller for four seasons at Drury University from 2016-20, has experienced this approach firsthand over the years as both a player and fellow coach.
"She does a really good job of blending her personal family – her biological kids, her husband, her parents – and the basketball family," Bernard said via Sun Devil Athletics. "We were always at her house, we were always playing with her kids. I've watched them both grow up. I had surgery, and I stayed with her mom for a couple of weeks ... she treats her basketball kids like she would her kids."
This, plus the fact that the Sun Devils are 8-0 through their first month of play, means the group's morale couldn't be higher.
Miller has loved the energy she's seen from her team thus far. It's something she's preached from the start, and she believes it's been one of the biggest contributors to their early success.
"You're not going to earn favor in this program if you don't play with that kind of energy and effort," Miller said. "We're all in this together. We're all a group, and you have to have this energy with this brand of basketball. To their credit, they've bought into that."
Along with energy, Miller has also harped on the importance of selflessness on the court, which was practiced to perfection in ASU's most recent win against Southeast Missouri State on Nov. 29.
The Sun Devils put together an all-around solid performance against the Redhawks to cap off their Thanksgiving Tournament, and nothing made Miller happier than seeing 21 total team assists on the stat sheet afterward.
"We always want to be the team that plays harder, and then the shots might not fall, things might not go your way, but you'd better play hard," she said. "The other thing with that is team-first mentality. So you want to be selfless, and tonight we had 21 assists and 10 turnovers. I think that's the brand we're trying to emulate, and we're trying to reward also."
With 21 points on the night, sophomore forward Heloisa Carrera led the Sun Devils in scoring against SEMO. The only thing the Ole Miss transfer could talk about after the game was the squad's team-first mentality.
"We really like each other, and we hang out outside of basketball, so that really helps on the court and also off the court," Carrera said. "When you have that, you're really going to play together and look at each other. It's not selfish basketball."
The Sun Devils have five more games before they begin conference play against Colorado on Dec. 21.
As they move forward, they plan to focus on what's in front of them while making necessary improvements along the way.
"We want to grow with our schedule, and I think we're doing a good job of that," Miller said. "We definitely want to get comfortable, not only as a team, but as a program which is bigger than the team."
Edited by Alan Deutschendorf, Henry Smardo and Pippa Fung.
Reach the reporter at holtzingerethan@gmail.com and follow @EthanZinger6 on X.
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Ethan Holtzinger is a sports reporter for The State Press who has previously worked for Cronkite News and the Arizona Interscholastic Association. He is in his 2nd semester with The State Press and 5th semester at ASU.
