Bearcats tap Miller as next head basketball coach
Life can change on a dime and that is certainly the case for Wes Miller who has spent most of his life in North Carolina as an assistant coach and then the head coach of UNC-Greensboro. Miller was in the mix for the North Carolina gig as a former Tar Heel player when Roy Williams retired recently and while most Cincinnati fans were fixated on the idea of hiring an alum to replace John Brannen, Bearcats AD John Cunningham found someone with a little more experience than the names floated for the job earlier.
Miller comes to the Queen City after five straight 21-plus win seasons in Greensboro and a decade of head coaching experience at a tough job. His Spartan program was postseason eligible for five straight seasons and they made the NCAA twice in a single bid Southern Conference league.
Miller will also be an outlier in the AAC where most of the league's coaches are either extremely experienced coaches on job three or four or former NBA players like Penny Hardaway or Aaron McKie. He will be the youngest coach in the conference by a decade.
New energy and life are needed after a rough two-year stint under Brannen that ended with a massive departure of players via the transfer portal, a 12-11 record and an investigation by the school into that coach's behavior toward his players and the rules.
Miller brings a clean slate, he is well-respected in the coaching community and he helped rebuild a struggling UNC-Greensboro program.
"I think Wes Miller is a home run hire for Cincinnati, he is an experienced head coach who rebuilt a struggling UNC-Greensboro program. They won 125 games there in the last five seasons and he will be really good at Cincinnati and for the American Athletic Conference," Rivals Basketball Analyst Russ Wood said.
