Corbin Miller: Ready To Fire

­“My legs are coming.”

Donning the familiar Harvard Hoops pinny, sophomore Corbin Miller said these four words to men’s basketball coach Tommy Amaker. Miller had stopped Amaker after the final whistle of practice blew, and repeated the sentiment for emphasis.

My legs. They’re coming along.

Miller was in the final stages of a rehabilitation process of sorts, a seven-month conditioning drill in which, in Amaker’s words, the guard “broke down and built up” his body strength.

It was the third week of official practices, and, for Miller, the first time in three years that he was training for a full season of collegiate basketball. Miller, known on the team and around the Ivy League as a lethal shooter from deep, had spent the previous two years on a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He had taken a leave of absence from Harvard following his freshman year and spent close to 24 months training for and serving on his mission in various states in East-Central Mexico.

So while his team forged its way onto the national basketball scene, Miller was immersed in a culture that prized fútbol over free throws. And when, in an ironic twist of fate, Harvard drew Salt Lake City as its second-round destination for the 2013 NCAA Tournament—a location just 25 minutes from Miller’s hometown of Sandy, Utah—Miller was 2,056 miles away, leading a training session for other missionaries in San Lorenzo, Almecatla.

One year later, in March 2014, Miller’s flight home must have nearly crossed paths with the Crimson’s plane to Spokane, Wash. As his team prepared to play in its third consecutive NCAA Tournament on March 20, Miller ended his mission and flew back to Utah on March 19, timing that enabled him to watch his team upset the No. 5-seeded Cincinnati Bearcats in the second round of the Big Dance.

Now, as Harvard looks to win its fifth straight Ancient Eight crown, Miller is back on the hardwood alongside his teammates. The faces on the court beside him have changed as two years have come and gone, but, for Miller, the most important thing has stayed the same.

He was recruited to shoot. And that’s what he plans to do.

“A VITAL ROLE”

The average basketball jump shot is released at about a 45-degree angle, with just enough air under the ball to cushion it as it falls through the net. For Miller, however, 45 degrees just isn’t enough.

His shot is unconventional in the amount of arc he puts on every jumper. On a given play, Miller will swing the rock up to face level, hesitating for a split moment before cocking the ball back and releasing it in quick, successive motions. While the ball often starts off at knee level, with Miller’s arms extended—creating space in front of him—it nearly touches the bridge of his nose before he lets it go, a high-flying shot whose arc must be closer to 60 degrees than 45.

“His [form] is beautiful,” sophomore forward Zena Edosomwan said. “Watching him shoot—even when he misses, it’s pretty.”

“He just has a special ability to shoot the ball,” said Jeff Gardner, the current head basketball coach at Brighton High School, which Miller attended from 2007 through 2011.

During his freshman year with the Crimson, Miller shot a cool 45.6 percent from deep, knocking down 26 of the 57 three-pointers he attempted—a season-long conversion rate higher than any of those of Laurent Rivard ’14, Harvard’s all-time leader in three-pointers made in a year and in a career. Miller’s biggest moment as a rookie came in a conference win over Penn in which he carried the team with 17 points, stepping up when Rivard had a cold shooting night.

So with Rivard graduated, the logical step seems to be to pencil Miller into the lineup where Rivard was just one season ago. Even the national media—including the likes of NBC Sports and CBS Sports—have pegged Miller as the “replacement” sharpshooter, as Rivard 2.0.

But Miller doesn’t see it that way.

“Laurent was an incredible shooter, an incredible player…[and] I hope to be able to shoot it as well as Laurent,” Miller said. “But I think my game is a little bit different [than his], I take it off the dribble a bit more.”

Amaker echoed the sophomore’s sentiments, citing Miller’s ball-handling capabilities as a key difference between the two marksmen.

“[He’s] not going to be Laurent, though everyone [thinks so]—they’re just not the same player,” Amaker said. “Corbin can put the ball down, and he’s more of a true guard: he can do things off the dribble [and] can play point guard for us.”

While Rivard would often wait a foot or so behind the three-point line with his hands up, ready to catch and shoot, Miller has added to his repertoire a sharp dribble to his left or right, in an attempt to shake a defender and create a better look at the basket. And while Rivard rarely drove to the hoop, Miller’s ability to penetrate will enable him to create opportunities for others as well, finding them on the drive.

But Miller’s central asset for the team will be his ability to stretch the floor. With a stacked frontline as well as a talented pair of ball-handlers in senior wing Wesley Saunders and junior point guard and co-captain Siyani Chambers—whose strengths are most evident when they penetrate the paint—Miller’s shooting will force the defense to the perimeter, opening up the inside game for his teammates.

While just over two months ago Miller and Chambers had never met or spoken with one another, the guards have said that their transition to playing together has been seamless. And with the two most frequent recipients of Chambers’s perimeter swings—Rivard and Brandyn Curry ’14—graduated, Miller will likely step in as the go-to gunner receiving the junior’s bullet passes, a role that both Miller and Amaker say he is more than ready to take on.

“Corbin’s going to be a key guy,” Amaker explained. “We need him to be a terrific shooter. He’s going to play a vital role for our team, without a doubt.”

“BUILDING BACK”

When Miller arrived back on U.S. soil in March 2014, he had barely picked up a basketball in almost two years and, according to Amaker, was 20 pounds lighter than he had been the last time he had stepped on the hardwood.

Miller’s roommate Nathan Wall, a linebacker on the football team who went on his mission at the same time as Miller, described just how difficult it is for athletes to keep their conditioning while on service trips. While they get 30 minutes to exercise every morning, there is no equipment to train with, rendering it difficult for them to maintain their body strength.

“You get out of shape really fast,” Wall explained.

So now, back on the floor of Lavietes Pavilion, Miller is working—every practice, every conditioning session—to get back into the rhythm he was in his freshman year, when he tallied those 17 points against Penn.

“He’s building back up,” Amaker said. “He’s worked hard to get to this point and so far so good.”

For Miller’s teammates, his marksmanship remains unquestioned. Despite the many months away from the court, his shot “looks exactly the same” according to co-captain Steve Moundou-Missi, and regaining his stroke has simply been a matter of “muscle memory” according to senior center Kenyatta Smith.

The main difference between the freshman of 2011 and the sophomore of 2014 is, instead, the leadership he gained when he stepped away from the gym and put the ball down, when Miller says he immersed himself in an attempt to “really just help people.”

“[I’ve had] a change in perspective,” he said. “I feel a lot more mature, a lot more comfortable playing, there’s an even more enhanced purpose to why I’m playing.”

With the start of the season right around the corner, Miller says he is back where he wants to be: steps away from the familiar red three-point arc on the Lavietes floor and ready to shoot that high-arcing jumper once more.

“I missed it—I missed it a lot,” Miller said. “I think [my mission] rekindled my fire and my hunger to come back and play.”

—Staff writer Juliet Spies-Gans can be reached at juliet.spiesgans@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @JulietSpiesGans.