By Tom Ganser
Correspondent
At the Whitewater Rotary Club meeting Tuesday, Rotarian Jerry Theune introduced his invited speaker, Pat Miller, by sharing several of the outcomes of Miller’s tenure as head coach of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater Men’s Basketball Program since the 2001-02 season.
Some of the facts under Miller’s watch, thus far include: 291 wins to 83 loses, five conference championships, three conference tourney titles, seven NCAA Division III appearances, two NCAA national titles (2012 and 2014) and his selection as conference coach of the year four times.
Theune’s introduction provided a great lead for Miller who said, “People know about our success. They know about our outcomes,” and yet, Miller said, he finds it surprising that no one ever asks how the team gets to that point or what it is that creates championships.
“At Whitewater we’ve had obviously an unbelievable year. We’ve had unbelievable success,” Miller said. “It’s been amazing to me how it’s changed with the trifecta and just the momentum that we’ve built. Winning national championships in the past were things that built momentum and brought recognition, but this trifecta thing is like nothing I’ve ever seen.”
The trifecta Miller was speaking of happened last year when, for the first time in NCAA history, three teams (men’s basketball, baseball and football) from the same school won the national championship games.
Miller said the challenge in an athletic program is figuring out how to “create a great process in an outcome oriented business because your process is what is going to define you even though the perception that will define you are your outcomes.”
As a first-year head coach, Miller said he recognized the great success of the men’s basketball program, including a culture of toughness and winning, but “didn’t feel like we had a complete culture to sustain and build upon our success.”
Together with his assistant coach, Miller told the Rotary club he aimed to come up with something specific and not at all ambiguous “to teach academic success, social success, professional growth as well as basketball.”
The result was creating five “pillars” for the program that players will understand and appreciate, and carry with them when they graduate.
Collective responsibility: Athletes need to “become part of something bigger than yourself” and to understand “if you go out and have a problem, it just doesn’t affect you. It affects us as a team, it affects our athletic department, it affects our university,” Miller said.
Communication: Miller outlined three different aspects of communication: “logistical (being where you’re supposed to be and when you’re supposed to be there); implementation (how things are taught in the program, including the terms used, because we all have to be on the same page); and crisis (communication has to be proactive. You have to be prepared for every situation before it happens because if you’re not prepared and it happens, it’s not going to go well.)”
Discipline: Recognizing that there are many different definitions of discipline, Miller described the pillar of discipline as “doing what you’re supposed to do, when you’re supposed to do it, the way you’re supposed to do it. Period.”
Work ethic: Miller said work ethic is something people can absolutely control and it’s clearly “an avenue for people to improve where they’re at.” One of the jobs of a coach is to help student athletes to develop their capacity to work by getting them “out of their comfort zone, which we strive for every day, and it’s difficult,” he explained.
Toughness: “We define toughness as overcoming obstacles,” Miller said, avoiding excuses and just figuring out how to get something done. “We want innovation and creative thinking.”
The five pillars, Miller said, “Allows us the ability to teach across different disciplines. It gives them (student athletes) a comprehensive idea of what’s expected and what we want them to leave with.”
