The ritual is always the same.

It doesn't matter if it's inside Tiger Coliseum at Lancaster High School, Ed and Rae Schollmaier Arena or even the acclaimed Allen Fieldhouse.

With his head down and soulful rap artist Rod Wave playing in his headphones, Mike Miles is getting ready for his first-ever road appearance against the Kansas Jayhawks. 

He’s chewing Skittles, the Wild Berry pack, not original.

Miles first puts on his left shoe. 

Then, his right.

It’s been that way since ninth grade. In one of his first high school games, he randomly chose to go left sock and shoe first and then scored 34 points. He’s done it ever since.

The music changes sometimes. Wave is Miles’ favorite artist, but Alabama native NoCap or rap phenoms like Drake and NBA Youngboy are also part of the pregame playlist.

Through the years, the teams and leagues have changed but not the ritual. It was left shoe, right shoe during the summers he competed with the Texas Titans, one of the top AAU (Amateur Athletic Union) teams in Texas. 

He started munching Skittles his junior year at Lancaster, where he would lead the Tigers on a state title run a year later.

The music played on at TCU, where he quickly became one of the top freshmen in the Big 12. 

This past summer, he took his pregame routine to Latvia, where he helped the USA Basketball U19 World Cup team win a gold medal.

Miles swears the only time he may have forgotten to do the routine was when he played Kansas for the first time on Jan. 5, 2021.

That night, he went 0-for-8 from the floor with zero points in 28 minutes of play.

At one point, a fan in Schollmaier Arena yelled, “Wake up, Miles!”

Three weeks later, in his Allen Fieldhouse debut, Miles was wide awake.

He made 6 of his 12 shots for a game-high 18 points, outscoring future All-Big 12 Jayhawks David McCormack and Marcus Garrett.

TCU lost 59-51, but Miles’ impressive performance had given the Frogs a chance in what could have been a blowout for Kansas.

Fearless leader

After averaging 13.6 points, 3.5 rebounds, and 3.1 assists per game, Miles was named to the All-Big 12 freshman team, joining long-time friends Cade Cunningham (Oklahoma State) and Greg Brown (Texas).

To some, Miles' immediate impact was a surprise.

"When Mike Miles committed to TCU, we all knew he was an incredibly talented player, but no one thought he would do what he did this past season," TCU guard Francisco Farabello said.

To the Lancaster native, though, it was the start he always envisioned for himself.

“I know what I can do on the court, and a lot of people were surprised because I wasn’t highly ranked or whatever,” Miles said.

This summer, Cunningham and Brown moved on to the NBA, but Miles stayed at TCU to try and put basketball on the map in Fort Worth.

A native of the area, his goal remained the same one it was in his commitment video over two years ago.

"I’ve decided to stay home and put on for the city that made me," Miles said.

A 12-14 finish following Miles' rookie season meant it was his top priority to punch a ticket to the Big Dance during his sophomore campaign, though TCU had been to the NCAA tournament just once in the previous 23 years.

To Miles, though, that meant more than working on his own game. It meant putting a LeBron James-esque effort into recruiting talent to join him while also building chemistry on a squad ready to shock the Big 12 in a bounce-back 2021-2022 season.

“I feel like me and TCU was a match made in heaven, really,” Miles said. “We’re both underrated. No one really looks at us.”

All eyes on me

The Miles family moved 10 minutes southwest from their home in Highland Hills to Lancaster, where Miles was a phenom at Lancaster High School.

A four-year starter, he had an offer from TCU by December of his first year. Corey Barker, an assistant on Jamie Dixon’s staff at the time, extended the offer to Miles after a strong performance against Huntington Prep.

Two months later, Oklahoma State came calling. LSU, Houston, SMU and Old Dominion also took notice before he started his junior season.

Miles led Lancaster to the regional finals as a sophomore. The Tigers fell a game short of making state, losing on a buzzer beater.

As a junior, Miles led Lancaster to a perfect 12-0 record in district play (31-3 overall), earning first-team all-state and district MVP honors on 18.0 points, 4.5 assists and 2.3 steals per game.

After Lancaster fell in the regional playoffs yet again, Miles vowed to lead his team to state. 

“If we don’t go to state this year, it’s on me,” Miles wrote on Twitter.

Mickey said Lancaster fostered a win-at-all-costs mentality in Miles.

“Going to Lancaster with coach Ferrin Douglas brought out something of Mike that I’ve never seen, and I’ve been watching him forever, which was his toughness,” Mickey said. “He never wanted to lose.”

Douglas echoed this sentiment, emphasizing the impact that Miles’ leadership had on the Tigers during his senior year.

“Mike is/was a natural leader. [He] didn’t have to say too much,” Douglas said. “His play led the way. His teammates really enjoyed playing with him."

At the start of his senior year, Miles had named his top five schools: TCU, Oklahoma State, Auburn, Butler and North Texas.

While TCU had been Miles’ first offer, many predicted him to choose Oklahoma State, as his best friend and AAU teammate, Cade Cunningham, was expected to go there. 

Mickey suggested he visit some of the other schools, specifically LSU and Butler, to test the waters.

Through it all, Miles remained focused on TCU, the school that wanted him first.

“I just felt like I had to go on my own,” Miles said. “I love Cade [Cunningham]. That’s my best friend, but I felt like I had to go on my own because I’d been playing with him for so long.” 

“Mike kind of wanted to go his own path,” Mickey said. “He wanted to make his own way because he would always be seen kind of like when you have an older brother: ‘that’s such and such’s brother.’ He would always be seen as ‘Cade’s best friend,’ and he just wanted to make his own path.”

Miles committed and signed his letter of intent to TCU on Dec. 22, 2019.

He was ranked the No. 8 overall player in Texas at that time and joined four-stars Terren Frank and Eddie Lampkin Jr. in the Frogs’ small but dangerous 2020-2021 recruiting class.

“I had a lot of options to go play basketball, but I’ve decided to stay home and put on for the city that made me,” Miles said in his commitment video. “Go Frogs.”

Unfinished business

While his junior season was outstanding, Miles’ senior year was unbelievable: he dropped 21.4 points, 4 rebounds, 4 assists and 3 steals per game.  The Tigers had the best record in 5A at 36-1.

As the state playoffs were approaching, DFW’s Inside High School Sports released a limited edition Mike Miles bobblehead at a Lancaster home game.

Two weeks later, on Feb. 5, 2020, Miles hit the 2,000-point milestone in his career with the orange and black. Then, he was named to the 2019-2020 All-VYPE DFW Public School Boys Basketball Team, joining current teammate Micah Peavy, who was a senior at rival Duncanville High. 

When the two had met on the court, Miles outshined Peavy, scoring a game-high 32 points in a Lancaster victory.

As individual accolades continued to pour in for Miles, so did the wins for Lancaster. After finishing a perfect 12-0 in district, the Tigers tore through their first four playoff opponents, winning by an average margin of just under 35 points.

In their second victory, Miles had dropped 25 points in a 40-point rout of Texarkana’s Texas High School.

Finally, only a matchup with Dallas’ Justin F. Kimball High School stood between Miles and fulfilling his promise. This time, there would be no last-second defeat.

Miles popped off for 24 points, combining for 55 with now-Texas A&M guard Wade Taylor IV, to help the Tigers cruise past Kimball and reach state for the first time since 2016.

“It’s the best feeling in my entire life,” Miles said to the media postgame. “The last two years, we haven’t been able to get out of here, so just to finally get out of here my senior year and go to state – it feels good.”

But that dream, like much of 2020, was put on lockdown as the COVID-19 pandemic shut down sports around the world.

Miles was crushed.

“It just traumatized him I think,” Mickey said. “I would honestly say that.”

Instead, each of the four state teams was awarded a share in the 2020 Texas 5A State Title.

Over the following months, Miles was named the Texas Association of Basketball Coaches 5A Player of the Year, the USA Today Boys Basketball Player of the Year in Dallas and the SportsDay High School Boys Basketball Player of the Year by the Dallas Morning News.

For the title of top player in Dallas, he beat out Peavy and another current Frog – JaKobe Coles of Denton’s Guyer High School.

To this day, the three still argue about who had the best high school career.

A new chapter

Mike Miles stepped onto the campus of TCU on July 1, 2020, sporting a simple, black “Champion” shirt, his signature wide grin and a beard that had filled out during quarantine. 

The first step? Miles had to get back into basketball shape after spending the previous four months at home.

“I came in overweight because of quarantine,” he said. “My body fat was too high. I’m not going to tell you how much I weighed, but I got it down.”

It was far from the transition from high school to college that he had imagined, but that did not change the way Miles felt about starting his time in Fort Worth. 

Things were anything but easy for Miles and the Frogs right away, though. While every team around the country felt the effects of COVID-19, TCU saw “close to 100 practices” affected by contact tracing guidelines, said head coach Jamie Dixon.

It wasn’t even confirmed the NCAA basketball season would take place until mid-September.

Regardless, his first career college game made it pretty clear his time at TCU was going to be special.

With star guard R.J. Nembhard out, Miles took charge in TCU’s season opener. He made his first four shots for 8 first-half points. He finished the game tied for a game-high 13 points to go with five assists and three steals. The Frogs bested Houston Baptist 69-45. 

“Shoutout Mike Miles,” redshirt junior forward Chuck O’Bannon said postgame. “That boy can hoop.”

One game into his college career, and Miles already had the respect of one of his most experienced teammates.

Three days later, he delivered again, scoring 12 points in TCU’s 70-65 win over Tulsa.

After Miles’ first three games, TCU was 3-0 and the guard had averaged 10.3 points, 3.3 rebounds and 2.7 assists per game, earning Big 12 Newcomer of the Week honors.

TCU would go on to start 4-0, but it was not until the team's fifth game and first loss that Miles became certain that he was ready to succeed at the college level.

The Frogs lost their game 82-78 to conference rival Oklahoma, but a career-high 21 points from Miles off the bench had put him on the radars of teams around the Big 12.

“That was the first game I’d say last year I was like, ‘This is hard, but I can play here and I belong here,’” he said.

In seven of the nine games TCU played before the start of 2021, Miles scored in double digits, reaching the 20-point mark three times.

Foes on court, brothers off

At that point, the Frogs had amassed seven wins, but none of them meant more to Miles than a one-point victory over Cade Cunningham and Oklahoma State on Dec. 16.

Miles and Cunningham first met as fourth graders playing for the Texas Titans. They played AAU ball together until the end of high school.

The two are as close as brothers.

In their first collegiate matchup, Miles totaled 16 points, and while Cunningham topped him with 17 of his own, a game-winning jumper by TCU guard R.J. Nembhard in the final seconds gave the Frogs the road victory.

On Feb. 3, the two faced off in Schollmaier Arena. Once again, Cunningham (19 points) outscored Miles by one (18 points), but TCU won on a game-winner, this one courtesy of TCU's Jaedon LeDee.

In that game, TCU fans had yelled “overrated” at Cunningham when he had zero points at the halftime break. After that, he erupted for 19 in the second half alone. Miles later admitted that his friend’s second-half return had made him “nervous” at the time.

Still, Miles is 2-0 against his closest friend and one of the top rookies in the NBA.

“It was good. You know, Cade ain’t never beat me, so I got that on him,” Miles said while laughing. “He’s never beaten me. He doesn’t talk to me after I beat him. He waits about two days, and then he calls me and says ‘good game’ and stuff. It was fun playing against him for sure.”

Growing up, they pushed each other, often getting so competitive in practices that those who did not know them personally may have assumed they disliked each other.

“They showed each other no slack and nor did they fear one another,” Mickey said. “It was really a great matchup, and if you could’ve been to those practices, oh my God, half the time, I thought they would fight.”

When Cunningham was drafted with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2021 NBA Draft by the Detroit Pistons, Miles said it was an emotional night for him.

“It was a great feeling. I feel like I got drafted, cried a little bit,” Miles said. “I texted Cade before the draft. He called me after the draft. It was just very emotional for me. I’ve been with Cade almost our entire [lives].”

Tough pills to swallow

Miles had plenty of noteworthy moments in his first-year campaign. 

He was Big 12 Newcomer of the Week for a second time after scoring 26 points against North Dakota State, hit a three-quarters court shot to give TCU a lead at halftime in its matchup with No. 2 Baylor and even scored a career-high 28 points in a 102-98 overtime loss to Missouri on the road.

But 2021 was a struggle. TCU dropped 12 of its 15 games in the new year to finish just 12-14 on the season.

During that stretch, the Frogs lost seven games by 15 or more points, including a 71-50 blowout loss to ninth-seeded Kansas State in the First Round of the Big 12 tournament.

For Miles, the season low was that zero point effort against Kansas. 

“That was definitely the lowest point for me, but everybody lifted me up,” Miles said of the first Kansas game. “I had to talk with a lot of coaches, my parents, my friends, so that was the lowest point, but it was a great learning experience. It helped me grow. I’m still young. I’m going to have those types of games, but it was the best learning experience.”

Mickey said following that game, Dixon reached out to Douglas to ask what to do in the event of a Mike Miles slump. Douglas assured Dixon that there was no such thing as a Mike Miles slump.

“He said, 'One thing about Mike,’ which is honestly, brutally true,” Mickey said, quoting Douglas, "'He does not like to be embarrassed. He was embarrassed on national TV. It won’t happen again.’”

Miles bounced back from that game, scoring in double figures nine times over the final 13 games, but TCU would go on to miss the postseason for a second-straight season.

When reflecting on his first year, Miles chalked TCU’s issues as a team up to chemistry problems, most of which were a result of missed practices at the hands of COVID-19.

“We never really clicked the whole season [2020-2021], and I feel like it showed,” Miles said.

Lead recruiter

Despite the individual success Miles saw in his freshman year, he knew that failing the NCAA tournament meant change needed to happen. After eight Frogs either entered the NBA draft or transfer portal, Miles focused his efforts on helping to rebuild TCU’s roster.

On April 13, Micah Peavy announced that he was transferring from Texas Tech and joining Miles in the purple and white. The two had never played together before, but they had known each other for years because of the Dallas-area connection.

“Micah [Peavy] said, ‘Why would I come to TCU?’ He [Miles] said, ‘You get to play with me,’” Mickey said. “That was his pitch. Micah was like, ‘Okay.’”

Miles knew Peavy as someone who had worked hard over the offseason to prepare.

“The one [teammate] that stood out most to me is probably Micah [Peavy],” Miles said. “He’s in the gym all day. I think he woke up at six in the morning and came and worked out. I don’t know how he did it. He definitely works the hardest, I think.”

Two months after Peavy, JaKobe Coles, who had played with Miles on the Titans in high school, announced that he was leaving Butler to join his friend in Fort Worth.

Both of Miles’ recruits have proved impactful already this season, with Peavy being TCU’s top on-ball defender and Coles providing a sizable (6’7”) scoring threat off the bench for the Frogs.

Going for gold

During the same offseason, Miles earned an invite to try out for USA Basketball’s U19 team, eventually making the team that would go represent the United States in Riga, Latvia.

A huge plus for Miles: His coach for the summer experience was Jamie Dixon.

“He trusted me, and I trust him,” Miles said before the 2021 season. “It was definitely good, and I feel like, going into this year, we have a better relationship.”

“Another month working side-by-side, the both of us, I think that was very valuable for us going forward. I think it's something that we really took advantage of," Dixon said.

Even playing with some of the nation’s top young talent, including future Gonzaga center Chet Holmgren, Miles stood out overseas. Behind his 9.1 points and 3.3 assists per game, the point guard led his country to a perfect 7-0 record.

In the gold medal game versus France, Miles had scored 11 points, 7 rebounds, 6 assists and 4 steals. With under two minutes to go, he stole the ball and burst ahead of the defense for a dunk on the opposite end, letting out an emphatic yell to signify that the game was indeed over.

“Not a lot of people can say they’re gold medalists,” Miles said. “It was good. It definitely gave me momentum coming into this year. It’s definitely something I’ll remember for the rest of my life, saying I’m a gold medalist, and I’m only 19.”

To Dixon, Miles’ biggest improvements over the offseason came in three areas: being a true point guard, getting in game shape and leading his teammates well.

“You saw it [Miles’ improvement] in USA Basketball, especially in the last two games, the championship game and in the semis when we needed him,” Dixon said at Big 12 media day in October. “That was a great sign for us going forward. It was a great experience for him.”