With His Late Grandmother On His Mind, Duke Miles Had Signature Performance
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NASHVILLE—Nearly all the media had cleared out and Duke Miles sat there facing forward, stepping into vulnerability for a second. Miles had stepped into stardom in the hours prior as he went for a season-high 30 points in a Vanderbilt win over Tennessee, but the feelings inside him were too strong for him to let his off the bounce game be the story of the day.
Miles sat there in reflection at his locker in the front corner of Vanderbilt’s setup and gave a number of quotes that will be remembered for a long time around this place. Miles says he’ll remember this one forever, too. His late grandmother Terry Martin–who he says he’s dedicating the season to–would, too.
Perhaps she still had a role in it despite her spring passing.
“I woke up this morning with a light on me and I think it was my grandma,” Miles told Vandy on SI. ”I felt a presence on me all today. And when I prayed this morning, I just felt everything was gonna go right.”
Miles says that if Martin was here, he wouldn’t be sitting in his locker conducting his final interview of the day. Only Martin could get Martin to bypass SEC rules and after a performance like he had on Friday, her eagerness to demonstratively give him a hug would have moved the needle enough for him to cut his open locker room time short.
The Vanderbilt guard said in the winter that "everything" about his grandmother made her special to him. “From the way she cared, to the way she loved, to the way she talked and motivated,” Martin became a “foundational” piece of Miles’ upbringing and basketball ascension. “The first thing” Martin ever taught Miles was that giving up isn’t an option and that if you start something then you have to finish it. The words have manifested themselves throughout Miles' day-to-day life and tumultuous college basketball career.
Miles said at the time that Martin is his “whole heart” and what he did on Friday evening at Bridgestone Arena–as Vanderbilt won the season series against Tennessee while he was the best player on the floor–didn’t deviate from his words. Martin was on his heart the whole way.
The Vanderbilt guard says that Martin would likely be screaming with joy if she was in the building on Friday. She was never one to hide her emotions while watching Miles play. He knows enough about her to know that she would be proud.
And she has plenty to be proud of.
Like an artist staring at his canvas with a vision for his best piece in mind, Duke Miles ripped around a ballscreen and squared up Jaylen Carey. In that moment, Miles was more like a fearless animal eyeing up his prey. When the approach is more reminiscent of hunting than getting by for the Vanderbilt guard, the result is all but a given.
In this case, it was. Miles turned the corner, put it between his legs and stepped back with Carey all but drifting away from him and his quick trigger putting the ball in the air before Carey could get out to the 3-point line. By the time the Tennessee big man landed, the fate of Miles’ shot was all but inevitable.
“Miles stepback 3,” ESPN play-by-play announcer Karl Ravech said on the broadcast, “Nailed it.”
Miles was the best artist on the floor on Friday, and for once this season he wasn’t among the best celebration artists on the floor. When the shot fell, Miles sprinted back with his arms by his side and the intention of doing more than what he’d just done written all over his face.
Perhaps there were more highly-touted players on the floor that had better odds of putting out a breakout game on Friday, but none were better than Miles. On a court that featured multiple future NBA players and a multitude of college players with more linear career paths, Miles was by far the best player on the floor.
He’s got the numbers to back that claim up, too.
The Vanderbilt guard went for a season-high 30 points and created a number of them by himself. Miles has always been able to score it, even as he’s worked to get back into rhythm after an injury kept him down for a few weeks, but he’s not always done what he did on Friday. The kicker behind his performance; he was remarkably efficient. Efficient enough for this to become his signature performance.
“Amazing, bro. Best game he’s played here in my opinion,” Vanderbilt wing Tyler Nickel said from the locker room, “Just was always calm, never got too high or too low. He kept the same intensity throughout the whole 40 minutes. He was hitting. When you’re hot, you’re hot. He was feeling it.”
It wasn’t as if Miles was taking easy looks every time down, but he started 9-for-9 from the field and finished the day with the game-sealing rebound after making 11 of his 14 field goal attempts. The heroic nature of Miles’ performance will be the thing remembered about it forever, but his remarkable consistency was the catalyst for this.
Expecting Miles to repeat this consistently isn’t all that realistic considering the nature of the beast he’s in the midst of, but Vanderbilt needs a version of Miles that it can rely on to go get a bucket when it needs one badly.
It feels as if it has him these days.
“He’s a bucket,” Vanderbilt big man Jalen Washington told Vandy on SI. “He gets buckets and that was huge for us today. He was firing on all cylinders, and I love to see him kill.”
"Just the entire game, big shots, big moments," Vanderbilt coach Mark Byington said in regard to Miles. "For Duke to have a big night, that's not surprising for anybody in our locker room.”
There was no greater example of Miles taking the game into his own hands and killing than perhaps Vanderbilt’s most important possession of Friday’s game. Tennessee had just cut it to three and had the crowd behind it with just over a minute and a half to play as Miles went into a ballscreen.
As Miles caught the switch, drove it on Tennessee big man Felix Okpara and went up off two feet for a finish to all but seal this thing as a signature win for Vanderbilt basketball. As Miles walked into the locker room postgame, he appeared to be drained. That was okay, though, that’s what Martin would want.
“I played my hardest,” Miles said, “I played my heart out.”
_(1)-b3e453dfe426b2dd4b83a12540ebdb37.jpeg "Joey Dwyer")
Joey Dwyer is the lead writer on Vanderbilt Commodores On SI. He found his first love in college sports at nearby Lipscomb University and decided to make a career of telling its best stories. He got his start doing a Notre Dame basketball podcast from his basement as a 14-year-old during COVID and has since aimed to make that 14-year-old proud. Dwyer has covered Vanderbilt sports for three years and previously worked for 247 Sports and Rivals. He contributes to Seth Davis' Hoops HQ, Basket Under Review and Mainstreet Nashville.
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