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UNC Basketball: Former Tar Heel, UNC Greensboro coach ranked No. 1 by ESPN

By Blake Cockrum

WASHINGTON, DC - DECEMBER 22: Head coach Wes Miller of the UNC-Greensboro Spartans looks on during a college basketball game against the Georgetown Hoyas at the Verizon Center on December 22, 2016 in Washington, DC. The Hoyas won 78-56. (Photo by Mitchell Layton/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON, DC - DECEMBER 22: Head coach Wes Miller of the UNC-Greensboro Spartans looks on during a college basketball game against the Georgetown Hoyas at the Verizon Center on December 22, 2016 in Washington, DC. The Hoyas won 78-56. (Photo by Mitchell Layton/Getty Images) /
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Wes Miller, former UNC basketball player and current UNC Greensboro head coach, tops ESPN’s list of best college hoops coaches under the age of 40.

On Wednesday morning, ESPN released its list of the top 40 college basketball coaches under the age of 40, and former UNC sharpshooter Wes Miller took the top spot.

"“Three years after playing on a North Carolina team that captured the 2005 national title, Miller started his coaching career as an assistant at Elon in his mid-20s, and the No. 1 coach on our list hasn’t looked back,” ESPN’s Myron Medcalf writes. “After accepting the head-coaching job at UNC Greensboro as a 27-year-old, Miller emerged as one of the top young coaches in college basketball. Since the start of the 2016-17 season, Miller has amassed 104 wins in a stretch that includes the program’s first NCAA tournament appearance in 17 years (2018).”"

A member of the Tar Heels’ 2005 squad that won 33 games and brought Roy Williams the first of three national championships, Miller has been coaching since 2008 when he was an assistant at Elon. He took an assistant coaching position at High Point the following year, and then spent one season as an assistant at UNC Greensboro before taking over the Spartans’ head coaching role.

Since taking over the UNCG program in 2011, Miller has put together a record of 164-126 in nine seasons. That includes no less than 23 victories in each of the last four seasons, and three first-place finishes in the Southern Conference. His team also took home the SoCon Tournament championship trophy in 2018, something the program hadn’t done in 17 years.

Miller was a top candidate last month when Wake Forest fired Danny Manning, and began its search for a new head coach. It was former East Tennessee State head coach Steve Forbes that was ultimately hired for the job, but Miller was on the cusp of taking over his first Power 5 coaching job. That’s obviously due to Miller’s tremendous success over the past decade, and the respect that he’s garnered from coaches and athletic directors throughout the college basketball landscape. It’s also something that’s going to make it very difficult for UNCG to keep Miller on staff as he continues to get attention from larger programs that are looking to make a change at head coach.

For now, though, Miller remains one of college basketball’s top head coaches outside of the Power 5 conferences, and quite possibly, the best under 40.

Next. UNC target Harrison Ingram names top 10 schools. dark

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