The RoundHouse | 3/23/2023 7:10:00 PM

By Paul Suellentrop
 
The Chick-fil-A on Holcombe Blvd. is 2.4 miles from Tudor Fieldhouse, home of the Rice University basketball program in Houston.
 
In 2002, Paul Mills didn't make any money as a volunteer video coordinator for the Owls. Assistant coach Marty Gross took him to Chick-fil-A every day.
 
"We would drive over there, have lunch, visit, talk hoops, whatever," said Gross, an assistant coach at Wichita State from 2007-2011. "You talk about taking a chance. This guy had a high school job, getting paid. He gave it up to volunteer at Rice."
 
From those lunches and Mills' one season with the Owls, a friendship formed. Gross, now director of operations at Missouri State, watched as Mills' career ascended. Mills worked at Baylor under coach Scott Drew from 2003-2017 and moved to Oral Roberts as head coach for six seasons.
 
On Wednesday, Wichita State announced Mills as its head coach.
 
"Marty looked out for me," Mills said Thursday after his introductory celebration and news conference. "My goal was to beat Marty Gross to the office. He was always there at 6 a.m. I would be there at 5:30."
 
In December, Missouri State played at Oral Roberts. During shootaround the morning of the game, one of Mills' assistants handed Gross an envelope with 20-plus years of memories and gratitude inside. It contained a thank you note and $100 gift card to Chick-fil-A.
 
"For a guy to remember people that have helped him along the way, that's pretty special," Gross said. "An attitude of gratitude. Humility. I've got to tell you, there's a lot of coaches who don't have either one of those. He does. That's why he's going to be successful at Wichita State."
 
When a coach changes jobs, the stories fly. The anecdotes and background checks on Mills, 50, come back to the same places – people and basketball.
 
"I'm about people," he said. "My gift is helping. I do not get a rebound. I will not make a free throw."
 
Fans are learning more about that style as the Scott Drew-Baylor coaching tree grows in prominence.
 
 

"The people here, the passionate fanbase… made this a no-brainer.

I will represent you well." - @CoachMills pic.twitter.com/kkkIdvInAM

— Go Shockers (@GoShockers) March 23, 2023

"I will prioritize these players over everything else that I do," Mills said. "To be able to help these guys achieve their dreams is the goal."
 
Jerome Tang's Kansas State team is in the Elite Eight. Grant McCasland coaches North Texas in an NIT semifinal on Tuesday. Both are former Drew assistants. Drew, of course, won an NCAA title in 2021 after rebuilding a deeply damaged program at Baylor. Those coaches build relationships, talk about faith, strive to be servant-leaders and, as they often say, pour themselves into the people on and around their team.
 
"He has a great ability to be with people and he is genuine," said Matthew Driscoll, who worked at Baylor with Mills and is now coach at North Florida. "You would bring a kid to campus at Baylor, and they would fall in love with Paul Mills."
 
Mills' job at Wichita State is to reignite the love affair between fans and the basketball program. He spoke Thursday afternoon at Koch Arena and convinced them he wants the success that defined the past 20 seasons.
 
"People are used to winning around here," he told Mike Kennedy, radio voice of the Shockers, in an interview earlier in the day. "You're absolutely OK with that. I hate losing more than I like winning, because winning is what you anticipate. Winning is what you work to do and expect."
 
Mills' work as a basketball coach started in high school in Houston. When he targeted college basketball, he went to Rice and did whatever coach Willis Wilson and the assistants needed. He worked their camps. He painted 1,472 steps in the arena to make $2,000. If a player needed help, Mills helped.
 
"As a young assistant, I was eager and ready to do whatever I had to do," said Todd Smith, an assistant coach at Rice from 1996-2007. "But there always came those chores and jobs that maybe I didn't want to do – Paul would be the first to do them. If a kid needed a ride to a town five hours away, Paul would be the first to step up and say, 'I got it coach.' He knew that person, who was in our life and in our program, needed help. That's how he approaches all his student-athletes."
 
On Thursday, Mills talked about hard work and being passionate about getting things right. At Rice, he shared an office with Smith. After a week, Smith handed Mills the key.
 
"He was always there," said Smith, now athletic director at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. "I never beat him in. And he was always there when I left at night, whether it was to help student-athletes or watch video or whatever. I gave him my key and I didn't have to worry about it for an entire year."
 
Mills went from Rice to Baylor as coordinator of operations before becoming an assistant coach in 2009. While operations isn't a recruiting position, Driscoll saw Mills' skills with people blossom.
 
When coaches brought recruits to campus, Mills showed them around campus and answered questions. He connected with them, their families, and their coaches with his knowledge of basketball shoes, music, games and social media.
 
"You bring a kid to campus at Baylor, and they would fall in love with Paul Mills," Driscoll said. "And Paul Mills wasn't even on the road recruiting. He does such a great job, so in tune with what they're in tune with."
 
At ORU, he recruited the type of players who took the Golden Eagles to the NCAA's Sweet 16 in 2021, the program's first NCAA appearance since 2008 and its first wins since 1974. ORU went 30-5 this season, 18-0 in the Summit League, and lost to Duke in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
 
"He recruits kids that reflect his values and work ethic," Gross said. "High character kids that work, accept coaching and buy into high expectations."
 
On Thursday, Mills flew into Wichita in the early afternoon. He walked into Koch Arena with his family (wife Wendy Scott-Mills and daughters Audrey and Abbey) around 1:30 for a photo shoot. He thanked the people who set it up, saying "I know all this stuff doesn't just happen."
 
He checked out the arena, set up for his introduction to the fans. He toured the basketball offices and other athletic and academic facilities, along with assistant coach Kenton Paulino and Iain Laymon, director of player development. He sat down with Kennedy for an interview, complimented his play-by-play work and asked about Kennedy's 43-year history with the Shockers.
 
Throughout the afternoon, he showed his knowledge of Shocker history, name-dropping Xavier McDaniel, the 2013 Final Four and the 2014 perfect regular season. He smiled as he talked about coaching ORU three times in Koch Arena against a loud bunch of fans and remembered that the Shockers beat Baylor in 2017 and 2018.
 
"I understand the decibels," he said.
 
He met with the Shockers, who attended the introduction in matching gray polo shirts. Around 3:30 p.m., he joined university president Rick Muma and athletic director Kevin Saal to walk up the Koch Arena tunnel to meet the fans.
 
"Good people make good players," he told Kennedy, and revealed that watching the movie "Hoosiers" is part of his pregame routine. The movie, he said, is about making a community proud of a basketball team.
 
On Thursday, the cameras rolled as Mills started his own version of chasing that goal at Wichita State.
 
Paul Suellentrop writes about Wichita State athletics for university Strategic Communications. Story suggestion? Contact him at paul.suellentrop@wichita.edu.