How Molly Miller reloaded Arizona State women's basketball - USA Today

KANSAS CITY, MO — Weeks before this women’s college basketball season started, Molly Miller was glowing with confidence, walking around Big 12 Media Day with a smile and a swagger.

And why wouldn’t she be? All Miller did last year in her first season as the head coach of the Arizona State Sun Devils was what she had done at every stop before this one in Tempe: She won.

Following a six-year drought, Miller got the Sun Devils back into the NCAA Tournament last season. They won 24 games, their most in a single season in a decade.

When Miller took the job in April 2025 after five incredibly successful seasons at Grand Canyon, she rebuilt the Sun Devils through the transfer portal. She pulled in players from Penn State, UNLV, Ole Miss, Pitt, LSU and Northwest Florida State College. What mattered more than their shot-making abilities or background was that they believed in Miller and what she was trying to accomplish as a first-year head coach in the Big 12.

The outcome was a team that opened the season with a 15-game winning streak, and one that was strong on defense, ranking 29th nationally in total turnovers forced.

“Those kids that took a chance on basically hope and a vision — it was really cool to see. And now we've set the standard, and we've set the floor, and we set the expectation,” Miller told USA TODAY Sports. “We had a team that was committed to each other, that was committed to the brand, and the byproduct of that ended up being winning. That was really special to get the right people in place at the right time to kind of catapult us to this second year.”

Now, it’s Year Two for Miller at the helm of the Sun Devils. After shocking opponents and fans around the country last year with immediate success, the expectations are higher.

But for Miller, they always have been.

“Yeah, they haven't changed for that internal locker room,” Miller said. “We might have surprised some outsiders, but I think internally we had goals: We wanted to win, we wanted to be competitive, we wanted to make it to the tournament. So, that wasn't surprising to the group that believed from Day One.”

Miller retained a handful of key contributors from last year’s roster, but went about reloading this roster the same way she built it — through the transfer portal.

What Miller discovered when the portal opened was something that she already believed: Arizona State has become a destination school for players looking for a change.

“The best ability for coaches is adaptability. You really have to figure out how to adapt to the market, the environment. We've leaned into that, and that's why Arizona State's becoming a school of choice,” Miller said. “Our kids are happy, our culture is great and we work hard on the court — and we're winning. The fan base is involved, and the momentum of the athletic department is going up, up, up.”

Before the portal even officially opened, Miller secured the commitment of former Tennessee standout Ruby Whitehorn, a former five-star recruit and McDonald’s All-American who averaged 11.6 points, 4.1 rebounds and 1.7 assists per game while shooting 46.3% from the floor in the 2024-25 season for the Lady Vols.

Whitehorn was dismissed by Tennessee before last season began, but Miller had someone in-house who knew the talented guard well. Before joining the Sun Devils’ staff, assistant coach Daniel Barber had been at Clemson, where Whitehorn spent her freshman and sophomore seasons. Barber, Miller says, spoke not just about Whitehorn’s skills on the basketball court, but also her heart.

“From the get-go, I knew it was a system fit, and that has to be important, right? But we're not going to recruit kids just because they can play in the system. We're going to recruit good character kids,” Miller said. “She's a hungry kid. To have her believe in us — I think we reciprocated that and we believed in her. That's going to be the foundation for a really special year for her.”

The second pickup for Arizona State that jumped off the page was landing Rashunda Jones from Michigan State. A 5-foot-8 guard, Jones was an All-Freshman selection in the Big Ten two years ago, and last season made the conference’s All-Defense team while playing for the Spartans.

When the name of the South Bend, Indiana, native popped up in the portal in April, Miller was immediately intrigued. Not only is Jones heralded for her defensive prowess, but she averaged 11.7 points and 3.2 assists per game last season for Michigan State, which advanced to the second round of the NCAA Tournament.

At Arizona State, she’ll be Miller’s eyes, ears and voice on the court.

“She brings leadership. She's very vocal, and she didn't shy away from that from the beginning,” Miller said. “Me and her are (in) lockstep, which I really like. She can be really honest with me and I can coach her. I can be really honest with her, and she has to be an extension of me as a point guard. She's kind of my mouthpiece on the court and she's really bought into that. And we clicked from the very beginning. So we've got a really strong, solid relationship from a coach-player perspective.”

Other additions for the Sun Devils include the MAC’s leader in field goal percentage, Ayanna-Sarai Darrington, MAC Player of the Year Madi Morson, and Quinnipiac sharpshooter Ella Ryan, who shot 41.1% from 3-point land as a freshman last year.

The new pieces are meshing well together so far. Arizona State is 2-0 with comfortable wins over Jackson State and Northern Arizona. Whitehorn tallied 25 points on 11-of-13 shooting to go along with 10 rebounds versus Northern Arizona, while Jones is averaging 10.5 points and 6 assists per game across her first two outings as a Sun Devil.

“We're a little bit more athletic. We filled some voids with our 3-point shooting. That was something that we needed to solve for,” Miller said. “That's a really dangerous group. I think we can play a little bit more freely this year because we do have so many threats on the court at once. You can't just scout for one or two players.”

Throughout her coaching career, winning has simply just been what the 41-year-old Miller does.

At Division II Drury University — her alma mater in Springfield, Missouri — she won 91.4% of her games across six seasons, winning the conference in five of those seasons and going to the Final Four in 2019. At Grand Canyon, she never had a losing season in five years and led the Lopes on a historic campaign in the 2024-25 season, going 32-5 overall and 16-0 in WAC play, winning the conference tournament and guiding the program to its first March Madness appearance.

A common phrase amongst her team at Arizona State this season is “perfect for us.”

It's a shorter way of saying, whatever the circumstances are, anytime, anywhere, the bar for excellence will always remain high for the Sun Devils. Some players are different, but the standard is the same. In March, the Sun Devils expect to be dancing.

Said Miller: “If you have a team that's willing to buy in, you can do anything.”