Column: Kiyomi McMiller’s advisors are doing her no favors

Drama in the Rutgers women’s basketball program has blown up into a national story.

Kiyomi McMiller handles the ball during Rutgers’ game against FDU on Dec. 11, 2024. (Photo courtesy of Rutgers Athletics)

I’ve been following the Kiyomi McMiller story since Sunday evening, when she revealed online that she wouldn’t play against USC, but on Monday the greater college basketball community caught wind of what was happening in Piscataway.

An NJ.com story suggested that 1) McMiller was being disciplined for a locker room altercation, and 2) that she may want to leave Rutgers now. It also introduced a character that made this thing much less straightforward than player versus coach.

But I’ll get to that in a moment. First, the facts as we know them:

Several hours before Rutgers was set to host the Trojans, McMiller posted the following to Instagram:

“I would Like to apologize to my fans. I will not be playing in today’s game vs USC, which is #4 in the country. This decision was made by my Head Coach Coquese Washington. Thank you for your continued support.”

Rutgers had the slightest of slight chances to compete with USC if McMiller were going up against JuJu Watkins. The Scarlet Knights were steamrolled 92-42 without her. Later that night McMiller reposted messages from her fans to her Instagram story, including one that had the caption “Transfer Portal Immediately” before she took it down.

Meanwhile, Washington told reporters “we’re gonna keep it internal” when asked why McMiller didn’t play. But I want to include the rest of the coach’s answer in full, because I haven’t seen that done elsewhere.

“I read, somebody sent me, I don’t know, a post that (Kansas State men’s coach Jerome Tang was) at one of his recent press conferences, and he talked about his faith and how he sees coaching as a ministry, and what he does in terms of leading and connecting with the young men on his team springs from his perception and his understanding that what he does is a ministry.

“For me, coaching is not just about what happens on the court on game day. It’s about how we impact these young women that are in our program in all aspects, from their character to their growth into womanhood, into their decision-making. And so I see my role as a coach as being more than X’s and O’s and wins and losses but how am I impacting the young women in my care. That’s always gonna be first and foremost in the decision-making that we do that goes into this program. It’s about defining character, growing young people.

“And so as we deal with different circumstances and situations, for me the first thing is how are we impacting these young people? How am I using my position and my role as head coach to grow teenagers into young women? And so what we’re doing here, we’re going to keep the specifics and everything internal, but I’ll never turn down an opportunity and turn down this position – use this position to do anything other than have an impact on young women’s lives.”

Washington never said McMiller was suspended, though “suspension” is what NJ.com is running with and seems to be more accurate than “benching.” We don’t know whether McMiller was meant to be out for one game or longer. Washington only addressed it one more time in that presser.

“Things happen in programs,” she said. “You have to sometimes make decisions and you have to, as a team, as a program, live with the consequences of things that happen. We go out there today and we play and we give our best effort and we’ll come back tomorrow and regroup and get ready for Minnesota.”

Since Washington is facing perhaps more criticism than McMiller at this juncture, I wanted that fully laid out before we continue below the paywall.