Shake Milton 3-pointers are nothing new – they’re expected, really.
A fervent in-game display of excitement, though, is far from normal with him.
Yet even SMU’s calmest, collected player couldn’t contain himself after drilling his second 3-pointer in less than a minute to give SMU a 32-22 lead late in the first half vs. Houston on Saturday. He stuck the landing and held his release as he watched the shot go down. He turned around, let out a yell and put up three fingers in each of his hands by his waist.
“I was just feeling it, and feeling the crowd’s energy,” Milton said. “It was just a combination of everything.”
A combination of everything is a fitting way to describe how SMU reached its 17-4 record. Anyone, in any game, can be the one to score a lot of points, pull down double-digit rebounds, dish out a lot of assists or come up with some stops on defense. The roles can change within a game, from game to game or week to week. No one has a specific role, because everyone has every role. SMU is truly everyone’s team.
“We’re just a team full of versatile guys,” Milton said.
With a seven-man rotation, versatility is a necessity. In SMU’s last four games, three different players were the leading scorer. Four SMU players have at least one double-double this season, four shoot 40 percent or better from 3-point range, four have a game with at least seven assists and four have made the AAC’s weekly honor roll. Each of Milton, Jarrey Foster, Sterling Brown, Ben Moore and Semi Ojeleye has been SMU’s leading scorer in at least one game this season. Each has scored 19 or more points in a game this season.
Last week, Milton took his turn as the scorer – relative to his season averages, at least. He is, after all, the team’s second-leading scorer and has only four games this season in which he didn’t score 10 points. But his output in SMU’s wins vs. Houston and Connecticut reached a new level. He scored 50 total points, with a career-high 27 (including 6-of-8 shooting on 3-pointers) Saturday against the Cougars. Before those two games, he had not scored 20 points in a game this season.
In all the scoring, Milton couldn’t give up his other roles either. He had five rebounds in each game, 11 total assists and just two turnovers. He sat out only five minutes between the two games.
“From the start, I’ve had total confidence in him from day one, at any position we put him in and in any role that we put him in,” SMU head coach Tim Jankovich said. “It just so happened he was amazing in a scoring way this week.”
Milton started his sophomore season as the defined point guard, the supposed heir to Nic Moore. Even now, with his position de-emphasized and morphed into an interchangeable role like everyone else, he has proven indispensible and unforgettable for SMU. He has scored double figures in all but two of SMU’s wins. In one of those two, he had eight assists.
“I’m just becoming comfortable,” Milton said. “Jank trusts me. I just try to get the guys the ball where they need it. If it’s my turn to shoot, I’ll shoot with full confidence.”
Jankovich’s trust in Milton is rooted not in his scoring or passing ability, but in his poise and basketball smarts. They are traits he noticed when he watched Milton play in high school in Owasso, Okla., a suburb of Tulsa.
“Even in high school, he played like he’d been in college for several years,” Jankovich said. “He was already in that poised, confident, ‘I-got-this’ mode.”
When SMU needed Milton to play 30 minutes per game as a freshman, he rarely looked overmatched, too slow or out-of-sorts mentally. Many freshman guards start their college careers trying to go too fast, physically and mentally. Milton already had developed the ability to play fast while thinking slow. Now, Jankovich – who prefers to call most of his team’s offensive plays – admitted he might let Milton call some on his own.
“Emotional control is a talent. He has it,” Jankovich said. “He’s confident and calm. It’s hard to get him rattled, but it’s hard to get him really excited.”
But as Milton showed Saturday, it’s not impossible.
