Upwardly mobile Miles trending on Twitter, in career

It was a bit past 5 p.m. Sunday, and Tim Miles was fashionably late to a cocktail party for the American Cancer Society's Coaches vs. Cancer benefit. Dr. J - the great Julius Erving - already was there, making a house call. Carrot Top had yet to arrive, but it would only be a matter of time.

Miles was wearing a blue checkered shirt and khakis, and those wire-rimmed glasses that make him look less like a basketball coach and more like an accountant. The trendy Hyde lounge at Bellagio was packed with movers and shakers and attractive women with bare shoulders.

And like in that Talking Heads song, Tim Miles might have asked himself, "Well, how did I get here?"

He had started his coaching career at Mayville State in North Dakota, which isn't as low as it gets on the college basketball food chain, though it's fairly close.

Then he went to Southwest Minnesota State, which I believe is where Craig T. Nelson coached football on TV.

Then he went to Colorado State, where in the 2007-08 season, he coached the Rams to zero victories against 16 defeats in the Mountain West Conference.

Last year, he coached about 16 guards and a 6-foot-5 inch battering ram from Arvada, Colo., named Pierce Hornung to eight wins in the Mountain West against six losses, an overall record of 20-12 and an NCAA Tournament berth.

And now Tim Miles is the coach at Nebraska.

He has gone from the shadow of Mount Rushmore, where he was born, to a coaching gig in the Big Ten, to hanging out with Dr. J and Carrot Top at trendy cocktail lounges where attractive women walk around with bare shoulders.

Somebody in the Black Hills needs to get out the hammer and chisel. They should carve Miles' mug into the granite hillside alongside those of Washington, Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt and Lincoln.

"If I was at the Big Ten Conference meeting five years ago, I would have been asking for that guy's autograph and that guy's autograph and that guy's autograph," Miles said. "It's a little surreal. But hopefully it's a feel-good story, too, that it doesn't matter who you are or where you're from, that (you) just go out and do a really good job where you're at and work really hard - and win.

"Then if your timing's good, good things might happen."

Miles, a boyish-looking 45, did all those things, and his timing was impeccable, because Nebraska was 4-14 in the Big Ten last year, 12-18 overall, and hasn't been to the NCAA Tournament since the team was called the Bugeaters.

(Actually, it has only been since 1998; it just seems a lot longer.)

He owes his rise in stature and tax bracket to a fine understanding of the X's and O's, to Pierce Hornung and all those guards, and, to a slightly lesser extent, to Walter Mondale and the Lorax. And to Twitter.

Long before Miles started winning basketball games up in Colorado's brew-pub country, he glibly became the Baron of One-Liners during conference calls and news conferences, by invoking names of people you'd never hear Bob Huggins, for one, or the humorless Steve Alford invoke.

After winless Colorado State upset Wyoming in the opening round of the Mountain West Conference Tournament during that forgettable 2007-08 season, Miles said he knew how Mondale felt after losing in a presidential landslide, when the senator carried only the District of Columbia and his home state of Minnesota, and Ronald Reagan carried the rest.

The last time I spoke to Miles, or at least listened to him speak, which is always better, was on a conference call before the MWC tourney in March. It was shaping up as a good week, he said, because the Rammies - as he affectionately called his players - still controlled their own fate as far as getting into the Big Dance. And also because he was taking his kids to see "The Lorax."

Miles embraced social media the way a teenage boy embraces his Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. Miles has become famous for posting Twitter messages when one least expects them.

Such as coming out of halftime.

The last time I checked, @CoachMiles had 14,571 Twitter followers. Steve Alford had 42. It should be noted this was Steve Alford, president of Alford Media Services in Coppell, Texas. Steve Alford in Albuquerque, N.M., has banned his players from using Twitter.

"What we tried to do is connect with our fans and, also, raise awareness about our program with fans that ordinarily wouldn't see us," Miles said. "For instance, in the Mountain West, we weren't a prolific presence on any major network. So, we thought, What could we do?"

After deciding against making Fritz Mondale a graduate assistant, he settled on Twitter.

"It wasn't just my idea, but I did embrace it," Miles said.

"It was always amazing to me that the different places we would go, people would be like, 'Hey, Coach Miles,' and it would kind of stun you a little bit. We tweeted at halftime of the right game, the win at Vegas (in 2011), and it went crazy. We worldwide-trended."

As for the Lorax, Miles said Dr. Seuss' go-to guy reminded him of his teams at Colorado State.

"It was like the Rams - pretty average, but it hooked up for a while."

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.