LOS ANGELES — Breaths flow and muscles unclench for just a few minutes this Friday night at the Galen Center, a timeout on the court pausing a breakneck bout between USC and Colorado on Feb. 23. The promotions team runs out courtside to pick a fan to man a prize wheel, and there is little deception when they announce the spinner: “Cheryl M.”
The crowd tunes back in immediately as Cheryl Miller pops up on the JumboTron, her energy pouring life into buzzing seats. This is who she was 40 years ago, dusting off the memories of the legend she built at USC, her fire as a Trojan so great that she joked concession-workers could hear her bellow after and-ones. This is who she is 40 years later, hamming it up for the hometown crowd, spinning the wheel and landing on one section in the lower basin to receive a prize. She holds her hand to her ear, mock-searching for the winning group, finding the row and motioning for them to stand.
“I think Cheryl,” former USC teammate Rhonda Windham said, “is finding some joy in life right now.”
Miller has found it, specifically, at Galen. As JuJu Watkins and the USC women’s basketball program have captivated Los Angeles, Miller has been their most radical supporter. An icon of the game has poured her soul back into USC, such an emotional barometer that senior McKenzie Forbes sought her out to mimic a chest-pound on the sideline after one 3-pointer against Colorado.
Sitting courtside for one game this winter, Miller saw Tina Thompson, a former legend herself, who Miller had coached at USC in the 1990s. She ran up to Thompson on the baseline at halftime, embracing her.
“What,” Miller recalled Thompson saying, “did they say to get you back?”
It wasn’t until then, really, that Miller realized how disconnected her relationship with USC had been.
For decades, Miller had felt disillusioned with the program’s direction. There was little support, Miller felt, from the university. The women’s team stagnated for years, never making it beyond the second round of the NCAA tournament, and so its greatest alumni recused herself. Why should I be connected, Miller thought, with a program that’s all talk and no investment?
“It’s funny,” Miller said, laughing. “It’s kinda like your first love, your first kiss. Things are going well, and then all of a sudden, you don’t know how the wheels fell off the wagon.”
“It’s back and forth, and they don’t want to call you, you don’t want to call them,” she continued. “And then you see them on the other side of the street – you’re not willing to cross the street.”
All these years later, Cheryl Miller has crossed the street.
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Before the season started, Windham visited one of USC’s practices in the fall, taking Coach Lindsay Gottlieb up on an open-door policy for the program’s alumni. Once Miller’s point guard and still USC’s all-time assists leader, Windham found herself in the middle of an end-of-practice huddle.
“You have a whole troop of aunts,” Windham told this 2023-24 team, “lined up to support you.”
When she first took the head coaching job at USC in 2021, it was “priority number one,” Gottlieb told the Southern California News Group’s Jim Alexander, to reconnect the USC women’s program with its past. Those roots had been long overgrown, buried under mediocrity. Alumni like herself and Miller, Windham said, didn’t feel like USC was pouring enough money into the women’s program for them to be truly competitive.
“It starts with marketing, it starts with branding, it starts with this constant change of coaches,” Windham said. “We didn’t feel the stability and the structure.”
When she heard USC was hiring Gottlieb away from an assistant coaching gig with the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers, Miller’s sentiment was still an eye-roll – no trust in USC to give her proper support. Good luck to her.
But Miller watched Gottlieb, in her hire, insist upon provisions for the program – control of the staff, of strength and conditioning, pitching her vision of running USC like a pro team.
“I mean, it’s the first time that a coach came to that program and demanded equality across the board,” Miller said.
After Gottlieb led a dramatic turnaround in 2022-23, streaking back to the NCAA tournament, Miller agreed to come to a couple of games in the fall. But Windham prodded Miller for more, sensing an opportunity for this particular team – with Gottlieb at the helm, with much-hyped freshman Watkins entering the fold, to “unite” the program’s alumni. And she wanted Miller, most of all, to be a part of it.
“It’s not just you coming to the games,” Windham told her, Miller recalled. “They need you at the games. They need to see you.”
So Miller bought four courtside season tickets.
“Best purchase I’ve ever made,” Miller said.
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After a victory over Arizona on Feb. 12, senior Kayla Padilla received a warm embrace from Miller, beaming wide when asked about it postgame.
“It’s unreal to think – to have these moments with the GOAT of college basketball,” Padilla said.
As seventh-ranked USC has streaked to a 21-5 record and national prominence, Miller has become in many ways a physical part of this team itself. And as Watkins continues to break Miller’s program records, Gottlieb has mused multiple times how the freshman’s brilliant season has, in a sense, re-contextualized Miller’s past greatness into the present.
“The attention that JuJu has gotten, to me and the team, actually shines the light on Cheryl the way that it should be,” Gottlieb said after the win against Colorado. “Right, like, she’s breaking these records, and then we get to say – ‘Hey, by the way, Cheryl’s the greatest of all time.’”
Miller, frankly, could care less about that. But the present colliding with the past has still brought her joy. She’s gotten to reconnect with former players like Erica Jackson and Tammy Story; shared the moment with former teammates like Windham and Yolanda Fletcher. They have all come, part of Windham’s Troop of Aunts, basking in a glory that transcends time itself.
“I can honestly say, there’s a peace now with my relationship with SC,” Miller said. “I’m home.”
No. 7 USC (21-5 overall, 11-5 Pac-12) AT ARIZONA (16-12, 8-8)
When: Thursday, 5 p.m.
Where: McKale Center, Tuscon, Ariz.
TV/radio: Pac-12 Los Angeles/790 AM
Then-USC basketball star Cheryl Miller is followed by a squad of cheerleaders, circa 1984. (Photo by Tony Duffy/Getty Images)