Miller’s Crossing : Junior Center Has Made Headway Since Transfer From Notre Dame

CHATSWORTH —  Whenever Eddie Miller calls his girlfriend, he undergoes the same interrogation.

Almost every night Miller, a standout junior for the Chatsworth High basketball team, speaks to Jasmine Malik, a senior at Notre Dame and Miller’s steady for the past two years. And the conversation always turns to Miller’s studies.

“She’s always asking me about each class and how I’m doing, what kinds of grades I’m getting,” Miller said. “She’s almost like a second mother.”

Malik knows she has to keep Miller focused on academics. Grades have forced Miller and Malik to spend the last two years at different schools.

Two seasons ago, Miller was a talented freshman who helped Notre Dame win a Southern Section III-A title.

Miller represented the future on a senior-laden team.

But Miller’s stay at Notre Dame was short-lived. He failed three classes in the spring semester of 1993 and was asked not to return.

Miller’s family moved to Chatsworth and he became the centerpiece of several talented transfers who had migrated. Chatsworth was considered one of the top teams in the area heading into the 1993-94 season.

But the Chancellors never jelled and the season ended with a frustrating loss to Washington in the first round of the City Section 4-A Division playoffs. Coach Sandy Greentree left the program following the season.

But under new coach Bill Whiting--and slightly lower expectations--Miller and the Chancellors have flourished. Chatsworth rolled through the Northwest Valley Conference without a loss and finished the regular season with a 19-4 record.

Three of the losses came in the Best of the West tournament in late December, which featured several of the top teams in Southern California.

Chatsworth is seeded sixth in the City 4-A playoffs and will play host to Carson in the first round.

Despite being slowed by a preseason knee injury, Miller, a 6-foot-8, 227-pound center, has been a force the entire season. After 21 games, he is sixth among area City Section players in scoring (18.4 points a game), second in rebounding (12.7) and fourth in blocked shots (2.7).

Miller’s preseason conditioning was hampered by the injury. When practice began, Miller weighed 245 pounds, 25 more than last season. Although part of the weight gain was added muscle, most wasn’t.

“Mom had a family reunion over the summer and she brought back a little bit too much food,” Miller said.

Although Miller receives regular therapy to rehabilitate the knee, the injury isn’t much more than a nuisance to him.

It was a back injury that nearly ended Miller’s basketball dreams before his high school career even began.

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“Eddie was always bigger than everyone else,” teammate Jerome Joseph said. “We never knew what we could do to stop him.”

By eighth grade, Miller was 6-6 and 170 pounds. He would play for hours on Friday nights at Northridge Junior High, where he drew attention from several area American Roundball Corp. coaches.

“When he first started he was real raw but the potential was there,” said Paul Collins, who coached Miller on an ARC team last summer. “He was quick for his size; he just needed work on his fundamentals.”

But Miller broke a bone in his back attempting to dunk during a game in eighth grade. The pain wasn’t intense at first but steadily grew worse until Miller finally saw a doctor, who told him he had to stop playing for several months.

“I thought they were joking. There was no way I wasn’t going to play,” he said. “But they said if I kept on playing, someday soon I wouldn’t be able to play any more.”

Miller missed most of his freshman season.

Notre Dame Coach Mick Cady wanted Miller to attend all of the Knights’ games during his layoff. Although frustrated at not being able to play, Miller did watch, and learn, from the experienced and talented team, especially Monte Marcaccini, who now plays at Pepperdine.

“I picked up a lot from those guys,” Miller said. “Monte was a great player. I’m glad he’s playing close by so I get a chance to see him.”

Just before the end of the regular season, Miller finally received clearance to play. And he jumped at the chance. He hadn’t even practiced before playing the final three games before the playoffs.

After playing sparingly in the remaining regular-season games, Miller recovered sufficiently to be a key reserve during Notre Dame’s playoff run.

But as soon as he arrived at Chatsworth, he was expected to be the savior for the Chancellors.

Although Miller played well at times, averaging 16.7 points and 10.5 rebounds in 1994, he grew weary of the high expectations.

This season Chatsworth has fewer established players.

Miller teams with junior point guard Joseph, who transferred from Montclair Prep two years ago, to form an effective inside-outside combination. Joseph’s three-point shooting and Miller’s inside skills make Chatsworth difficult to defend.

“When both of us are on, no one can stop us,” Miller said. “I don’t know if we can go all the way to the finals but we’re going to make it tough for whoever does.”

Miller’s biggest advantage is still his height. The tallest player with significant playing time in the Northwest Valley Conference is 6-6.

“It’s tough on him because he is the type to get up for a big game and a big player,” Whiting said. “When he knows he going against a good player, even if he’s shorter, he gets that special gleam in his eye.”

Ironically, if Miller had stayed at Notre Dame, he would face the only standout players in the Valley taller than himself: Harvard-Westlake sophomores Jarron and Jason Collins. But he is familiar with them.

Since Chatsworth didn’t play Harvard this season, Miller resigned himself to watching several Wolverine games. And both of the Collins brothers have kept an eye on Miller.

“I’ve known him since he was 13 and he’s always had this great ability to get to the basket,” Jarron Collins said. “It really would have been fun to play against him twice a year.”

All three played on the same ARC team last summer. With Jarron (6-9) and Jason (6-10) playing the post positions, Miller received a chance to play small forward and enhance his outside skills.

Now Miller’s passing skills and ability to shoot from outside (he’s recently developed a three-point shot) present formidable match-up problems.

“It’s the underrated part of his game,” Whiting said. “Those skills make him so much more versatile.”

After the season concludes later this month, Miller plans to redouble his academic focus to prepare for the Scholastic Assessment Test.

He already works with a tutor and plans to take an SAT preparatory class so he can score high enough to play Division I basketball his freshman year.

Miller still struggles with academics, but uses his Notre Dame experience as a learning one.

“I still need to shape up in a couple of classes. Algebra’s the only class that’s giving me trouble right now,” he said. “But I’m getting a B in Spanish now. That’s one of the classes I got kicked out for. Not coming back (to Notre Dame) taught me a lot about what I need to do to succeed.”