A Lot on the Ball

Maybe Chris McMillian was just bored. An easy thing to be in Laramie, where he is the point guard for Wyoming.

McMillian, a Brea Olinda High graduate, looks out his apartment window and sees snow . . . piles of the stuff. Such a desolate and isolated view can lead to soul-searching.

So on April 12, and he remembers the date as if it were his mother’s birthday, McMillian, alone in his apartment, took a basketball and began writing on it with a felt pen. When finished, he had a Marx-style manifesto, only the “state” in his plans was the team, his team.

This isn’t all about the proletariat, mind you. There are some deep-seated personal aspirations. Hopes of being a pro player, then coaching, don’t take long to root out.

So McMillian seized the means of production and the Cowboys manufactured four consecutive victories to open their season before losing to Cal State Northridge, 74-71, Thursday. The trek rolls on tonight at Cal State Fullerton, which is jump-shot distance from where McMillian grew up.

Granted, the Cowboys have beaten only tomato cans so far.

This, though, is only the beginning, McMillian insists, and it can all be traced to a boring night in his apartment, with that desolate view, where he put the season in writing.

“It was about midnight,” he said. “What else was I going to do in Laramie at midnight? I wasn’t tired, so I just started writing goals on a basketball. When I was finished, the whole basketball was covered.”

That ball sits on the dresser in McMillian’s meticulously manicured apartment--he lives alone, so if there’s a mess, “I know who did it.” The ball stares at him when he wakes up and before he goes to bed, goading him.

Win the Mountain West Conference championship, finish with a 24-3 record, reach the Round of 16 in the NCAA tournament--the first three items on the list.

This is his team and these are its goals. McMillian may have started every game as a freshman and sophomore, but now, as a junior, he has emerged as the foreman every point guard needs to be.

“You could just see he had grown right away this year,” Wyoming Coach Steve McClain said. “There is so much character there. Some guys can be rah-rah leaders for a day or two, but can they do that over time? Chris can. He’s the reason we’re capable of accomplishing our goals.”

The ones McMillian wrote on his basketball?

“He did that?” McClain said. “I haven’t seen that yet.”

Oh, he has . . . on the court.

The numbers aren’t particularly impressive. McMillian averages eight points and five assists. He is shooting 27% from the field and has made two of 12 shots inside the three-point line.

All of which makes the 5-foot-10 McMillian seem as necessary to Cowboy basketball as suntan lotion on a December day in Laramie.

Yet, you can pick out great moments from every game. In a 78-74 victory over Creighton, McMillian all but demanded that the ball be in his hands at the end. He is only a 67% free-throw shooter this season, but he canned four in the final minute to seal the victory.

“Some games, I tell myself, ‘OK, Chris, you need start making plays,’ ” McMillian said. “There are certain games where if I make a play here, we win the game. Maybe it’s a little thing, like a steal or even just blocking someone out on a rebound. Sometimes it’s just telling myself, ‘OK, go run the team.’ ”

That sort of I’m-in-charge stance was apparent from the day he walked onto the Wyoming campus.

“The minute I met Chris I knew this was a guy who could help us get to where we wanted to go,” McClain said. “He knows when it’s time to be serious and he also knows when it’s time to have fun.

“He’s definitely a practical joker. He’s done nothing to me, but every now and then in practice, there will be water all over the floor because he’s loosened the top to someone’s water bottle.”

But play time ends at game time.

“I don’t mind cussing guys out,” McMillian said. “I don’t care whether they are 6-10, 245 pounds. I could care less. My job is to get the guys to play and get them the ball where they can make baskets.”

That’s another reason why The Sporting News rated McMillian as the conference’s best playmaker. Being the front man was a little more difficult last season, when the Cowboys had four seniors: LeDarion Jones, Justin French, Bradley Mann and Anthony Blakes. But they were more suited for the chorus line, at least when casting for a leader.

McMillian averaged 10 points and five assists but felt uncomfortable with forcing his will on a veteran team. A month after the season ended with a loss to Nevada Las Vegas in the conference tournament, McMillian put this season’s plans in writing on that basketball.

At the top of the list was being king of the Mountain West Conference.

“I definitely put team goals on the ball,” McMillian said. “The first thing I wrote is I would lead us to the conference title. I have no problem saying that. I’m not being cocky. That is how I feel. I’m the team’s point guard. Like Mateen Cleaves was Michigan State’s point guard. He was the leader.”

Cleaves took the Spartans to the national title last season. Wyoming has won a national title too . . . in 1943.

The Cowboys haven’t won a conference championship since 1986, when they shared the Western Athletic Conference title with UTEP and Utah. That team featured Fennis Dembo and Eric Leckner, who were the main reasons Sean Dent accumulated a school-record 502 assists, something McMillian, who has 270 in two seasons plus five games, also has his sights on.

In the meantime, McMillian sees the basketball on the dresser. On it is where he wants to take his team. He also sees the Michael Jordan, Allen Iverson and Stephon Marbury posters on his wall.

How easy it is to look past the snow outside the window.

Said McMillian: “Sometimes you have to sacrifice a lot of things to get where you want to be.”