Cameron Mills having a blast in new Kentucky basketball role. ‘This was a big deal to me.’
For a majority of little boys from Kentucky who pick up a basketball with any level of seriousness, playing for the home-state Wildcats is the ultimate dream.
For four years, Cameron Mills got to live that dream. During his time as a UK player, Mills won two national championships, competed for a third and hit a number of big shots — one, in particular, that cemented his status as an all-time fan favorite.
Now, 25 years after his playing career ended, Mills finds himself living out another kind of Kentucky basketball dream. And this one actually took much longer to fulfill.
At the beginning of this season, Mills was announced as the new pregame radio analyst alongside host Dave Baker for the UK Sports Network’s official game-day broadcasts.
“It’s fun being part of this group of people on the network who love UK, love the game — whether it’s football or basketball or any of the other sports that we broadcast — and, to me, it’s like being at the top of the game,” Mills said. “Now, there’s ESPN and all that kind of stuff. But you can’t be a homer and work for those guys, right? I can be a homer and work for UK Sports Network. And I enjoy being a homer.”
Mills has lived the highest of highs as an actual Kentucky basketball player, but joining the UK network in such a capacity has been a dream of his for more than two decades.
Back in 2001, when the Kentucky basketball radio crew was going through a period of transition, Mills — just 25 years old at the time — was one of the finalists to get the in-game color commentary spot.
He was paired with Tom Leach — soon to be UK’s basketball play-by-play announcer — and the two rewatched the previous season’s matchup between Kentucky and Notre Dame, calling the action as if it were a live game.
“I was so excited and shocked that they would even consider me for that job,” Mills said.
He didn’t get it. The job, of course, went to Mike Pratt, a beloved Wildcats player from 1967 to 1970, later a college basketball coach, and then a seasoned broadcaster.
While Mills didn’t land the gig, the process itself had planted a seed.
“When I got my tryout, and they went with Mike — and rightfully so — I just decided that this was a secret goal of mine: to be part of this network someday,” he said.
And he never let go of that dream.
‘Best talker on the team’
While the personal focus on one day joining the UK Sports Network didn’t come until after his playing days, the roots of a broadcasting career were there from the beginning of Mills’ time on Kentucky’s campus.
Mills — the son of former UK player Terry Mills — was a star player at Paul Laurence Dunbar in Lexington. A Division I prospect, to be sure, but not quite at the level that it took to earn a scholarship from Rick Pitino, the Wildcats’ coach at the time.
When the signing period rolled around for Mills and his class of 1994 peers, the most likely scenario appeared to be that the local standout would end up at Georgia, which had extended a scholarship offer. Instead, a last-minute opportunity came up that could keep Mills home as a UK walk-on. And he jumped at that chance.
“If I can get the players water during practice, I will,” Mills said before the start of his freshman season. “That’s what it’s going to be this year.”
It’s unclear how many water cups he passed out in the early going, but it soon became apparent that there was another group who could rely on Mills’ contributions. The media.
Mills says he knew from the time he was a kid that ministry work would be his calling, and that has been a primary focus his entire adult life. As a result of that early plan for his future, Mills understood that he would have to be comfortable speaking in public, and by the time he was surrounded by tape recorders and TV cameras as a UK player, the attention didn’t faze him.
These days, three Kentucky players are made available to reporters after games, often fewer when the Cats are on the road. Then, the UK locker room was open. And it didn’t take long for reporters to find their way into Mills’ orbit.
“To be honest, you all in the media … those guys should’ve never bothered with anything I had to say, because I literally never played,” Mills says now. “I was a nobody. I was a somebody because I was a Kentucky player, but I wasn’t playing. And yet, because I ran my mouth, because I have opinions, and because I can talk in streams of consciousness — I could come up with a good sound bite, I guess.”
As a result, Mills got lots of coverage. He’d see his quotes in the Herald-Leader, the Courier Journal, the Kernel. He’d hear his voice on the radio and see his face on local TV.
“And I’m sure fans were thinking, ‘What the heck do we care what this kid has to say? He doesn’t play!’ But I could put together a couple of good sound bites that, I guess, would be interesting,” he said. “And I had the ability to share some truth without sharing our game plan.”
To simply say that Mills could talk would be, apparently, an understatement.
“He was the best talker on the team,” said Dick Gabriel, a veteran of the UK beat who covered the team at the time. “So it was manna from heaven when he played and would do something, and then we had an even better reason to talk to him.”
Mills played (mostly sat) his first three seasons under Pitino, who’s famous for — in addition to being one of the best college basketball coaches ever — spinning things in the media and looking for ways to use the medium to his advantage. Mills remembered Pitino telling his players not to trust the media.
“But I also didn’t look at them as the enemy,” he said. “So I was friendly with all of them. And liked a lot of them, I would say.”
Gabriel was someone who noticed that natural talent in Mills early on. He started having him on his radio show as a guest, and Mills’ broadcasting profile started growing from there. Not long after his playing days were finished, Mills was approached by WKYT with the idea of doing a “Cameron’s Keys” segment on TV broadcasts before games. He did it. It lasted only a season or two — and Mills says he didn’t think he was all that great at it — but it was more experience.
Gabriel would bring him in for WKYT specials that he was producing. The duo later paired up to co-produce three UK basketball documentaries. Mills worked high school games as a radio analyst. He worked on other broadcasts related to UK basketball — early pregame shows, postgame call-in shows. At one point several years ago, he was approached about doing his own radio show. After some initial hesitation, he gave that a shot, the dream of getting to where he is now still in his mind.
“And that is the reason, honestly, that I had my own show for seven years,” Mills said. “I knew, if I’m going to be a part of this network, I have to learn how to be a lead, even if I’m never going to be a lead. I have to learn to be comfortable — like, if Dave Baker happens to show up late for a show — I have to be comfortable getting it started and getting us going.
“I did a radio show for seven years, because I needed more hours as the lead. As the one responsible for getting us in and out of breaks, which, for whatever reason, terrified me. I had to put together content. I had to actually be and become … a professional radio broadcaster.”
A Kentucky basketball life
Anyone who listened to Mills’ weekly show — or gets him into a conversation about UK basketball, and that doesn’t take much — knows how passionate he is about his alma mater.
“Well it’s literally been — if not his life — a huge factor in his life,” Gabriel said. “From the fact that his dad played. And he turned down scholarship offers from other schools just to walk on. And take all that stuff from Rick Pitino. But it worked out pretty well.
“He does have that passion. And it’s unlike 99 percent of the guys who have played college basketball. He’s following in his father’s footsteps, and he has two national championship rings.”
Mills mentioned several people by name who had helped him along the way in this second UK basketball journey, but he calls Gabriel his “media mentor” — someone who has always been around to encourage but also critique his work.
And Mills has welcomed the feedback over the years, especially when it’s centered on pointing out areas for improvement.
“Basically, I want Rick Pitino in my life again,” he says with a laugh. “Which is funny, because I wanted him out of my life for three years, because he was so hard on me. And when he left, I missed him. I want somebody to take every little mistake I make and point it out to me. Because if no one points out my mistakes, I don’t learn. And if I don’t learn, then I don’t get better. And that was important to me. I didn’t want this gig ever given to me. I wanted to earn it. I wanted to be here. I wanted to have people fight for me to have this job one day. …
“I guess I tell you all this to tell you that this was a big deal to me. My wife and I really celebrated the night that I got the call and the invitation.”
Mike Pratt passed away in June after a lengthy battle with cancer, a tragic day for the UK basketball family. He had been UK’s color commentator for the previous 21 seasons.
Jack “Goose” Givens was ultimately announced as the Wildcats’ new radio analyst. Givens, who has ample NBA broadcasting experience, had been the UK pregame analyst and is one of the program’s all-time greatest players. That was an easy call. Figuring out who would replace Givens on the pregame show wasn’t quite so simple. A few names of former players were floated. Behind the scenes, Gabriel, who has worked in various roles on the UK network over the years, was among those lobbying for Mills.
“I knew how passionate he was about getting the opportunity to do this,” he said. “You know, we were all set with Mike, and then we tragically lost Mike. And Jack was the obvious and natural fit. So there was the opening that I thought would be really perfect for Cameron, having done so much work with him.”
Mills mentioned several of his fellow former Wildcats who have held positions similar to his current one in recent years. Pratt. Givens. Sam Bowie. Kyle Macy. Rex Chapman.
“That’s a who’s who of Kentucky basketball,” he said. “And you compare my basketball career to their basketball careers — you can’t compare ’em. Those are All-Americans and UK Hall of Famers, which I’m never going to be.”
Mills scored 365 points over his four-year career and really played for only about a season and a half — as he’ll be the first to acknowledge — but his story of going from walk-on to scholarship player to key contributor always resonated with fans. Along with his status as UK legacy player and Lexington high school star. And, of course, some of those big shots late in his career.
The biggest was his three-pointer against Duke in the 1998 Elite Eight, the shot that gave UK its first lead of the game to cap an epic comeback. No Kentucky fan will ever forget that victory. (Though many might not remember that it was the only shot Mills attempted that day). The Cats, of course, would go on to win the national championship the following week.
Gabriel pointed out that Mills actually scored more points the previous season — following the season-ending injury to UK star Derek Anderson — becoming a national story as the Cats nearly captured the 1997 title, scoring in double figures in seven of the team’s final eight games.
But his gift for gab made Mills a story even before that, well before he saw any regular playing time. He played 16 minutes over his entire sophomore season, riding the bench for the 1996 title team. Yet, just as Mills said, the newspaper archives from that time are filled with his quotes. The day before the 1996 Final Four began, esteemed Herald-Leader sportswriter Chuck Culpepper dedicated his entire column to the walk-on. Earlier that season, he was the subject of a long story in the New York Times.
“I don’t look back with any regrets,” Mills, who had just turned 20 years old a couple weeks earlier, said in that one. “I think the decision to come to Kentucky was the right one. I look at my dad and how no one ever forgot in Lexington that he played for UK. And I thought that Coach Pitino would make me a better player, and I was right.”
And here he is all these years later, sitting on the sideline on Rupp Arena game days once again. This time, looking out on the court from the other side.
“It’s cool, because I know how much work it takes to do it and to do it well,” Gabriel said. “And it’s interesting how many players through the years have indicated, ‘You know, I wouldn’t mind doing that.’ Or, ‘I’d like to do some TV.’ But when they find out the level of commitment, time, effort, work, research — they kind of shy away from it. Or they’d rather just dip their toe in it, and be happy with that. But to be fully immersed like this — it’s a major commitment.
“It’s something that you’ve gotta want to do. And, clearly, Cameron really wanted to do it. And he’s doing well.”
This story was originally published January 6, 2023 at 7:00 AM.
