A favorite for 2021 Kentucky Miss Basketball picks Lady Vols
Franklin County’s Brooklynn Miles, who will surely be one of the favorites to be named 2021’s Kentucky Miss Basketball and is the highest rated rising senior in the state, committed to Tennessee via social media Wednesday afternoon.
“I’d like to announce that I’ll be furthering my academic and basketball career at the University of Tennessee. Go Vols,” Miles said in a two-minute video posted to her Instagram and Twitter accounts.
Miles, a 5-foot-6 point guard with exceptional speed, narrowed her list to five schools on Monday in teasing her announcement. She chose Tennessee over offers from Kentucky, Purdue, North Carolina State and Miami on top of a slew of others.
“I just felt it in my heart to be honest,” Miles told the Herald-Leader moments after making the announcement. “It wasn’t a question. I just knew that was the answer. I like the team and the coaches.”
Miles averaged 21.5 points, 4.9 assists, 4.1 steals and 3.8 rebounds her junior year in helping lead the Lady Flyers to the 11th Region championship and berth in the Mingua Beef Jerky/KHSAA Girls’ Sweet 16. Those numbers also helped her earn first team all-state honors from both the Herald-Leader and the Courier Journal.
Miles was a key figure in Franklin County’s back-to-back runs to the Girls’ Sweet 16 finals in 2016 and 2017, starting on the 2017 squad as an eighth-grader. She has also played soccer and run track during her high school career.
Rated as a five-star prospect by ESPN.com’s HoopGurlz Recruiting Rankings, Miles comes into her senior year as the 46th ranked player and ninth ranked point guard in the nation. In ESPN.com’s comments from girls’ recruiting expert Dan Olson calls her an unselfish guard and “one of the fastest prospects in the class of 2021.”
“I’ve never been around anybody that can just go that hard, that fast,” Franklin County Coach Joey Thacker said. “There’s a difference in being explosive and being quick, and she’s both. This is our fifth D-1 kid and our sixth Division I athlete (former Lady Flyer Rebecca Cook ran track). They’re all different. I think what sets her apart is her ability to just, in a straight-line situation, to come right at you — and there’s not a lot you can do about it.”
Miles’ commitment adds to a huge haul of top-rated players in the class of 2021 for Tennessee head coach Kellie Harper. Harper now has four top-100 players on the 2021 list: No. 23 Kaiya Wynn (5-10 guard out of The Ensorth School, Tenn.), No. 46 Miles, No. 48 Karoline Striplin (6-2 forward out of Geneva County, Ala.) and No. 63 Sara Puckett (6-2 forward out of Muscle Shoals, Ala.). Tennessee ended the 2019-20 season with a 21-10 record and finished in a four-way tie for third in the Southeastern Conference standings, earning the sixth seed in the SEC Tournament.
Wynn and Miles played together on the AAU circuit and are close friends. Being part of such a stellar class has Miles pumped about their potential.
“I’m super excited to be honest. It feels great,” she said.
Miles and her Franklin County teammates will likely be highly ranked coming into her senior year, but the prospect of possibly losing her final high school season to the coronavirus also played a role in making her decision now.
“I wanted to make sure I’m set and my heart’s where it should be at, and I feel like that’s at Tennessee,” she said.
Miles is the only in-state player in the class of 2021’s ESPN.com Top 100.
“Not only are they getting a dynamic point guard, but they are getting somebody that can change the entire mood of your practice and your workouts because of the intensity and the speed that she can go at,” Thacker said.
Miles’ commitment marks another top in-state recruiting miss for Kentucky head coach Matthew Mitchell. But the Cats’ 2020 commitment of Sacred Heart point guard Erin Toller along with the addition of transfers Robyn Benton, an All-SEC guard from Auburn and Jazmine Massengill from Tennessee should fill its backcourt needs, making missing out on Miles less painful. Benton and Massengilll won’t be eligible until 2021-22. Massengill was the Lady Vols’ second leading assist-maker as a sophomore last season.
The Cats have not landed a Miss Basketball winner since Bell County’s Maci Morris in 2015. This year’s Miss Basketball, Maddie Scherr chose Pac-12 power Oregon. Mercer County’s Seygan Robins (2018) and Bullitt East’s Lindsey Duvall (2017) picked Louisville, Elizabethtown’s Erin Boley (2016) chose Notre Dame. Each of those three have since transferred.
This story was originally published July 1, 2020 at 5:18 PM.
