Ten Deep and Moving In: Jrue Miller and Rowland Hall Basketball
Ten Deep and Moving In
Jrue Miller is no longer a surprise. Neither is Rowland Hall. Now comes the hard part.
introduced himself
last season
Salt Lake City — Last winter, Jrue Miller walked into his first varsity basketball game having never played a minute at the level, and scored 42 points. In his second game he scored 41.
His head coach, Zack Alvidrez, didn't quite believe what he'd watched. After that first game he told Miller as much — that nights like that don't come along often, and not to go looking for them.
"Hey man, this doesn't normally happen," is how Alvidrez remembers putting it.
Miller took it well, he said, a kid with a good head on his shoulders. Then he went out and did it again.
"I was quiet after that," Alvidrez said, "and just kind of let things come as they do."
One season later, nobody at Rowland Hall is quiet about it anymore, and nobody in Region 17 is surprised by it. Miller enters his junior year as one of the most proven scorers in Utah high school basketball, on a team that returns nearly everyone, in a program about to move into a building it has been waiting years for.
What Last Season Actually Was
The numbers hold up under scrutiny. As a sophomore, Miller scored 645 points across the Winged Lions' 26 games, finishing among the top four scorers in the entire state regardless of classification. He also led Rowland Hall in assists (76) and steals (71) — a reminder that the scoring headline was never the whole story.
The team around him was better than its billing, too. Rowland Hall finished 19–8 and went 7–2 in Region 17, second only to American Leadership Academy, which ran the region table.
Then came the 2A state tournament, and this is where the story gets more interesting than the box scores suggest.
Seeded fifth, Rowland Hall took a first-round bye and dispatched No. 12 Millard 74–58 at home. That earned a quarterfinal date at UVU's UCCU Center against fourth-seeded South Sevier — the eventual state champion — and the Rams handled them, 65–48.
Some teams fold in tournament play after a disappointing loss. Rowland Hall didn't. They came back the next afternoon and beat No. 9 San Juan 67–50 in the consolation round. Then, in their final game of the season, they drew American Leadership Academy again.
In January, ALA had beaten them by 21.
This time Rowland Hall lost by three, 70–67.
Same opponent. Same season. An 18-point swing.
That's the number that ought to matter to anyone handicapping 2A this winter. A young team that got run off the floor by the region champion in January stood toe-to-toe with them in February. Rowland Hall finished sixth in the state — and finished it playing like a team that had figured something out on the way.
Replacing the Big Man by Not Replacing Him
Only one Winged Lion graduated: Landen Brady, an honorable-mention all-state forward and a two-time all-region selection who was the team's second-leading scorer at 13.8 points a game and its leading rebounder at 9.0. He also blocked 40 shots. That is a real hole.
Alvidrez isn't trying to plug it with a like-for-like replacement. His top two returning scorers are brothers — Jrue, and his younger brother Jevin, who averaged nearly 11 points a game as a freshman last season and returns as a sophomore. The plan is to play to them.
"It's not really like replacing the position. It's just kind of changing how we play."
— Coach Zack Alvidrez
"Our identity offensively will be more perimeter-oriented," he said. "We're gonna get out and run a lot more. So it's gonna be more guard-heavy. It opens up to Jrue's strengths, and Jevin's strengths, and a lot of the guys that are returning. It's not really like replacing the position. It's just kind of changing how we play."
Together the brothers gave Rowland Hall a backcourt opponents spent all winter trying to solve, and they're the reason Alvidrez can talk about playing faster without flinching.
He has the bodies to do it, too.
"We'll be about a 10-man rotation for the first time in my life," Alvidrez said.
For a school whose upper school enrolls roughly 200 students, that is not a small sentence.
The Summer That Built It
The buy-in showed up in the spring, right after a season that ended one round short of where they wanted it. Rowland Hall played the Great Western Classic in Utah County, then took a group to Colorado during the live scholastic period at the end of June — the window when college coaches are permitted to watch.
They went as a 2A school with seven players and played schools carrying benches of twelve to fifteen. They beat three of them and lost another close.
"It kind of helped me become more of a leader," Miller said. "To be able to talk to my team on defense, not only on defense but also on offense — being able to keep that energy with the team, even though this team was bigger and stronger than us. I developed more of being able to handle that pressure even when my teammates aren't going, and it may just be me, but to be able to lift my teammates up and keep distributing them the ball to help them get in their flow and build their confidence."
The rest of the summer happened in the weight room, most of it alongside his older brother.
"I'm definitely not one of the fastest guards out there."
— Jrue Miller, on the work he put in
"I'm definitely not one of the fastest guards out there," Miller said. "Just my genetics — I'm just very slow. One thing I've been really trying to work on is my athleticism. I do a lot of weightlifting with my older brother. We do a lot of plyos, a lot of strength toward the lower body to help build that athleticism for when I'm in those games. Me and my brother have gone every single day, just working on really trying to build our explosiveness, so that when we're in those games we already have that edge on our defenders."
The school hired a new strength and conditioning coach who opens the room before classes for anyone who wants it.
"In order to be a good athlete, you gotta prepare your body and your mind," Alvidrez said.
A Farewell and a Housewarming
Rowland Hall will open the season on Lincoln Street and finish it somewhere else.
The school's new Richard R. Steiner Campus — a $45 million project on the west field of the McCarthey Campus near the University of Utah — brings all grades onto one site for the first time in more than four decades. It comes with a new gymnasium, a new weight room, turf fields, and a walking track above the court. Alvidrez calls it "a miniature version of what the 6A schools have."
The move happens in early December, which means the last event ever held in the old building will be a boys basketball game, against South Summit, one of the program's oldest rivalries.
Rowland Hall vs. South Summit: Lights Out on Lincoln Street
The final event ever held in the old gym. One of the program's oldest rivalries, a balcony, and a packed house.
"It'll be a packed gym," Alvidrez said. "We have a balcony and all that stuff. It'll be kind of a good farewell for the old building as we move into the new one."
There is a nice symmetry to a basketball game closing that chapter. Rowland Hall was founded in 1867 and is the oldest continuously operating school in Utah. Its first classes were held in the basement of a bowling alley on Main Street. The Steiner Campus is the school's fifth or sixth home.
Region 17, and Everything After
Alvidrez is clear-eyed about the road. The favorite, as far as he's concerned, is whoever is holding the trophy — and that's American Leadership Academy, which has won Region 17 two years running and reloaded again over the summer. He expects Waterford, a rival that brings back a pair of guards, to be in it as well.
Region 17 Title Race
- American Leadership Academy
Two-time defending region champ, reloaded - Waterford
Returns a pair of guards - Rowland Hall
Returns nearly everyone
2A State Picture
- South Sevier
Defending champ, graduated one player - North Summit
Expected to be good - The field
Many perennial programs lost big senior classes
"Obviously, we have high hopes for ourselves to be in that last game for a region title," he said. "So I think probably us three will be fighting for that title in the region."
Statewide, the same logic applies. "All roads go to the champs," Alvidrez said. South Sevier graduated exactly one player. "They're still loaded," he said, and he expects them to be a heavy favorite to repeat. North Summit will be good. ALA will be good. But a lot of the perennial programs lost big senior classes, which leaves the bracket less settled than the names suggest. "Matchups make fights," he added.
What he wants from his own team is unglamorous: "Our goal is to be more sound defensively and rebounding." And then, on Miller: "It's kind of nice knowing consistently what he can give us every night."
Miller's own framing of the season is worth quoting in full, because it is not the answer a 24-points-per-game scorer is supposed to give.
"What can I do to lead my team to the state championship?"
— Jrue Miller
"My mindset going into the season is: what can I do to lead my team to the state championship? I know with a lot of these kids, maybe basketball isn't their first priority, but I know that I can trust in them to give me what I need to get us to that state championship. So my overall mindset is just to keep developing my teammates and keep getting them stronger, so that we can really have the strongest chance we can have at state."
When the Ball Stops Bouncing
Miller has two years of high school left and a clear enough view of what comes after. He is 6-foot-1 or so, which he knows, and he has stopped treating it as a limitation.
"Even though I may be a small 6'1, 6'2 guard, if I can hustle out on the court and just be a playmaker, it will help me go as far as I wanna go," he said. What he's chasing in a college program is not a logo: "any school that's gonna help develop me as a player — a strong, an important coach that is willing to work with me and really build a relationship with me."
He chose Rowland Hall for academics first — his word, unprompted — and he's pointed at mechanical engineering. Math is one of his stronger subjects at a school that doesn't hand that out, and, he says, the one he enjoys more than any other.
"Eventually the ball is gonna stop bouncing."
— Jrue Miller
"Eventually the ball is gonna stop bouncing," he said. "I would like to do something I love. And I feel like mechanical engineering is something that I really enjoy doing."
Alvidrez sees that combination as the whole pitch for what he's building.
"I really appreciate what a lot of programs, especially down in Southern Utah and Central Utah, do — the smaller 2A towns," he said. "The community, the camaraderie, the continuity that they build their programs. So it's really trying to model that, the hard work, and pair it with — we're a really high academic school. It's kind of a unique place where if you wanna challenge yourself academically, like Jrue and Jevin do, and also have a great opportunity to play a high level of basketball, why not?"
A year ago that was a sales pitch. After 19 wins, a state tournament run, and a three-point loss to the region champion, it's starting to sound like a description.
How this story was made: Mountain & Main uses AI tools to assist with research and drafting. Every story is reviewed and edited by our editorial team, and all quotes come from our own interviews or the sources cited.
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