California LB/RB sets four visits

Ricky Miller and his teammates at Tustin (Calif.) High School are in an awfully precarious position. His final high school season could be over, or it could continue in the playoffs Friday night.

He’s still waiting to hear whether the other four teams in his league voted for Tustin to continue its season. After one of Tustin’s players was found ineligible for submitting a false address, the team had to forfeit all of its league games.

“They are trying to boot us out of the playoffs. We’re going to take them to court if they don’t vote us in…the guy didn’t help us win or lose games. He never plays. He plays like one or two plays a game when we’re up by 80 points. So they are trying to screw us over.”

When Miller says 80 points, he’s not exaggerating. Tustin defeated Oceanview High School 92-0 in its last game, a result that could prompt their league rivals to prevent Tustin from competing in the postseason.

“They are mad at us already, and it’s going to be hard for them to vote us in,” Miller said. “They thought we (ran up the score on them). We didn’t know what to do. We had our third string in, in the third quarter. They kept scoring and scoring and scoring.”

A 6-3, 235-pound tailback/linebacker with 4.58 speed, many people have made obvious comparisons to Tustin graduate DeShaun Foster. But Miller feels linebacker is his best position, and that’s what he wants to play at the next level. He played outside linebacker until the ninth game of the year, when he was moved to middle linebacker, his favorite position.

Miller has scholarship offers from Fresno State, Oregon State and Wisconsin, the latter of which was the most difficult to obtain.

When Badgers Offensive Coordinator Brian White visited Miller last spring, he said he would give him a scholarship offer if he scored a 3.0 grade point average that quarter. Having struggled throughout his first three years of high school, White’s challenge was the catalyst for Miller to turn things around.

“I just beared down. If you get an ultimatum like that, you have no choice but to work hard,” Miller said. “I want as many options as I can. I did what I had to do…now I’m on track. I just scored a 980 on my SAT and I’m doing very well this year.”

Wisconsin is one of four official visits Miller has set up. He will travel to Oregon State this weekend, followed by Washington Nov. 30, Fresno State Dec. 8 and Wisconsin Dec. 13.

He said aside from the cold weather, distance is the only negative for the Badgers.

“I kind of want to be away from home, but close enough that if I need to get home, I can get home. And somewhere my friends and family can see me play,” Miller said. “But I like the (Wisconsin) coaches a lot. I really like Coach White. I’ve been looking up some research on them. It looks like they have real good educational programs.”

Miller plans to major in business management and communications. He will also look closely at each program’s depth chart.

“I want to go in and make an impact right away, maybe a redshirt year but I don’t want to wait a couple of years,” Miller said.

While he wants to play middle linebacker in college, he is open to playing at running back, and is willing to play wherever he’s needed. This season Miller was part of a double-wing offense in which he averaged only 15 carries a game. He finished the season with 950 yards and 19 touchdowns on 150 carries, while recording 27 tackles in the two games he started at middle linebacker.