It’s not often you can take head coaching job in women’s college basketball without relocating, but that’s the ‘exciting’ reality for Arizona State’s Molly Miller.
‘It’s kind of unheard of to go up a level and not have to move homes,’ Miller, who was hired away from nearby Grand Canyon University, told USA TODAY Sports. ‘The fact that my kids could stay in the same school … that was just an amazing opportunity for me. And I feel like the timing was right. The place was right. Arizona State is exploding in athletics … this is the place to be.’
Miller is the latest head coach leading Sun Devils’ athletics to new heights. Kenny Dillingham led Arizona State to the College Football Playoff last season and JJ Van Niel took the women’s volleyball team to back-to-back Big 12 conference titles in 2024 and ’25. And in her first season as women’s basketball coach, Miller has transformed a losing program into a contender.
Arizona State opened the 2025-26 season with a program-best 15 consecutive wins, tying the school record. The Sun Devils beat Kansas last week to improve to 17-2 and 4-2 the Big 12, already better than last season’s 3-15 conference record.
‘I told ’em the other day, I’m like, ‘You’ve already flipped it now. The hard part is sustaining success,” Miller said of her squad’s turnaround. ‘When you’re facing a conference with such parody in any given night, a win or a loss can have March implications. The Big 12 isn’t going to reward potential, it’s going to reward night in, night out, daily grind
‘It is a hard league with a high standard. So you have to have that one-game-at-a-time mentality.’
Buy-in from transfers
Miller joined Arizona State in March 2025 after leading Grand Canyon University — less than 25 miles away — to a 32-3 record and an NCAA Tournament bid. She immediately turned to the transfer portal to rebuild the Sun Devils roster, which returned three players from last year.
From the outside, Arizona State might appear to be a tough sell. The Sun Devils had four consecutive losing seasons and an 11-53 conference record dating back to the 2021-22 season. The program’s last NCAA Tournament bid was in 2019. Yet, Miller had no problem getting players on board with her vision to create a winning culture.
‘There’s an authentic way to get buy-in, and it’s all rooted in leadership and clarity and culture,’ Miller said. ‘From Day 1, I explained my vision and my standard and the roles to people. And so I think when they know what to expect and they feel valued, then they can commit to a purpose. And so we built trust early.’
Miller added eight players through the portal, including her entire starting lineup — sophomore Heloisa Carrera (Ole Miss), junior McKinna Brakens (UNLV) and seniors Gabby Elliott (Penn State), Last-Tear Poa (LSU) and Marley Washenitz (Pitt). It’s an experienced group that combined for 213 starts at the D-I level heading into the season. Elliott leads the Sun Devils in scoring with a career-high 16.3 points in her fourth program in six years.
‘(Elliot) has experience at this level and she’s got poise,’ Miller said. ‘She raises the competitiveness in practice, because she is a good basketball player, but she also expects a lot out of herself. She leads by example in that she is really wanting to make this last year her best year, because she has had a few stops.
‘She’s a go-to player for us. She wants the ball in her hands and we want it in her hands.’
Miller’s Arizona State’s roster can be compares favorably to coach Mark Campbell’s TCU squad. He took the Horned Frogs to the Elite Eight for the first time in program history with transfer portal additions last season. Arizona State lost to TCU in early January, only one of two losses for the Sun Devils this season, but Campbell praised Miller’s effort and said her team has a ‘legit shot to be a NCAA Tournament team.’
‘It is so hard to take a program that’s at ground zero and you dive into the portal,’ Campbell said. ‘To get a team to play together and compete together and share the ball, is really, really hard to do. And their staff and Coach Miller is doing a phenomenal job. I don’t think people understand how impressive it is what they’re doing. … They are gong to continue to be a tough out.’
Defensive identity
Arizona State’s identity is rooted in ‘defensive consistency,’ Miller said, which has put a team picked to finish 11th out of 16 teams in the Big 12 preseason poll on everyone’s radar. The Sun Devils are holding opponents to 57.1 points a game and averaging 10.68 steals, which both rank fourth in the Big 12.
‘This team, out of any team I’ve ever coached, probably grew the closest, the quickest. So I’m really proud of, from an X’s and O’s, just the defensive consistency and buy-in, because I’m convicted to that side of the ball,’ Miller said. ‘The way this group has come together and bought into the defense, that’s been really special.’
Washenitz, who’s having an efficient season with a career-best 37.5 field goal percentage, said she was instantly attracted to Miller’s vision of building a program around relentless defensive pressure.
‘I’ve always been a defensive-minded person, and so to be able to play in Coach Molly’s system where she loves defense has been really awesome,’ Washenitz told USA TODAY Sports. ‘That was one of my things when I went into the portal. I want to go to a program that’s going to win.’
What’s ahead for Sun Devils
Arizona State is 11-0 at home this season at Desert Financial Arena. The Sun Devils’ ‘defense travels,’ which also makes them dangerous on the road.
‘We kind of have a saying that we always say before the game. It goes, ‘In order to win, you have to hate to lose a little bit more than everybody else,” Washenitz added. ‘So we definitely take that into every game with it.’
The Sun Devils will need that mentality as they gear up for a challenging road trip that includes games against No. 22 West Virginia (15-4, 5-2) and Cincinnati (7-12, 2-5), which beat Audi Crooks and No. 24 Iowa State (14-5, 2-5). A win against West Virginia would be huge for the Sun Devils’ resume. According to USA TODAY Sports’ latest bracketology, Arizona State is on bubble watch as one of the last four teams in.
‘We definitely want to get to the tournament,’ Washenitz said. ‘We want to keep building that resume. To end that drought would mean a lot, because I just wanted to come here and make it better and leave it better than how I found it. And I think if we did that, obviously that’d be a no-brainer of the impact that this team has had on the program.
‘We’ve had made so much history and so much growth from previous years that we haven’t been able to say that’s been done.’
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