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Paul Mills knows the heavy passion that Wichita State fan base has watching their team achieve major success in the sports they take part in. That is definitely the case in basketball, seeing the program every year under his leadership.
The NCAA Tournament stands out as the biggest goal for Mills going into Year 4. Seeing great improvements each year, including consecutive NIT tournament runs, Mills looks forward to having Wichita State take the next step as a contender in the American Conference.
"You don't need the most money to make an impact. Okay, you don't need the most money to do things and be competitive as a basketball team. So winning is in the details, and so that's what you have to do. You better be really good at the details. You better be good at the things that are necessary in order to put you in a respectable position," Mills said in an interview with ClutchPoints.
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"But you need to play those teams with higher profiles, and that's fine, but I would put Wichita State's resume, over the course of the last decade, up with darn near anybody, and so because I think that there's already a framework here, a foundation of high expectations, we need to just focus on the details, and I think you'll find us right back in that conversation."
Paul Mills has been coaching in college basketball since 2003, starting out as an assistant for the Baylor Bears. He helped them achieve considerable success, as it featured seven appearances in the NCAA Tournament.
"My second year at Baylor, we won one conference game the entire year. We finished 1-17 over the course of the year, and then my last year there, we were number one in the country. So I got a chance just to watch the pendulum swing and watch how that works and to be able day in and day out, and then you felt confident, and you believe that if I go out on my own, we can recreate some of these same staples that it takes principles that you believe to really build a program," Mills said.
Mills represented Baylor for 14 seasons before embracing his first head coaching job with the Oral Roberts Golden Eagles in April 2017. It started out rough, winning 11 games in each of his first two years at the helm.
Mills finally turned a corner in Year 3, getting his first winning campaign with 17 wins in 2020. Oral Roberts kept improving from there on, getting 18 wins and winning the Summit League championship to qualify for the 2021 NCAA Tournament. They made noise as they reached the Sweet 16 after stunning the Ohio State Buckeyes and the Florida Gators before falling to the Arkansas Razorbacks.
Mills led Oral Roberts back to the tournament one more time in 2023, gifting them 30 wins in what was a career year for the head coach. Despite the Round of 64 exit, he was proud to have raised the program's standard with his coaching skillset.
"I enjoy building programs and competitive guys and doing the right things and embracing the hard stuff. I've listened to a lot of people during the course of my life talk about how they achieve success, and rarely was it an easy path. And hardly anybody talks about how the growth occurs in easy times," Mills said.
"And I try to remind our players that the first rung on the ladder of success is failure, and you're going to have to go through it, and you're not immune to it, and I'm not immune to it. But the goal is to show up every day and to stay true to your principles. And over the course of time, I've just been able to be a part of programs that we've gotten better year after year after year, and it's something now that you're trying to continue to do."
Mills had humility with the foundation and success he achieved with Oral Roberts throughout his six-year stint. But he understood that to keep improving meant taking the next step in his coaching career in college basketball, which ended up with him accepting Wichita State's offer to become their head coach in March 2023.
Wichita State is no stranger to historic tournament runs. Case in point, their Final Four run in 2013 under head coach Gregg Marshall. They beat the likes of Pittsburgh, Gonzaga, La Salle, and Ohio State to get to that stage for the second time in program history. They even put eventual champions Louisville to the limit in the Final Four before coming up short 72-68.
Mills understood that embracing a change of scenery results in him dealing with a different culture and higher expectations, something he knew from his Baylor stint. Nonetheless, the Shockers presented him a body of work that he looked forward to achieving great results with them in the state of Kansas.
"There is just real growth that's required over the course of time, and you just need to show up every day and continue to build and do this brick by brick. But I will tell you, I only won 15 games my first year. Those are not the expectations at Wichita State, and I tell people I don't know why you would want to be anywhere where there's low expectations. So I'm thankful that I'm somewhere where there's high expectations," he said.
"But if we won 24 games last year, if we had won 24 games at Baylor or won 24 games at Oral Roberts, when I went around to a different restaurant in the city, somebody would say, 'Congratulations.' In Wichita State, they come up to me, and they say, 'How come we lost 12?' So there's a different level of expectations everywhere you go. And to be honest with you, it's something that you really embrace because again, there's high standards here, and you're trying to achieve them."
Paul Mills had a slow start to his time with Wichita State, winning 15 games in his first year. Despite this, he achieved noticeable improvements in the next two years. They won 19 games in 2025 to make the NIT first round, then earned 24 wins as they made the NIT quarterfinals in the process.
Mills prepares for the fourth year of his stint with the Shockers. The program hasn't returned to the NCAA Tournament since 2021, looking to make noise as a member of the American Conference as they reach for the glorious heights they enjoyed long ago.
Mills knows that expectations will be high on the Shockers this upcoming season. The American Conference media preseason poll ranked them at the top of the list, projecting them to be a contender for the NCAA Tournament. The pressure to keep winning can be noticeable, but he doesn't worry about that and instead focuses on figuring out the obstacles that come his way throughout the season.
"It doesn't matter if we won 10 in a row, and it doesn't matter if we've lost 10 in a row. I just need to tackle the next thing in front of me, and I'm just a big believer that you approach the next thing in front of you the right way. Attack it the right way, and you know what? Let's just see how this plays out over the course of time. I'm not big on people judging a season, a situation after a month, and it's not the way that this works. Like at the end, there will be time to reflect on things we need to do better and things that we did well, but it's not during the moment. You don't throw the passengers in your vehicle out on the freeway as you're driving. Okay, keep going. Go to your destination, and then figure out if the trip was as smooth as you needed it to be," Mills said.
In the current era of college sports, many teams go through significant turnover. A lot of players test the waters in the transfer portal, looking for bigger opportunities in stronger leagues. Fortunately for Mills, he brought back 11 players from last year as he keeps that solid chemistry intact.
The most notable players coming back are Kenyon Giles, Will Berg, and Michael Gray Jr. Giles returns for his final year as the leading scorer, averaging 19.1 points and 2.6 rebounds per game. Berg shined as a big man off the bench, producing 8.8 points, 8.1 rebounds, and 1.3 blocks per game. As for Gray, he made the second-most 3-pointers on the team with 52 triples on a 31.1% clip.
As for the additions they made, Jordan Frison, Bryce Heard, and Cyr Malonga stand out. Frison led Chattanooga in scoring (16.4 PPG) and assists (129), while converting 55.7 percent of his field goal attempts and 45.6 percent of his three-point attempts. During his time at Dayton, Heard averaged 6.6 points and 2.4 rebounds on 44 percent shooting from the field and 37 percent shooting from beyond the arc. Meanwhile, Malonga averaged 3.7 points and 2.5 rebounds on 67.3 percent shooting from the field at New Mexico State.
"Having 11 players back from last year's team, my guess is that's not only near the top; it may be the best in the country of just having that many guys back. Then, with the additions that we're able to add, I think we've kind of simplified and streamlined our teaching to get guys back on page. Now, with 11 guys back, it's different than the previous year where we had 12 new players. So it's definitely a different approach, but it's one of those teaching elements that I think we've gotten better at to equip our guys and make sure that we have the library of knowledge necessary to be competitive," Mills said.
Mills was proud of the fact that Wichita State excelled with its ability to rebound the ball, leading the American Conference in rebounding margin while ranking fourth in offensive rebounds. However, he noted the need to raise their efficiency with sharing the ball and securing defensive rebounds, which didn't translate onto the court well throughout last season.
"Our issue was defensive rebounding. We were 92nd in the country there, and we need to be better. Taking care of the ball, we were top 60 in the country, but sharing the ball we weren't great. And I don't mean that sharing the ball is necessarily gonna translate to high dime rates and push rates. It's not that; we need to [do it] a little bit more," he said.
"I thought we shared the ball well, but I do think that we can get more out of sharing the ball through cutting. The best shot in basketball are non-dribble twos, and that's the most efficient shot there is. And we need to be better at that. And so we put a lot of time into that through our cutting to put ourselves in a position to get more of those opportunities, so that the sharing the ball component can actually increase."
Mills is excited to get the ball rolling this season with Wichita State. He sees the high level of commitment that his players and coaching staff have with preparing for the regular season and performing to the best of their abilities.
"There is nobody who puts higher expectations and higher standards on teams and on coaches than what's done internally. Players really want to win. They put a lot of time into this. Coaches really want to win. They put a lot of time into this, and so from a staff, I'm not going to listen to outside people or outside noise when I know that they're not as invested as we are," he stated.
"We probably do this [for] 16 hours a day. Once you start to get into the season, it's closer to 18. Just because you're consumed with this all of the time, and I get a kick out of people who think about this for about an hour once every month, and they've got some opinion. I just know how invested we are in this, and I'm very conscientious of it. But nobody is beating the standards and expectations that our players and coaches have for ourselves."
The Shockers will look forward to the start of their regular season, being at home. They host the Cal State Northridge Matadors on Nov. 4 at 7:30 p.m. ET.
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