Three-star WR and Colorado commit Keith Miller III, along with his team, The Colony Cougars, lost in the first round of the Texas Region 2, Class 5A state championship playoffs to the Lancaster Tigers, 44-29.
While he looks forward to playing basketball and competing on the track & field team for The Colony before he graduates, Miller can now look ahead to what comes next in his football career — playing for the Colorado Buffaloes.
Unfortunately for the Cougars, they fell to Lancaster, 44-29, thus ending the high school football careers of Miller and his teammates and fellow D1 recruits Christian Gonzalez and Marvin Mims.
Miller and Co. faced a team with similar big-name 2020 recruits, including three-star WR and Boise State commit Latrell Caples, four-star S and LSU commit Lorando Johnson, three-star CB and Baylor pledge Theron Stroops plus more.On the year, Miller caught 54 passes for 828 yards and scored nine TDs.
For Miller, although he'll still play on The Colony's basketball and track & field teams, the end of his football days has already created a twilight feeling of where all the time went.
"It goes by fast," he said. "After your sophomore year, things go by real quick — you’re already a senior by the blink of an eye.”
Miller said that he got much love from the Buffaloes coaching staff and some commits after the tough loss. Recent commit Toren Pittman attended the game in support, as well.
“All the coaches texted me," Miller said. "After the game I talked to Brenden Rice and Brendon Lewis, Carson Lee. The main conversation I had with with (Rice). He was just saying ‘don’t hold your head down too much,’ and encouraging me for college next year.”
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Miller did say that he's been in talks with a representative of the Adidas All-American Bowl, a game played in San Antonio on Saturday, Jan. 4, 2020. An official invite has yet to come but Miller indicated that if it does come, he'll accept it and play in the game. If that does happen, he'd join fellow Colorado commit Devin Grant in representing the Buffs in the contest.
Looking back on his most recent trip to Boulder, an unofficial visit to watch Colorado take on Stanford for homecoming two weekends ago, for Miller it felt different than other times he was in town.
“People knew who I was when I went to the Nebraska game, but just walking around and going to the concession stand (for the Stanford game), people were stopping me and acknowledging me, saying I was the recruiter of the year," he said. "It really means a lot because I didn’t know half the people stopping me — (Colorado has) a great fan base — I would say the best in the Pac-12 and probably the best in the nation.”
By "recruiter of the year," Miller clearly refers to the efforts he put in to help CU land coveted four-star recruits in Rice and Ashaad Clayton.Now, Miller will focus on basketball and track, while remembering the good times he had on the gridiron with the Cougars.
And sooner rather than later, he's going to really begin ramping up his weight-lifting regimen to get as strong as possible by the time he steps on campus as Colorado Buffaloes freshman over the summer.
Miller. who's 6-foot-5 and around 210 pounds, said he looks at the frame of Laviska Shenault and thinks getting to that level of strength is within grasp.
“When I first committed, (CU strength & conditioning) coach (Drew) Wilson texted me," Miller said.
"I’m a little bit taller than Viska. He’s 225 and if you’ve seen him in person — that’s a big dude, muscle-wise. I was telling (Wilson) that I wanted to get to 225, but he was telling me just get to 210, which is what I’m at now, and once I get there, they’re going to get the rest of me. They said they want me to be a solid 225 for when I get there.”
