The CMS-ence of Miles President

CLAREMONT, Calif. - Senior guard Miles President was heavily recruited coming out of high school for his basketball skills. Four years later, as he prepares to have his Senior Day on Wednesday prior to the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps men's basketball home game against Redlands (7 p.m.), he is once again a highly recruited prospect, only this time in the tech industry, as he'll graduate this spring with top honors from Harvey Mudd's computer science program.

President comes into Wednesday night's home regular season finale with a chance to hit a major milestone, as he currently has 988 career points. With 12 more, he will become only the 20th player in CMS men's basketball history to reach the 1000-point plateau, and only the second Harvey Mudd student to ever do it, joining Dick Barton, who accomplished the feat over 50 years ago when he graduated in 1967 with 1,272 points.

The last Stag to hit that mark was Michael Scarlett, who graduated in 2018 with 1,327 while playing in the backcourt with President for two seasons. CMS won SCIAC Championships in both of those seasons and went on to the second round of the NCAA Tournament twice, and naturally that's a goal that means far more to President than a scoring number. 

"It would be incredible," President said of the possibility of returning to the NCAA Tournament in his final season. "We went my first two years, and it's an awesome journey to be able to have that experience."

President was the rare freshman who stepped in and became a starter right away for Head Coach Ken Scalmanini. He averaged 9.0 points as a sophomore in a supplemental offensive role to Scarlett, and had a more featured role offensively while earning a second-team All-SCIAC selection a year ago. His career numbers have included some impressive percentages, shooting 42.3 percent from three over his career, including 48.8 percent as a sophomore. 

"It just takes a lot of hours of practice," said President about his ability to shoot a high percentage, even while taking some high degree of difficulty shots. "I also owe a lot to my high school coach (John Mounce, who led President and Ruben Ayala High School to the California state championship), who taught me the form and revised my shot."

The most impressive numbers of President's career, though, probably come from the student side of the student-athlete hyphen, where he has a near-perfect GPA in Harvey Mudd's demanding computer science program. His academic credentials earned him an internship last summer at Google working on its cloud security division, where he will return to work full-time after departing Mudd in May, while planning to pursue a graduate degree as well. 

Before he turns his attention to helping Google with its cyber defense, President still has more work to do leading a CMS defense that led the nation in points allowed last year. That defensive effort will be key as CMS tries to battle some high-scoring league opponents to earn the SCIAC title, which will take place next weekend with the semifinals on Feb. 28 and the finals on Feb. 29. But whatever the result of this year's postseason run, President has enjoyed the experience of being part of the program throughout his career. 

"It's been a great journey," said President. "I know I've definitely made some friends here who are going to be friends for life."

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