The delirium emerged and if Brant Byers didn’t know it then, he had just become the subject of a moment in Millett Hall history significant enough to be hung on the walls of this facility until his youthful energy has faded and this special Miami team he’s a part of is a distant memory. The choice was his; would this be another in the long line of special finishes that will define Byers’ legacy around these parts? Or will this be a moment immortalized?
Byers had just contorted his body and thrown it into a helpside defender with a nearly reckless abandon–and he’d just been rewarded for it as the ball skipped through the net. Byers has let this type of moment pass him by in the name pragmatism of every time he’s created one, but this one was too good to gamble with. Failing to embrace what had just happened would do the moment and its magnitude injustice.
That was never in the picture for Byers, though. In that moment–which appeared to be the climax of his 26-point masterclass in a Miami win over Akron–he was possessed by the spirit of college basketball’s best story and a moment of electricity that allowed it to live for another day.
“AND ONE,” Byers yelled after the ball dropped with around three minutes left to play.
“He actually screamed,” Miami guard Peter Suder told Basket Under Review. “I was surprised a little bit, but I love that stuff. I love when people show emotion on the court.”
The best explanation for the moment that Byers can offer is “it just happened.” Byers is perhaps the most levelheaded player within this program and has demonstrated the necessary process-over-results mindset that has allowed this group to withstand intense media coverage and the reality of being the hunted.
Miami coach Travis Steele says he’s never seen Byers celebrate and laughs at the prospect of Suder remembering such a rare celebration from the Miami wing. If anyone around Oxford, Ohio, deserves to celebrate, though, it’s Byers.
When the sophomore wing arrived a few seasons ago, he bought into the vision that this program had something ahead of it despite the lack of proof of concept up to that point. He admits that he never expected this, though. Miami is 29-0 with two games left in the regular season and Byers is as significant of a face of this as anyone.
The Miami sophomore leads the team with 14.6 points per game, has led it in scoring in eight games and is a 30-minute per game player for it. The efficiency numbers also lend themselves to Byers’ MAC Player of the Year case. Byers is No. 94 in the country in true shooting percentage and is nationally ranked in eight other offensive efficiency categories.
As would be fitting for Byers, though, he doesn’t feel as if his biggest celebration is warranted yet.
“We haven’t won the MAC championship and reached some of the goals that we wanted to get to,” Byers told Basket Under Review, “So maybe I'll get a little outside the box whenever that happens.”
Byers had already decided that the best path to a desirable future was the prep school route when Miami assistant Jonathan Holmes–-who was the lead recruiter--saw him for the first time at Rock Hill while Byers was a member of Team Thrill. Byers was wrapping his senior year of high school and was heading to The Newman School in Boston as he hoped to generate some looks by getting out of his small town.
Holmes says he wasn’t all that familiar with Byers when he first saw him, but he knew that the Team Thrill team that Byers was on–which only lost one or two games all summer–was loaded. As for Byers individually, Holmes could easily see the athleticism and frame. When Byers started “firing” shots in from 3-point range, Holmes started to dream a bit.
“I was like ‘Okay. Okay,” Holmes said. “Just really what caught my eye early was his shotmaking, his athleticism and obviously his positional size and athleticism. I mean, he shoots it so easy. Obviously it was such a clean ball and it was what kind of drew my eye to him.”
Once Steele started joining Holmes at the games, he noticed that a few of the same coaches would keep showing up in the gym over and over again. They anticipated that if they were going to get Byers on campus, they’d have to win a recruiting battle to do it. Holmes and Steele knew that Byers could be a foundational player for them if they could land him, though.
Steele’s program was coming off of a 12-20 season and required Byers to have some significant faith in the vision, but Holmes says the connection between Byers and the staff was always there. Byers took an official visit to Bradley–which was more established as a program at that point–and had offers from Marshall, Iona, Holy Cross as well as a few other programs. He chose Miami, though.
Steele says Byers’ dynamic shotmaking ability and range stood out to him initially, but the competitiveness that the Pennsylvania native possessed was perhaps his best trait. The Miami coach says he and Holmes “fell in love” with Byers and his game at the time.
The only problem; they would have to wait on him.
“I was like ‘man, like why are you going to prep,” Steele said. “I think that they wanted to do it at that point in time because they had already made the commitment to do it and they felt like an extra year of physical maturity and probably just maturity overall would prepare him for college even more.”
The last thing Steele wanted to do as a college coach in the northeast was ruffle any feathers at Byers’ Boston prep school; The Newman School. Byers and his dad–Jonas–were both at the point where they believed there may not be all that much for him to glean from prep school, though.
Byers says he was skinny at the time and that he wanted to put on weight in his prep year. But, he was already committed to a Division-I program. His academics weren’t an issue, either. But he had committed to play for The Newman School, was on its campus and he didn’t want to back down from his pledge.
Steele says Byers had a vision of coming to Miami’s campus early, joining the program as a redshirt, getting stronger and giving himself some runway before his first college season. UConn star Alex Karaban did it before playing his first season, so why shouldn’t Byers?
“I was like ‘there's no reason to hold it off any longer,’” Byers said. “Go get comfortable with everyone there so that's what I did and it's I'd say it's worked out pretty well so far.”
For as much as Steele wanted to avoid upsetting those who mattered at The Newman School, he cared more about Byers and his development. When Byers and his family made the decision that he would be best served leaving Boston in favor of Oxford, Steele made the decision to take him–even if it inconvenienced Byers’ prep school.
“They weren't really thrilled about it if I'm being honest,” Steele said in regard to the prep school. “What I told the Newman school is that ‘I have to support Jonas and [Byers’ mom]. Like, that's my job and we had an open scholarship.”
Whether anyone liked it or not, there Byers was moving into a place on Miami’s campus preparing to join the team the rest of the way. Byers went on every road trip, saw every venue he was going to play at moving forward, practiced every day, learned the terminology, lifted weights with the team every day and got extra workouts in with the staff.
If Byers thought this build was going to be easy or that the vision would be vitalized as soon as he arrived on campus, he would be woken up quickly. Steele’s program was still early in its build, played in front of half-empty arenas at home games and the Miami team that Byers watched went 15-17 that year.
Byers and company believed that they’d turn it around down the line, though. Two years later, Byers is a part of a team that hit the 15-0 mark by Jan. 3. He’d always have been a part of it whether he went to prep school or not, but Holmes says the extra semester within Miami’s program was “incredibly beneficial” for Byers’ development.
By the time he got to his first summer in the program, Byers was closer to a sophomore than he was a raw freshman. His 8.4 points per game on 49.5% shooting indicated that the adjustment to the college game wasn’t all that difficult. His sophomore leap into stardom indicated something similar.
Perhaps something like this would’ve happened for Byers at some point down the line regardless of whether he took the redshirt semester or not, but it wouldn’t have been this fast. It wouldn’t have been this fulfilling, either.
“It's just fun because I think that's what we always say ‘be obsessed with trajectory and not the result’ and Brant, his game has just been on an upward trajectory,” Steele said “Our program has been on an upward trend right and it's been cool because he’s seen us when we weren't very good. And he saw us get better and better and better and watched us build it individually and as a team as well so I think it's pretty cool."
The Miami staff rolled past the old brick buildings and completed the seven-hour drive from Oxford to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, an old civil war town that’s hardly a destination. Byers was important enough to this staff for them to take a group trip to his hometown just to see his parents while Byers was at prep school.
In some ways the town they got a behind the scenes look at throughout the visit represents their star forward. Holmes says that the town is decidedly small and doesn't appear to make a big deal of itself, but he says the visit was “cool” because of the look it gave the staff into Byers’ life as well as his family’s.
Byers is one of just a few players to ever be recruited out of the town of 23,622 to play Division-I basketball. He’s one of just two in recent memory–the other is Ohio freshman forward JJ Kelly–and is a representative for the town because of what he’s done. Byers says he doesn’t try to draw attention to himself when he’s home, though. He does it unintentionally by representing the town as an understated star.
“I’m a pretty simple person,” Byers told Basket Under Review. “Never too high, never too low. But, someone that can be relied upon for whatever. Just reliable, I'd say probably is the main thing.”
Byers’ self description as simple could be perceived as self deprecating by some, but the perception of what the word simple means to those around him. To Steele it means low maintenance. To Holmes, it means that Byers is the model of consistency in terms of his attitude and habits. To Suder, it means that his teammate is properly equipped to avoid getting swept up by the storm of media attention he’s received.
The Miami forward describes himself as being from the “middle of nowhere Pennsylvania,” and says he doesn’t do “a whole lot” besides playing basketball. He does like golf–and says it’s his second-favorite sport—and country music. Byers is also a notorious lover of Jolly Ranchers–he’s known for using them for a pregame superstition, but admits that they’re more than that. He even displayed a treasure chest of blue ones that he acquired in an Instagram post.
Simple here isn’t a bad thing. It’s how Byers has gotten here. It’s how he’s going to stay here, too.
“He's a basketball guy,” Holmes told Basket Under Review. “He's not the most vocal guy, but he's fun to be around. He's a great kid and in our environment you can see him laughing and joking with our guys, but he's very, very process driven.”
As Steele evaluates where a player’s development stands, he keys in on what the player does well. Before he’s finished with his self scout, though, he identifies what a player’s weaknesses are and how he can facilitate a step forward in those areas.
The areas of Byers’ game that met the former criteria were obvious as he and Steele met after the 2024-25 season. Byers was already a “very good” shooter, as Steele says, he was smooth and he already had positional size that allowed him to make a real impact on the defensive end. The then-Miami freshman was No. 290 in the country in 3-point efficiency, but there was a problem.
He was having trouble shaking the ‘shooter’ label. He couldn’t often prove that he was much more than that.
“I would play games last year where I would probably dribble the ball maybe two or three times the whole game,” Byers said. “I feel like I was a lot more of just like a straight shooter.”
From the time that the 2024-25 season ended on, Byers made it his mission to become harder to guard. He refined his shot fake and made it more convincing. He worked on ripping closeouts and finishing straight-line drives off of them.
65.9% of Byers’ field goal attempts a season ago came from 3-point range, he scored off the bounce just nine times–per Synergy–and his free throw rate was just 31.1–per KenPom. As Miami approaches its most important basketball of the year with two regular season games left, Byers has attempted 57.2% of his shots from 3-point range, has scored it 17 times off the dribble, has the No. 108 free throw rate in the country with a 57.1 mark.
Byers has taken a leap from being an 8.4 point scorer a season ago to a 14.6 point per game standout and one of mid-major basketball’s brightest stars.
“He's just gotten so much better,” Steele said. “He's a young man that works so hard and is very process oriented, so I'm not shocked. With the growth that he's made in his game, especially with driving the ball cause he gets fouled a lot, he's able to finish in the paint. He does make better decisions and he made [good ones] before and I think there's other levels he can touch with it. But, man, just the growth that he's made since he's been here has just been a lot of fun to watch.”
Perhaps more than any number could indicate, Byers is a significantly more dynamic player than he was a year ago. When someone closes out on him, he says he feels as if he has a different level of freedom because he’s able to put it on the ground and build out his offensive portfolio outside of just shooting. Those around this program feel as if Byers is a significantly more dynamic finisher through contact, as well.
Drop that shooter label.
There Byers is jogging back towards the home bench at Millett Hall after completing perhaps the biggest masterpiece of his college career in a 76-73 Miami win over Akron. His joy isn’t tangible, but it’s obviously in there. It has to be after something like that.
In a game that was perhaps Miami’s most difficult game of the season, Byers was the best player on the floor. Miami knew that it would have to earn it–particularly after it lost a heartbreaker to Akron in the MAC final a season ago–and 26 points from Byers later, it had. All it took to get there was 10 shots attempted from the field to get there.
Surprising that Byers showed up when it mattered most? Not really.
“He's obviously one of the best scorers on our team, one of the best scorers in our league and even in the country,” Suder said. “The way he can shoot the ball not even just from 3, but almost 40 feet sometimes, it's just he's so consistent like that and then this year he's really developed his game off the bounce and that's what definitely propelled him this year so far.”
Byers’ best performances came in that outing, a 27-point showing against Wright State, a few 21-point outings and seemingly countless double-figure performances. The Miami wing went for 20-plus points just twice last season, but those days are over. Byers has gone for 20-plus just one less time than he’s gone for single digits this season.
Bigger than any number, Byers is either the best or second-best player on the roster of college basketball’s only remaining undefeated team. He’s a testament that development can be a plausible strategy in this era.
He’ll be a legend in this program forever, too.
