Master P’s Son Hercy Miller Commits To Playing Basketball At An HBCU

He’s carrying on the legacy!

Master P’s son Hercy Miller just committed to playing basketball at HBCU Tennessee State University, the Tennessean reports.

A senior at Minnehaha Academy, the 6-foot-3 guard has been ringing bells since he stepped on the court. His father, hip hop mogul and entrepreneur, Percy “Master P” Miller played with the Charlotte Hornets and Toronto Raptors in the preseason during the 1990s. His older brother Romeo also played two seasons of basketball at USC and the family has spent a lot of time in Nashville for music and during his sons’ tenure in the AAU basketball league. The younger Miller had received offers from Vanderbilt, LSU, UCLA, USC, Missouri, South Carolina, Arizona and Georgetown. His commitment to attend an HBCU, Tennessee State, took the world by storm.

“I want to be a leader and a dream of mine and a goal of mine is to change the narrative. I want to show people you don’t have to go to one of these big schools, Power Five conference schools, just to be great. There are a lot of great people who came out of HBCUs or mid-major schools. I want to be the next one,” Hercy told reporters during a press conference.

Hercy had narrowed his choices down between Vanderbilt and TSU, choosing to go with the latter primarily due to the persistence of TSU coach Brian Collins. Both son and father said they were impressed with Collins’ and his tenacity. 

“That’s the thing that got my attention. Because I feel like most people would have felt like, ‘Oh, he would never come here,’ but that’s not the case. With me I don’t see a school as having to be big or whatever to have to be good,” said Hercy. 

Master P echoed his son’s sentiments, saying, “I had never seen a coach with that much confidence. Coach Collins was like, ‘We want you to come here and I was like, ‘Coach, for real? Do you know all the big schools that are offering us?’ He said, ‘Yeah, I looked at that. But they’re nothing like Tennessee State.’ I felt a realness in him and his staff. He wants a winning program and he wants to change how people think about Tennessee State and we’re going to do that.”

For some years, the conversation about college athletes making the shift to attend HBCU’s has been recurring. Former ESPN host Jemele Hill wrote an article in 2019 about why Black athletes need to attend predominantly Black universities. That next year in July 2020, five-star athlete Makur Maker made history as the highest ranked college basketball prospect to commit to an HBCU, announcing his decision to attend Howard University. This past October, NBA superstar Chris Paul, who had been using his platform to raise awareness and money for HBCUs, announced his decision to enroll at Winston-Salem State University, citing the fact that he was the only person in his family who didn’t an attend an HBCU, which was something he intended to fix. Recently, there have also been reports circulating that Master P intends to purchase his own HBCU. 

Master P told reporters that regardless of his own stance, the decision on which college to attend was ultimately left up to his son. 

“He had a lot of big schools on the table – Vanderbilt, LSU, USC, UCLA – and I said, ‘Son, this is all your decision; you’ve got to live with whatever you do. We’ve been in and out of Nashville before and everybody thought he was going to pick Vanderbilt. When he told (TSU) coach Penny (Brian Collins), ‘This is where I want to go,’ it was a surprise to all of us. I think this is bigger than just going to a school and bigger than basketball. What Hercy is doing is going to change the game and I think a lot of great players are going to want to go to HBCUs,” he said.

Check out Hercy’s announcement below! 

Congratulations, Hercy!

Photo Courtesy of Tennessean