Leake’s Prince aims at playing next level basketball

Leake Academy junior guard Miriam Prince seemingly has all the tools to play basketball at the next level.

Prince is a proven winner for the Rebelettes, helping guide the team to the Class 5A state championship and the MAIS Overall championship last year. This year, Leake is off to a 16-1 start and is the No. 1 ranked team in Class 5A.

Prince is a proven scorer as well and is rapidly moving up the school’s all-time scoring chart, much like her father, Philip Prince, who is the school’s second all-time leading scorer.

She is a legendary gym rat, putting in numerous hours of practice during and after the season.

Prince is also a straight-A student at Leake and a devout Christian, helping with her father’s basketball ministry at The Arc.

Now it’s just a matter of Prince finding the right place to play after high school.

Leake coach Amanda Hatch, who is fourth on Leake’s all-time scoring list and played four years at Mississippi College, said Prince has what it takes to play at the next level, whatever that may be. 

“First of all, Miriam is a great kid and has the whole package,” Hatch said. “She is going to make sure that her homework and her studies are attended to. She is going to be a great teammate and has great character. On the court, she can do it all. She can score in any way that you can think of. She can get to the rim with either hand and can handle pressure, double and triple teams.”

Prince is currently averaging 18.4 points, 5.2 assists, four rebounds and 3.4 steals a game. She currently has 1,693 points for her career, putting her at 12th on the school’s all-time scoring list, but a strong finish to the season will put Prince inside the top 10 with a chance to get No. 2 all-time before she finishes her career.

When it comes to college, Hatch said she has no doubts about Prince’s ability to play at the next level.

“I definitely think she can play Division I,” Hatch said. “I don’t know if it will be SEC or Power 5. It just kind of depends. But I have seen Mississippi State, when they were a Sweet 16 team, have a player in their top six that was not as good as Miriam Prince. I think she will have great opportunities. We are in the private school association and don’t get a ton of looks in general and don’t get a ton of respect. We do compete against public schools throughout the year and are generally successful against them.”

Prince, who is 5-foot-8-inches tall, plays point guard for the Rebelettes and wants to follow in her father’s footsteps and play college basketball. 

“I would say that I’m a mid-major to an SEC school type of player,” Prince said. “I think I have the potential to be there if I keep on working and going as hard as I can. I have received some letters and have talked to some coaches and texted some others. I’m a Mississippi girl and a homebody. I would love to play at Mississippi State.”

Hatch said she has talked to several college coaches about Prince and has a consistent message for all of them.

“I remember talking to one college coach and telling them, she is going to live in the gym and going to make thousands of shots in the offseason, and that’s no exaggeration,” Hatch said. “She loves the game and is going to live in the gym and is going to put in the time. She’s 5’-8” but a long and scrappy 5’-8”.”

Like any coach, Hatch is always looking for areas of improvement in her players.

“She is also a talented defender as well,” Hatch said. “She puts a lot of pressure on the ball and understands the game, which is always good for a college player. There are a lot of great characteristics there. I stay on her about her off-the-ball defense. That’s something you can keep working on and getting better at in practice.”

This past summer, Prince played on the AAU circuit in hopes of catching the eye of some college coaches. 

“I think AAU was great for her,” Hatch said. “I think that and her gaining about 10 pounds of muscle in the off-season. She can get the ball inside and finish it and get the and one, get her own rebound and score like a post player would. She has gotten a lot tougher, and I think that came through the AAU.”

Prince said she enjoyed the AAU experience and is looking forward to playing again this summer.

“I didn’t know a lot about it when I started,” Prince said. “My dad said we are just going to go and play, no practices, just go and wing it. I loved it and loved my coach and the players. I had some good games and the privilege of playing with some good players. We played against some of the top players in Mississippi. The college coaches can come in July, and that would be nerve-wracking. There would be chairs filled with college coaches, everywhere from East Central to UConn.”

While Prince is a standout in the gym and the classroom, she enjoys helping her father in his sports-based ministry at The Arc.

“The Arc has been so special,” Prince said. “The worship has been awesome. We often see our acts of service as singing or sitting in a pew, but I love how the Arc lets me use one of my gifts, basketball, to share the love of Jesus. We put some courts up on the Westside and have been able to do some camps. Basketball has always been a big part of my life, and my family’s life and Jesus has been as well. My dad has gotten to go on ministry trips all over the world and play basketball. He said, why not bring it back to our community. I think it has a lot of power to reach people.”

While Prince stays busy with school, basketball and ministry pursuits, she hasn’t lost focus of one goal.

“A lot of girls and I want to go back-to-back, district, north half, state and overall,” Prince said. “We wanted to go undefeated, but Pillow had other plans.”