Video of news conference at the bottom

Darius Miller had represented his country’s colors before.

He had traveled to foreign territory, ate food he’s never tasted (although he’s never been warned from drinking the water) and experienced a week without his phone (“That hurt pretty bad,” Miller said) in 2009 with USA Basketball at the FIBA U19 World Championship in New Zealand.

But this year’s experience at the World University Games in Shenzhen, China may have been more beneficial. In his second go-around with Team USA, Miller said he feels like he got a jumpstart to his senior season at Kentucky.

“We had three really good coaches,” Miller said of coaches Matt Painter (Purdue), Cuonzo Martin (Tennessee) and Brad Stevens (Butler). “I picked up a lot of things from them. We’ve been going hard, so I feel like I got an early start to the season as far as conditioning and just gaining overall experience against the competition we played against.”

While his teammates were in Lexington for a chunk of the summer playing in pickup games, Miller was testing his game alongside and against some of the world’s best young players. On Miller’s team alone, he played with the likes of Alabama’s JaMychal Green, Vanderbilt’s John Jenkins, Pittsburgh’s Ashton Gibbs and Minnesota’s Trevor Mbakwe.

Miller doesn’t mean any disrespect towards his teammates and the pickup games they played in this summer at the Joe Craft Center, but he feels like he’s better prepared for the rigors of Southeastern Conference basketball after a summer in China.

“Pickup games are not real basketball,” Miller said. “If you watch a pickup game, it’s more of a show than anything. You’re really going through the motions than when you play against competition, especially at that level where it actually means something to the people playing for a gold medal.”

Miller is hoping to springboard off the Team USA experience and cement what has already been a successful career at Kentucky. Last season, the Maysville, Ky. native averaged 10.9 points and 4.6 rebounds while helping UK to its first Final Four since 1998. He was also named the 2011 SEC Tournament MVP.

“Those guys are the best, some of the top players in the country,” Miller said. “Practicing against them every day, seeing how they play, maybe I can take a little bit of stuff from their game.”

Despite going 7-1, Miller’s team failed to win the gold medal and finished in fifth place because of a quarterfinals loss to Lithuania. Miller made no bones about his disappointment with a medal-less trip.

“We felt like we had the best team there,” Miller said. “We should have won. We had a pretty bad shooting night and I think that affected us on the defensive end. We missed shots and it seemed like people were getting frustrated. It carried over to the defensive end.”

The 6-foot-8 guard started five games and averaged a modest 5.6 points and 3.6 rebounds. On a team full of swingmen, Miller spent some time at power forward, where he focused on improving his rebounding. Without Josh Harrellson in the fold this season, Miller’s rebounding presence would be welcomed.

“He was a big part of our team, especially in the rebounding area,” Miller said of Harrellson. “I feel like we’re all going to have to work and pick up the slack for him.”

If anything, playing overseas where fouls were rarely called has toughened up Miller.

“It’s totally different,” Miller said. “It seems like everybody over there can shoot. The rules are different, especially traveling. We got a few traveling calls on us where we didn’t even know what we did. It’s a much more physical game, too. They play extremely physical. There are not a lot of calls you’re going to get, especially for the USA.”

With another No. 1 recruiting class in town, John Calipari has already said that no spots this year will be awarded on experience. Miller understands that he’ll once again have to fight for playing time, and he’s OK with that.

“I think it helps the team actually because everybody has to play hard,” Miller said. “You can’t take any days off. Overall that makes us a better team. We know we’re going to have to compete for playing time. It’s going to make us better in the long run.”

As the lone fourth-year senior, Miller is also embracing his role as a leader on what is otherwise another very young team. Miller believes he could have done a better job of leading the freshmen by example last year, especially early in the season.

Now he understands how hard it is to get to a Final Four and knows that it will take some early contributions from his experience.

“I have a big part in that,” Miller said. “I’ve been here for three years so I know what to expect. I know how intense it’s going to be. I know what it’s going to take to be a successful team. I can instill that in them in the early going.”

As for the experience of visiting another country, Miller said he was grateful. Although he didn’t get to do much sightseeing – the Great Wall of China was about five hours away from Shenzhen – he said he’d like to go back to China if he was ever afforded the opportunity again.

Never in Miller’s wildest dreams did he imagine that the game of basketball would provide him with so many experiences.

“I’m from a small town so we didn’t have many high-level experiences like that,” Miller said. “I never dreamed of being in the situations that I’ve been in, especially the last couple of years.”