Adam Miller signed a one-year deal Thursday with Coretec Oostende in Belgium, his first professional contract, after 152 college games at Illinois, LSU, Arizona State and Gonzaga. He’ll play on the North Sea for the most decorated club in Belgian basketball, one that just watched a 14-year run of national championships end in overtime.
He’s also walking into a locker room another former Bulldog (and a Top 5 most underrated and underappreciated Zags of all time) vacated five weeks ago.
That would be Silas Melson.
Melson played 143 games at Gonzaga from 2014 to 2018, a true four-year guy, and came off the bench for the first three years of it. He played for that 37-2 team that lost the 2017 national championship game to North Carolina. As a senior, however, Melson started all 37 games, logged 1,136 minutes and averaged 9.3 points. He was named All-WCC honorable mention and went undrafted.
Nine teams across seven countries later, Melson landed in Ostend, Belgium, where he averaged 11.9 points in 24 minutes a night across 29 games while also shooting 37% from three. He signed with Dijon in France in July.
It’s easy to see why Oostende went after Miller to fill the hole left by Melson. Both are 6-4 and somewhere between 190 and 200 lbs. Both played point guard in college when a roster needed it and shifted off the ball when it didn’t. Both score off the catch more than off the dribble, and both learned the game in Mark Few’s system. Miller shouldn’t need long to adjust. He’s versatile, he’s coachable, and he comes out of a program that turns out backcourt players who can slot into somebody else’s scheme.
The club’s announcement on Miller indicates that they’d like exactly the kind of backcourt piece they had in Melson: a big guard who can be used at multiple positions in the backcourt, let it fly from outside, and still bring some defensive intensity to the perimeter.
But last season was a rough one for Oostende. The club fired its manager in October and hired a new general manager in November. Three American imports came and went between October and January. Head coach Georgios Dedas was fired in February, and Denis Wucherer took over in March and was given just one month to work with his new team before the playoffs commenced.
Things went from rough to ugly in June. After fourteen straight Belgian championships, Oostende finished the season without a championship trophy for the first time since 2011 following a game 5 loss to Antwerp. That championship matchup was also one of Melson’s worst nights of the season. He shot 3-of-13, 2-of-7 from deep, and got to 14 points only because he went 6-of-6 at the line. Oostende lost by five in overtime.
Miller is the fifth and final import Oostende’s signed since July 3, following the additions of AJ Clayton out of Ohio University, Dakota Leffew out of Georgia, Stephan Swenson out of UC Santa Barbara and Jakobi Heady out of Bethune-Cookman.
At Gonzaga, Miller played all 35 games and started 25, averaging 7.3 points in 19.4 minutes a night. He shot 42.5% from the field and 30.2% from three, down from the 42.9% he hit at Arizona State the year before. His best night came at Santa Clara on February 14, when he scored 21 on 6-of-9 shooting and went 7-of-8 at the line.
But what kept Miller on the floor despite the nosedive in his shooting numbers were his intangibles as a leader and trusted veteran. Miller kept finding ways to keep himself on the floor through his dramatically improved defensive instincts and high IQ. In tough moments it was Adam Miller who called the huddles and made sure cooler heads prevailed. He kept guys level when games got tight. Despite the rough shooting numbers, Miller’s experience will be missed on a 2026-27 roster that has very little of it.
Miller now joins the list of nearly 20 former Zags making a living playing basketball overseas. Ben Gregg is at SIG Strasbourg and Joel Ayayi is at Paris, both in France’s Betclic Elite, where Melson himself will compete against them this season. Rasir Bolton signed with Río Breogán in Spain’s Liga Endesa in July after a year in Italy, and as we know, Mario Saint-Supery went from Gonzaga’s roster straight to Valencia.
Miller opens his first pro season in the Europe Cup on October 7, with a chance to help Oostende win back the title it held for fourteen straight years.
