NCAA tourney is corn-ucopia

MITCHELL, S.D. - It is a story as old as basketball shorts are long.

While a country boy leads his college team toward a national championship in a big city far away, the hometown locals flock to the gym where it all began.

Only, the tale of Florida's Mike Miller is a little different.

These locals are pigeons.

In a cluttered little corner of a wind-swept prairie, they will be flocking to the gym in an attempt to eat it.

You want a corn-pone Final Four?

You want corny reminders this is still a sport of playgrounds and driveways and barns?

You want cornfed athletes?

Mike Miller can give you more than that.

He can give you an entire palace.

The Corn Palace.

"The World's Only Corn Palace," reads the advertisements, and no man worth his salt (and butter) would argue.

Before Miller led the Gators into the national semifinals, against North Carolina today in Indianapolis, before he made enough big shots to become the biggest player in this tournament, he ruled the Corn Palace.

"If you haven't seen it, you'll never believe it," Miller said.

Once you have seen it, you will believe in all of it, especially the part about small-town roots enabling the Final Four to withstand storms and remain this country's most popular collegiate event.

Located on the corner of Seventh Avenue and Main Street in the farm town of Mitchell (pop. 14,191), the Corn Palace is where Miller played his high-school basketball.

For the Mitchell Kernels.

In front a mascot who resembles a winking ear of corn.

In games broadcast by, among others, radio station KORN.

Tourists stalk the building every summer with one question:

"They all ask, `Why?' " said Dale Odegaard, director of marketing and merchandising for the Corn Palace.

The answer can be found at the wick of the flame that drove Miller, a 6-foot-8 sophomore, from these desolate rolling fields to this weekend's national stage.

Built to bolster town pride, the Corn Palace now breathes it.

"You learn, if you want somebody to notice you from South Dakota, you have to bring something different," Miller said.

Like his driving shot that beat Butler in the final second of overtime in the tournament opener. Like how he doesn't want to be like Michael Jordan, but Larry Bird.

And like, well, the Corn Palace, which was appropriately built to honor the historical equivalent of a blocked shot.

Explorers Lewis and Clark once said they thought this area would be good for nothing. Some frost-resistant pioneers threw it back in their faces by growing long fields of corn and soybean.

In 1892, the Corn Palace was established to celebrate that highlight reel. It was redone in 1921, the roof was detailed in 1937 and the rest is agri-sports history.

On nights when cattle died and cars stalled and the wind chill hit 50 below, it has become a community's heart.

"It's like our own little Boston Garden," said Odegaard.

This is where 3,500 fill the seats for nearly every home game during basketball season to cheer the state's most prolific program, which won five state titles in the 1990s.

This was where Miller, whose family still lives in a modest wood-frame home across from a field filled with farm equipment, learned that basketball was more than just basketball.

And that his calling was higher than any leaping dunk.

"It doesn't seem like you get a lot of credit, being from South Dakota," he said. "It's important I can show everyone about what people from there can do."

Those people have already shown Miller.

Early in his high-school career, during morning shootarounds on game days, he would be curious about all the coats draped over the Corn Palace's front-row seats.

Turns out, those were people saving their seats for the game. Nine hours later.

Ernie Kuyper, Miller's cousin and best friend, remembers once when the team turned its game cameras to the Corn Palace's front doors when they opened in midafternoon.

"Everybody would come through the door and run to their seats," he said.

Miller's only problem was his weight. When he showed up in eighth grade at about 6 feet, 125 pounds, everyone called him "Skinny."

Skinny grew, and grew, and eventually became a high-school All-American and perhaps the best basketball player to ever come from South Dakota.

Not to mention, king of the Corn Palace.

Recalled Kuyper: "He was signing autographs for a half-hour before the games when he was a junior."

Said Miller, surrounded by cameras and note pads in Indianapolis yesterday: "My status today has actually decreased from when I was in South Dakota. There are a lot more stars here. This is kind of nice."