The flow of confetti had trickled to a halt, but the Alabama men’s basketball team was still celebrating its 17th conference title. As players grabbed their phones from the locker room, Brandon Miller wanted to find his parents.

The 6-foot-8 Miller stepped over the crowd, stopping to pose for photos with a few cheerleaders while one fan screamed as loud as he could asking Miller for his game-worn jersey. When Miller finally made it behind the Crimson Tide bench, he tried to pull his parents onto the parquet but was denied by security. Instead, Miller leaned over a barricade and gave Darrell and Yolanda Miller his SEC championship hat. It was a brief moment before Miller was called away. A net had to be cut down. Interviews were scheduled. And through it all, Miller was trailed by a group of cameras.

The Miller family knew for a month the storm was coming, but at least the eye would be on their turf this week. Miller’s Nashville homecoming uniquely captured the position he currently finds himself in; He’s making a claim to be the best player in the nation while firmly planted at the center of its biggest story. Who else is having a media session deflecting questions about an ongoing murder trial in one moment, talking about the friends and family he had in attendance the next and promoting his new merchandise all in the same interview?

On the court, Miller was a force in the quarterfinals over Mississippi State. A superstar in the semifinals against Missouri. An MVP versus Texas A&M. If the circumstances of the week weighed on Miller, he didn’t verbalize it. When the relief did come — perhaps the purest moment of the Tide’s postgame was Miller’s elation at seeing mascot Big Al in the middle of a dance — it was hard to miss. At the very least, it was a preview of what’s to come in March Madness, where the Tide is a No. 1 overall seed and opens play in Birmingham on Thursday.

“I think it was amazing for him,” transfer guard Dom Welch said. “Just to come back home, perform like that in front of his hometown. Get the tournament MVP. I’m really proud of him. I talk to him every day. He’s my roommate. I just try to you know, praise him.”

Alabama’s run through the SEC tournament started on Thursday. National media piled into Bridgestone Arena as the Tide rolled Mississippi State, watching Miller wave both his arms to get the fans louder before the quarterfinals. A mostly pro-Alabama crowd cheered loudest for Miller in team intros, shrouding the few boos he received.

He would go on to earn the first of three standing ovations in three days when he checked out late in the second half. But the postgame press conference was tense, featuring questions related to the game and his involvement in the Jan. 15 shooting on the Tuscaloosa strip.

Miller was on his way to pick up former-teammate Darius Miles when Miles texted Miller for his gun, which was in Miller’s car. Eight shots would be fired, two hitting Miller’s windshield and another fatally hitting Jamea Harris, 23. Miles and Michael “Buzz” Davis were indicted on Friday.

“Respectfully, I’m not going to be able to say on that,” Miller said when asked why he should still be playing despite UA and Tuscaloosa police clearing him of any wrongdoing.

Another spectator, a big Kentucky fan who watched her team get eliminated the night prior, hovered near the Alabama tunnel with a neon t-shirt reading in Comic Sans font ‘I (heart) Brandon Miller.’ She’s not from nearby Antioch, Tenn., or Tuscaloosa. The woman and her son are huge college basketball fans, she said, and each year they pick a player to root for aside from the Wildcats. This season was Miller.

Miller has been the subject of opposing boos all year, earning a modicum of respect in a way. “You’re the biggest obstacle to a win and we want to get in your head.” Marlin Simms, who was wearing a t-shirt from the ‘BrandMillerr’ collection, knew from years of watching Miller 12 miles south at Cane Ridge (Tenn.) High when opponents talked smack, Miller rose to the occasion.

Miller didn’t have a drop in his performance against Missouri in Alabama’s semifinal. In fact, he assisted or scored on the Tide’s first 22 points of the half, rallying from a four-point deficit.

But in a grotesque turn, Miller wasn’t hearing it from fans just because he was, as Oats put it, the best player on the court. A group of Vanderbilt students arrived hours ahead of the Commodores’ semifinal game on Saturday to yell “Bran-don Kill-er” during warmups. At one point during the Tide’s practice, after signing the Kentucky fan’s shirt, Miller appeared to look right toward the loud group of three as its chant resumed, but quickly looked away when it was his turn in line for a jump shot. Such is the current reality for Alabama’s star freshman embroiled not just in a historic season, but controversy.

“Obviously we never lose sight of the tragedy that’s kind of marked our season,” Oats said Sunday. “It’s always there. Today, with the team, we’re going to celebrate this win without losing sight of that. Moving forward, we’re going to try to keep the team focused on the task at hand, just like we have, without ever losing sight of the fact it’s an unbelievably sad situation.”

Miller’s second-half run against the Tigers and dominating performance against A&M was, as center Charles Bediako put it, “just a Brandon-like day, nothing new.” He made key defensive stops and thrived as the focal point of the Bama offense. Quinerly called him the team’s most consistent offensive player.

A group of Miller’s old high school teammates and Simms converged as it did at Vanderbilt on Jan. 17 for the Sunday finale. Miller performed his pregame routine, stripping the crust from a Strawberry Uncrustable to clear his head. Hours later, he’d return to the Tide locker room with trophies he needed help carrying and the team’s hard hat award waiting in his locker.

Miller cracked jokes with teammates and deferred to his connection with them when asked how he’s handled the public and social media scrutiny of the last month. When asked what this week meant to him, Miller probably said it meant more for his parents, especially since they only had a five-minute ride “down the road” to the venue. But other Tide players recognized the moment.

“We just wanted to send him out the right way,” junior forward Nick Pringle said. “It’s speechless, man. He did it at home. That’s all that really matters. And we not done yet.”

Nick Alvarez is a reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @nick_a_alvarez or email him at [email protected].