Andre Mills, a Dorchester native who attended the Mather Elementary School and then St. John Paul II Catholic Academy on Columbia Road as a youth, today is a redshirt freshman playing point guard on the University of Maryland’s basketball team.
Mills started his collegiate career with Texas A&M, then entered the transfer portal earlier this year, electing to follow his head coach to Maryland and a fresh start with the Terrapins.
In an interview with The Reporter, he remembered having a basketball in his hand by the time he was two and spending his childhood years in different areas of Dot.
“I grew up around Uphams Corner and then around the Franklin Park Zoo,” said Mills, who will turn 21 at the end of the month. “I used to stay with my grandmother a lot, since she lived near the Zoo. I was over there a ton.”
With his grandmother living so close to Roxbury, he began playing at the Manny Wilson Basketball Academy out of the Yawkey Club of Roxbury.
“It was a cool and convenient thing to do after school,” said Mills. “It was comfort. It was a way for me to express my emotions in a positive way.”
While basketball began as just another after-school activity, as the years progressed, Mills’s talent did, too. He spent his first two years of high school at Archbishop Williams in Braintree, where, he said, he began to see his own potential.
“I had a really good freshman year, and I had Coach [Brian] Holden, who played at the collegiate level. He just instilled in me a lot of trust, and taught me things about the game that I had no idea about,” Mills said. “I had a good feeling of the game, but he really taught me the mental part of the game, the conditioning that you have to have to play, and just little things like that.”
With Holden’s help and the support of the Mass Rivals AAU Program, Mills said, he took a “major leap” between his freshman and sophomore years. “I went from averaging like 11 points my freshman year to 25. I got bigger, stronger, more athletic,” reflected Mills.
After two years in Braintree, Mills left Massachusetts and reclassified at Vermont Academy. After spending a year up north, he returned to Massachusetts to finish high school with two standout seasons at the Brimmer and May School in Newton.
During his junior year there, he committed to play Division I ball at Texas A&M, and in his senior year, he set a one-game school record with a 52-point performance.
Mills said his current college coaches, Buzz Williams and Wabissa Bede, played large roles in his commitment process. Both men were at Texas A&M when he joined the squad; now all three are in their first season at Maryland.
“At Texas A&M, that group of players and guys were already there for four to five years together, like the whole team was seniors,” said Mills. “I had a meeting with Coach Buzz, and he was just saying like ‘You’re good enough to play, but we just have so much talent, we have so many veteran guys, that you’re probably not going to play as much.’
“I love coach so much,” Mills added, “because he knows there’s always a mental side of basketball, too, and there were a lot of things that were going on in my life that I don’t know if I would’ve been able to handle while playing.”
With the coaches’ guidance, he moved to redshirt his true freshman season and enter the transfer portal.
“That year was like getting my mental right and my emotions right, so I could play now, so that’s what led me to come with [Coach Williams] to Maryland as well.”
This fall he began his first official collegiate season with the Terps. With 16 games and 13 starts under his belt, the 6-foot-4 guard is averaging 8.6 points per game.
“There’s been a lot of ups and downs, of course, but I’ve enjoyed, and I’m enjoying a lot,” Mills said about his season so far. “Honestly, I’ve learned a lot about myself. I’ve learned a lot about leading, I’ve learned a lot about life, I’ve learned a lot about love, hate everything. I’m enjoying every moment of it.”
The season, however, is still far from over, and there’s a climb ahead for the Terrapins, who were 7-9 as they faced USC on Tuesday night. With three games next week, they hope to see a shift in those stats.
“I’m really excited and eager for these next few games,” said No. 7. “We’re finally starting to figure our identity out, so I just can’t wait to start this run we’re about to go on and shock a lot of people.”
When the season and school year is over, Mills plans to return to Dorchester.
Andre Mills drove to the hoop during a summertime Crew Love tournament at Harambee Park in August 2025. Seth Daniel photo
“I just enjoy being home,” he said. “Whatever my grandmother is doing, if she goes to church, whatever she needs me to do. I like keeping myself busy there. I work out, take a nap, and then just do what she needs me to do.”
In between, he will train with his high school coaches in Newton and occasionally treat himself to Rino’s Pizza by the Zoo.
His advice for the next generation of innercity basketball stars: “Stay consistent in your work every day and don’t worry about the next kid from your area that’s being talked about more than you. Don’t worry about people’s opinions, don’t even worry about social media. I wasn’t talked about until I was in junior high school, so just stay consistent.”
He added, “Stay with it and love it. Don’t do it for no other reason, don’t do it for other people, do it for yourself, do it because you love it.”
