Tim Miles, the zany, tireless, second-year Husker basketball coach, is building his fan base  one smartphone photo at a time.

Eight hours after Nebraska basketball choked away an 18-point lead to Ohio State in the Big Ten quarterfinals, threatening its first NCAA tournament bid in 16 years, Tim Miles was back in Lincoln, looking for something to ease the pain.

Doritos.

He pulled into a gas station on Old Cheney Road at about 11 p.m. Friday, determined to hustle in, hustle out. That's when he spotted the Coors Light party bus in the parking lot. Oh boy.

Miles hesitated — maybe I shouldn't go in there. "Ahhhh, they don't know me, they're college kids."

He opened the door and — like ants attacking cheesy chips — they swarmed him. Can we take a picture!?

Miles never turns down a picture. Their iPhones clicked once, twice, 10 times. Hana Muslic and her friends probably would've approached any famous person that night, she says. But few people would've generated so much joy at a Lincoln gas station.

"Tim is a legend."

Behind the camera "My friend and I are a part of the Kappa Alpha Theta Sorority here on campus and our symbol is the kite. "After the Illinois win, we 'kited' Coach Miles. He was a good sport and did the Theta symbol using his mouth and finger. Just something fun, but we was very excited to do it with us!"



 Casey Seberger

See the #MeAndCoachMiles photo » Great win for #Nebrasketball last night! @CoachMiles showed his love for @RhoTheta_NE after with me & @BrekkanBall! pic.twitter.com/Hkc2EtIS2e — Casey Seberger (@cseberger) February 13, 2014

How does a man take one of the worst major-conference basketball programs in America — a place that hangs NIT banners in the rafters — and compete against Indiana and Michigan State?

He doesn't. Not one man anyway.

Miles, a small-town kid with a small-college coaching pedigree, learned a lesson during 20 years on college basketball's backroads: It takes a village to raise a program. Before he could win at Mayville State, Southwest Minnesota State, North Dakota State and Colorado State, he had to persuade people to cheer. To care.

He had to forfeit privacy. Open his time to the public. Fuel the sputtering engine with school spirit. The generation with whom Miles connects most is the 18 to 50 crowd.

"The second Twitter came out, Coach Miles was on it," long-time assistant Craig Smith said.

Miles made a side bet with a colleague at Santa Clara. First one to get 5,000 followers wins.

"I remember coach coming in, saying 'I got 500! I got 1,000! I got 5,000!' "

Now Miles has 66,000-plus.

"That's part of the genius of him," Smith said. "He understands the culture. He understands people. And he understands young people especially and what's trending, literally (on Twitter) and figuratively."

Of course, Miles, now 47, didn't discriminate based on age. Once a year at Colorado State, he took his team to assisted living centers and challenged Granny to cards and darts.

"We'd have this little old lady carrying her oxygen tank up and throwing a bull's-eye."

Granny didn't live in a village that reveres its sports heroes like Nebraska does.

When he took the Husker job, Miles talked to Terry Pettit. He told Pettit he was expecting the attention at NU to be like North Dakota State — on a little bigger scale.

"And I remember Terry saying, 'It won't be like NDSU if you do it right."

Miles has done it right.

Miles loves a good conversation. But he also knows the value of making new friends. Take a photo with a stranger and there's a chance that man or woman posts it on Twitter or Instagram. His neighbor sees it, who tells his boss, who tells his barber, who tells his customer. Pretty soon they all want tickets.

Pretty soon players feel the fervor around town and start investing more time and energy in the offseason. Pretty soon prospects see the atmosphere on TV and start taking your phone calls.

And when an NCAA tournament bid comes down to one game against a Top-10 opponent on the final day of the regular season, suddenly 16,000 fans refuse to sit down.

It's like wildfire. One click of a camera phone can be the spark.

Jereme Jones of St. Edward in his #MeAndCoachMiles pic. Miles hosted Jones, a teacher, & students for nearly 1 hour. pic.twitter.com/vdUript42T — World-Herald Big Red (@OWHbigred) March 20, 2014 Behind the camera "I'm a business teacher in St. Edward, Neb. Each spring, my sports marketing class takes a trip to Lincoln to watch a Husker baseball game. We normally tour Memorial Stadium, too, but this time I decided it'd be fun to see the Hendricks Training Complex, so I sent Coach Miles an e-mail.



To my surprise, Coach Miles wrote me back and said that he would have a staff member give us a tour and then we could come and talk to him for a little bit. He ended up giving us almost an hour in his office. The amazing thing about it? I only had two students in my class."



 Jereme Jones

See the #MeAndCoachMiles photo »

Two years ago, Terran Petteway visited Nebraska the weekend after spring classes dismissed. It was a quiet Saturday. Not much going on in Lincoln.

Craig Smith escorted the Petteway family over to Haymarket Park to watch a baseball game. They entered through the pass gate in left field.

"Right away, three crazy fans walk up, 'Hey, you're Terran Petteway!' " Ten minutes later, Smith had to break up the conversation.

Walking away, Petteway's dad wore a skeptical look: "You planted that," he said.

Absolutely not, Smith said.

For the assistant, it signaled the potential of Nebraska basketball. This was a potential transfer who'd averaged two points a game his freshman year at Texas Tech. And fans knew who he was?

For years, outsiders looked at Nebraska basketball and assumed that natives didn't care. Truth is, they just didn't care for losing. Smith's neighbors tried to tell him when he moved to Lincoln.

"They said, you have no idea how many Nebraska basketball fans are in the state. They just never had anything to cheer about. You're gonna be shocked, Craig."

He was. Last year after a home loss at Devaney, the Huskers hosted autograph night for the previous summer's basketball campers.

Smith walked out of arena and there's a line wrapped around the concourse — "I couldn't see the end of the line." Forty-five minutes later, he came back and the line hadn't shrunk.

But interest didn't really blow up until Pinnacle Bank Arena. Until the Huskers' late-season run. Miles admits now that he was naive. So much that he called Terry Pettit back one day and confessed.

"I didn't imagine it like this."

Behind the camera "My wife needed a little break from my 3-month-old daughter (Kinsley Ann Carr) and me, so we decided to go "Meet Tim Miles" at one of his events. We have been Nebraska basketball season ticket holders for three years and loved the Miles hire.



After he spoke, he was visiting with fans. We waited around and Coach Miles came up and asked about Kinsley and offered to take a picture with us. The picture is my ALL time favorite picture of my daughter. I cannot wait to tell her that she was with Tim Miles from the beginning."



 Shawn Carr

See the #MeAndCoachMiles photo » Shawn Carr and 3-month-old daughter Kinsley Ann Carr snagged this pic at a "Meet Tim Miles" event. #MeAndCoachMiles pic.twitter.com/jTaNhtRcVy — World-Herald Big Red (@OWHbigred) March 20, 2014

Twenty years ago, you saw a local celebrity at a gas station and you shook his hand. You searched for a piece of paper and pen and asked for an autograph. But this is 2014. This is the Selfie era.

Miles has posed with drunk guys, sorority girls, babies — even Creighton fans (he subtly covered the Bluejay logo with his hand). He's posed during court-stormings on the arena floor, outside the bathroom during the Jay-Z concert.

"I've been asked IN a bathroom before. And I just respectfully asked if they could wait. And they did."

The other day, Miles drove his Black Escalade through his car wash on Highway 2. He reached through the passenger window and tipped the guy drying his car.

Meanwhile, out his driver's window, another young dryer said "Hey, Coach." Miles turned his head and — click. He barely had time to smile.

"He was like a pro," Miles said. "It didn't take 2½ seconds to have it knocked out. Boom. I'm like, man, you're good."

The attention can be a little overwhelming. Miles' wife is an introvert. When she sees the mob coming to her husband, she darts the other way — "She's gone."

Sometimes when Miles leaves the house, his son worries about him. "He's seen me get bull-rushed. He's 9 and he worries about my well-being. 'Well, a crazy person could do something.'"

"They're not crazy," Miles tells him. "We're just having fun."

Miles does understand how some coaches, especially if they're a different personality type, would hide from the attention.

In 2006, Miles' North Dakota State Bison went on the road and beat Wisconsin, the biggest win of his career to that point. The next day, ESPN invited him to appear on "Cold Pizza." Miles called Smith and described his unbelievable day. Media requests, one after another.

"Coach, you love every second of it!" Smith said.

Miles' response: "I know, but think if I was one of those coaches who didn't. ... How miserable would that be."

Smith has thought of those words countless times this season. Because Miles is selling the brand on a daily basis now. He's the CEO — the face of the program. And it requires more time than ever. It requires him to lean on his assistants and support staff more than ever.

Miles and Nebraska are the perfect match. An underdog leading an underdog. A coach who sought devotion all these years bonded to a fan base that sought enthusiasm.

But what happens if Nebraska keeps the momentum going next year and the year after? It's one thing to pose for 20 or 30 photos after games. How do you do it with 200 or 300?

"Will it take more time? Yep," Smith said. "Will it take more effort? Yep. But it's still who he is."

Thanks for taking time for picture @CoachMiles! GREAT coached game! #winningstreak #gbr #huskers pic.twitter.com/rnLk2zLVr2 — Dustin Haney (@therealdhaney) February 17, 2014 Behind the camera "I moved up to Lansing, Mich., last year from Omaha. My girlfriend, an MSU alum, bought us tickets to the Feb. 16 game for Christmas. Fast forward, after the Husker upset, we headed down to the court just to see what was going on. Tim Miles happened to come back out and we stopped him for a quick picture. This was the game after his Major League "winning streak" press conference and I imitated "that's what you call a winning streak" right before the picture. He laughed."



 Dustin Haney

See the #MeAndCoachMiles photo »

Hana Muslic remembers the gas station after a crushing loss. Kody Schrader remembers the Railyard after a festive win.

Schrader and his buddies watched the regular-season finale, absorbed the victory and decided to take off the next day so they could celebrate into the night.

He couldn't help but think of football. At 12, Schrader attended his first game at Memorial Stadium. He called it "magic."

Over the years, he watched Nebraska basketball, too. But it never felt the same. Never twisted his gut. Never lifted his heart.

Not until the night of the Wisconsin win. Not until 10:30 p.m., when he was partying with friends and out of nowhere, a man in glasses and a red tie appeared and started shaking hands, throwing arms around strangers.

Hey Coach, can we get a picture?