Rice earned several honors this season including Pac-12 Freshman of the Year, All Pac-12 Team and Pac-12 All Freshman Team.
2024 was Rice’s first full season back in college basketball after he missed the 2022-2023 team fighting cancer.
Rice stepped foot on campus in the summer of 2021 and had to battle with Michael Flowers, Noah Williams and Tyrell Roberts for playing time. After a strong competition, WSU head coach Kyle Smith decided to roll with his veteran players and redshirt Rice.
“We had a couple of older guys that were good and you could tell that Myles’s talent was on par, he was just younger and I did not know if he was mature enough to lead a veteran group of guys and now we will never know because we did not let him. Now I am like, maybe we should have,” Smith mused.
Rice took that year as an opportunity to learn and grow his game and was ready to accept an important role on the 2022-2023 edition of the Cougs, but on September 12, 2022, everything changed.
Rice went to the doctor to get a lump in his neck checked out and was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. He had to relay that horrible news to his mother, Tamara, on her birthday.
“Having to break that news to her was probably the hardest thing I have ever had to do, but she stayed strong for me and let me know that everything was going to be okay. My parents being my rock through my chemotherapy journey was everything I could have asked for,” Rice said.
After losing another year battling cancer, Rice was declared cancer free on March 9, 2023. Then the process began to build back his strength to return to the sport he loves.
Rice was calling his mom to tell her he had cancer.
“It was hard for me to tell her,” Rice told USA TODAY Sports.
His mind was racing as he explained to his mother he had Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, thinking about life, basketball and what this would mean for his future as he had yet to even play a game of college basketball. But as chaos reigned in his head, Rice’s parents kept him steady. They told him he was going to get through this, and eventually, he’d be able to play basketball again.
Not only has he gotten on the court, but now he’s become a star. More than a year and a half from his diagnosis, Rice has emerged as a leader on a Washington State team with its most wins since 2007-08. The Cougars finished second in the Pac-12 regular season and will play Thursday against Drake in its NCAA Tournament appearance since that 2008 campaign. And to top it off, Rice was named the Pac-12 freshman of the year.