The game clock at 26 seconds, the lead a single point. Facing the ACC’s most efficient offense, Pitt needed a defensive plan to stop Miami.
All Panthers eyes went to Milan Brown. The associate head coach was Pitt’s lead scout for the game and, during this timeout, he would remind everyone of the Hurricanes’ late-game tendencies.
One problem.
“I felt like a mule had kicked me in the chest,” Brown says.
Three teams, three conferences and three time zones. Two common threads: Longwood, Utah State and Cal-Irvine each have won at least 20 games t…
The culprit was his implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD), Brown’s security blanket since a May 9 cardiac arrest left him unconscious and without a pulse.
Remaining calm as he stood in front of Pitt’s bench, Brown managed to discreetly inform head coach Jeff Capel that his ICD had engaged.
“Sit your butt DOWN,” Capel told him sternly.
Weeks later, Brown and Capel chuckle at the sequence, comforted by doctors’ assurances that Brown is healthy and that the ICD, designed to monitor the lower chambers of Brown’s heart, mistakenly detected a blip in the upper chambers.
Courtesy of clutch shots by Blake Hinson and Greg Elliott and timely steals by Elliott and Jamarius Burton, Pitt survived Miami that afternoon, part of a renaissance season for the Panthers, who are on the verge of their first NCAA tournament since 2016.
Brown survived May 9 thanks to untold confluences that all involved believe were choreographed on high.
“My saving grace is I know there has to be some other purpose going forward, and I’m actually pretty excited to figure out what that is,” says Brown, a Hampton native, former William & Mary and Old Dominion assistant and former Mount Saint Mary’s and Holy Cross head coach. “This was not coincidence. The man upstairs mapped it out and said, ‘Not yet.’”
Harrowing and heroic
On the evening prior to Pitt’s game at Virginia Tech, Brown relaxes in a plush lobby chair at the Panthers’ hotel. At age 52, he appears as fit as his playing days at Howard University.
He leans over and points to an indentation in the back of his head. That is where he landed, with a thud, on that Monday morning last spring.
It was 11 a.m., and Brown was strolling the concourse of the Petersen Events Center, Pitt basketball’s home, as he spoke via phone to a summer league coach in Virginia about a prospect.
The next thing he remembers is waking up at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center on Thursday.
“Everything I know is from what people are telling me,” Brown says, “which in some ways is great, absolutely great.”
What they tell him is harrowing and heroic.
Amy Anderson, Pitt’s associate athletic director for external initiatives and special projects, is renowned for her punctuality. But with three successive appointments that morning, she was literally running late, heels and all, to a meeting in the basketball suite.
When a co-worker texted to inquire of her whereabouts, Anderson responded with a GIF of Forrest Gump sprinting. Never in her 23 years with the department had she attended a meeting in this location.
Exiting a stairwell after climbing two flights, Anderson turned left and immediately noticed someone prone on the concourse. With a concert setup underway on the arena floor, she figured it was a roadie catching a quick nap.
That evening’s performers were metal bands Megadeth and Lamb of God.
As Anderson drew closer, she recognized Brown. He was unresponsive.
Anderson called 911, ran into the arena and screamed for help. A concert worker named Zach raced up the steps.
Both trained in CPR, Anderson and Zach worked to revive Brown. Custodians with walkie-talkies alerted arena management to open the loading dock doors for easy ambulance access. Associate head women’s coach Terri Mitchell held Brown’s hand.
“I was praying out loud: ‘I’m with you, God’s with you. We’re here for you,’” Mitchell says.
For a fleeting moment, Brown resumed breathing. Then, nothing. Anderson and Mitchell had the same thought: Get the automated external defibrillator that hangs on the concourse.
“And this is the commercial I want to give to people,” Mitchell says. “Know where [the AEDs] are where you work. I didn’t know, and I think the grace of God sent me [to the] right, because we’re in the middle of the concourse. I could have easily gone left. ... God, angel, whatever you want to call it, said, ‘Go right.’”
The women cut off Brown’s shirt and placed the AED paddles on his chest.
“I don’t know how many times we shocked him,” Anderson says. “It’s all such a blur.”
The AED worked and, when EMTs arrived to transport Brown across the street to the hospital, Anderson and Mitchell sensed he was stable.
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Pitt associate head coach Milan Brown is seen with the
co-workers who rescued him: associate head women’s coach Terri
Mitchell, left, and associate athletic director Amy Anderson.
Pitt Athletics
Still, the following hours and days were tense as they awaited updates.
“I am not the reason he’s alive,” Anderson says through tears. “There were so many angels that day. But if I wasn’t late for that meeting, the next time somebody was walking around there was about 25 minutes later. ... Nobody would have found him [before] it was too late.”
‘Ordained by heaven’
Pam and Charlie Brown raised a houseful of athletes. Their middle son, Morocco, was a linebacker at N.C. State and works in the Indianapolis Colts’ front office. Their youngest, Marseilles, played basketball at Richmond and Hampton and is a personal trainer in South Carolina.
Charlie passed away in 2018, and Pam travels frequently to visit her sons and six grandchildren. When Milan collapsed that morning, Pam was in Pittsburgh, having celebrated Mother’s Day and her birthday the previous evening at the Capital Grille.
Pam learned the news from Marseilles, who had heard from Pitt assistant coach Jason Capel, Jeff’s younger brother. Pitt staffers had trouble at first contacting Milan’s wife, Tina, who had been at a dental appointment.
When Beth Schoedel, the administrative assistant for men’s basketball, reached Tina, they used FaceTime so Tina could see Milan, oxygen mask on, breathing on the ambulance stretcher.
“We were all in shock for so long,” Pam says.
Doctors told the family that Milan had suffered cardiac arrest caused by ventricular fibrillation, a type of irregular heart rhythm. There are no blockages, no disease. They do not know why the v-fib episode occurred but, by Saturday of that week, they were ready to insert the ICD that corrects any rhythm issues.
Brown, who had Tina diagramming plays on his hospital room whiteboard, was discharged that evening and began outpatient rehab the next week.
“The doctor told me, ‘You’re a very lucky man. If one person didn’t do what they did at the time they did it, you’re not here. You’re the .5%,’” Brown says.
“With our family’s faith, we just know that this was ordained by heaven and the Lord’s will,” Pam says. “I imagine those events were to teach him something and teach us all something about life and about survival and about helping one another. It’s just a miracle.”
‘One of the lucky ones’
About 10 days after Milan’s hospital discharge, Tina drove him to the office for poignant reunions with Anderson and Mitchell.
“There’s nothing I can give them to show them as much gratitude as I have,” Brown says. “There’s nothing, except to say thank you every time I see them.”
Gratitude has long been a pillar of Brown’s faith-based journey, but May 9 has reinforced its importance.
Brown thinks often of all he could have lost that morning: Tina and their daughters, Nyla, 17, and Sanaa, 14; his mom and brothers; Pitt coaches and dear friends Jeff and Jason Capel and Tim O’Toole; plus scores of coaching colleagues and former players, so many of whom have reached out.
He watched breathlessly in January when Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin collapsed on the field during a game. He immediately texted Richmond coach Chris Mooney when Mooney announced that he would have surgery to correct a heart condition.
And then there is this remarkable team and season. Projected by media to finish next-to-last in the ACC, Pitt (21-10, 14-6) tied for third and is the No. 5 seed at this week’s league tournament in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Brown has been there for every step. He resumed full-time duties this summer, including on-the-road recruiting; feels great; and has no restrictions.
“To me, every practice is a great practice, and now that we’re winning, every win is not a great win, it’s a tremendous win,” Brown says. “And the times we’ve had losses, they hurt, but it doesn’t stay as long.
![]()
Only a remarkable confluence of events saved Pitt associate head
basketball coach Milan Brown when he collapsed in May and was
discovered by co-workers without a pulse.
Pitt Athletics
“I can move on to the next thing much better and quicker than I ever could because of what happened, because I understand how precious life is. You need to spend time with the people and the things that make you happy as long as you possibly can. So that’s what I’m doing.”
Secure in his good health — he did not flinch when an errant pass struck him in the chest during preseason drills — Brown is no longer hesitant to share his story. He wants to applaud those who rescued him and encourage everyone to take a CPR class.
“Not a day goes by where I don’t think: I don’t know why it was my turn to be saved,” Brown says. “I don’t know what it is about me that I was one of the lucky ones.”
Photos from the UVa men's basketball season
