Midway through his college basketball career, Aaron Miles is on pace to crush Kansas University’s all-time career assist record.

The 6-foot-1 Portland junior, who ranks seventh in KU history with 496 assists, could conceivably pass Kevin Pritchard (499), Adonis Jordan (568), Darnell Valentine (609), Kirk Hinrich (668) and Cedric Hunter (684) this season.

And if he stays healthy, the pass-first, shoot-second floor general could surge past KU’s current all-time assist king — Jacque Vaughn (804) — sometime his senior campaign.

“Aaron Miles is the best passing point guard in the country, hands down,” gushed KU junior forward Wayne Simien, who is surprised Miles hasn’t received more acclaim nationally in the preseason magazines than have pretty much ignored the KU standout.

“He doesn’t get enough credit. He can pass. He can lead a team. He’s been to two Final Fours. Maybe he’s had other guys cast a shadow on him as far as the national spotlight, but I think he now deserves to be there.”

The national knock on Miles, who has a career assist to turnover mark of 496-235, is he can’t shoot.

Miles, who averaged 8.9 poitns a game last season, made 119 of 292 shots for 40.8 percent. He downed just 24 of 98 threes for 24.5 percent.

“I worked on my shot a lot last summer,” stated Miles. “It wasn’t necessarily how many shots a day I took. I did get a lot of shots up, but the big thing was making sure it felt good. If you shoot a lot of shots and the ball doesn’t feel good coming out of your hands, it does you no good. The shots I took felt good.”

Miles — he didn’t change his mechanics — believes the hard work in the gym will pay off and his shots will fall this season.

“I think at times the biggest part of me not shooting well was not being ready to shoot,” Miles said. “A lot of times, I was not prepared to shoot. If you stand around, get the ball and are not ready to shoot, you will not make it. You’ve got to be ready.”

He says he is ready to expand on his leadership role this season.

“The last two seasons, one of the biggest impacts on me was playing with Kirk and Nick,” he said of leaders Kirk Hinrich and Nick Collison. “Watching how hard they work … the work ethic and everything .. it shows the leadership they had on the court and off the cout.

“It’s something I’m trying to do myself.”

As point guard, Miles has had to exhibit some leadership in the past, calling out the offensive and defensive sets.

“I always felt I was a leader on the team,” Miles said, “but not just me, Wayne, Mike (Lee), Keith (Langford), too,” he said of the junior class. “When all this stuff happened last spring with coach Williams leaving, we led collectively, keeping everybody around, motivating our incoming freshmen to stay.

“I think it was the first time somebody had to become a leader. It’s something that had to be done. We are not the best leaders right now, but we are working on it,” he added of the juniors.

KU coach Bill Self is counting on Miles to lead the way.

“Is Aaron’s offense im-proved? Yes it is improved,” Self said. “(Yet) there is only one statistic that matters when you are a point guard and that’s wins and losses. I think that is where he excels.”