Here in the Mills family home in Monash, the feats of their son and emerging basketball star Patrick are watched, read about and listened to every day.

And most evenings there's a live cross to Saint Mary's College in San Francisco and a smiling, waving, face-pulling 19-year-old who is fast becoming one of US college basketball's most celebrated talents.

A few days after finishing an AIS basketball scholarship last August, former Marist College student Mills left home to take up a scholarship at Saint Mary's.

Despite being a first-year 'freshman', the point guard has been an instant sensation, leading his small college to the top of the West Coast Conference and lifting the 'Gaels' into the top-25 of all US college teams for the first time since 1988.

Fifteen years ago families in the Mills' situation would have relied on an aerogram or an occasional expensive phone call to keep in touch.

Now thanks to cheap internet videoconferencing, Mills and his parents can see and speak to each other whenever they want.

"Technology these days, it's great. They call me on this to check up on me, to make sure my room's nice and clean and make sure I'm still brushing my hair," Mills says, laughing on screen.

"I still get all the parental questions and I have to turn the camera around to show them that my bed's made and I've done the washing."

Naturally Benny and Yvonne are their son's biggest fans.

At home they proudly wear Saint Mary's T-shirts. They've sent other Saint Mary's paraphernalia to family and friends including Mills' uncle Danny Morseu, the last indigenous Boomers player before Mills' debut last year.