Smart showing VCU all the possibilities
HOUSTON -- It was halftime of the Southwest Regional final, and upstart Virginia Commonwealth was 14 points ahead of top-seeded Kansas. Rams coach Shaka Smart, who is one week shy of his 34th birthday, was warning his team to expect the powerful Jayhawks to flex their muscles and make a second-half run.
"He was telling us how we had to keep pressuring the ball and guarding, and he said something about loose balls,'' point guard Joey Rodriguez recalled Thursday. "Someone rolled a ball across the floor, and Coach just dove on the ball in the middle of his speech. He just keeps things loose.''
A year ago, Rodriguez said, the Rams were in their dorms after winning the College Basketball Insider tournament, and were cheering for Butler to beat Duke in the NCAA championship game. Now Smart has VCU at the Final Four -- preparing to play Butler in Saturday's semifinals.
It has been an improbable run for a team whose admission to the tournament as one of the First Four was roundly questioned, but even Butler coach Brad Stevens, last year's phenom on the bench, is on the Smart bandwagon. Stevens said he has known Smart since he was an Akron assistant and sees him as a kindred spirit in terms of recruiting players with "intangibles that translate at the college level.''
Stevens said he told a radio interviewer earlier this week, "For my next job, I want to be an agent for Shaka Smart. He is really good at what he does.''
There's no denying the charisma that comes as part of the Smart package. He's bright, having graduated magna cum laude with a degree in history from Kenyon College in Ohio; he comes from a multi-racial background, and he has worked with such coaches as Florida's Billy Donovan, Oliver Purnell at Clemson and Dayton, Akron's Keith Dambrot and his former Kenyon coach, Bill Brown, at California (Pa.) University.
Asked what "coaching tree'' he comes from, Smart said, "I'm kind of a mutt. First of all, my mom, Monica King, is the best coach I ever had.''
Smart said she taught him about showing appreciation to others for a job well done and that leadership or parenting "is not about you, it's about the kids.''
That lesson served Smart well two years ago when he replaced former VCU coach Anthony Grant, who took the Alabama job. Rodriguez, who was tight with Grant, left school. But he returned, and Smart let him watch practice until he committed to the program.
Smart has given the Rams a measure of freedom on the court, especially in terms of three-point shooting, and they praise him for instilling confidence. It's an approach Smart said he borrowed from Purnell, "his unbelievable level of optimism and positivity. It really dawned on me that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.''
At first, the Rams didn't know what to make of Smart. Grant was more distant, but Smart spent time off the court with them to build a relationship beyond coaching.
As guard Brandon Rozzell said, "It's kind of like cheating. He is like the sixth player in practice. He tries to stay hip with the guys. He'll try to use the slang we use. When we're in the locker room, we like to dance and he'll act like he can dance, but I can't see him dancing at all.''
Of course, Smart has VCU dancing like crazy now, all the way to "The Big Dance.'' How improbable did that seem when he took over?
"Well,'' Smart said, "Emily Dickinson said: 'Dwell in possibilities.' So it's not improbable at all.''
