It’s not how you start, but how you finish.
By Chris Dortch
“Tyler Smith Honed His Skills at Hargrave” was provided by Blue Ribbon College Basketball Yearbook. Chris Dortch is a Blue Ribbon College Basketball Yearbook editor. Copyright 2008 by Blue Ribbon College Basketball Yearbook. Reprinted with permission. www.blueribbonyearbook.com
KNOXVILLE, TN — It’s early January, and then eighth-ranked Tennessee is locked in a battle with 16th-ranked and unbeaten Ole Miss in the first Southeastern Conference game of the year for both teams.
Less than 30 seconds remain and the score is tied at 83. The Volunteers have possession, and their strategy to try and win was evident to all in attendance at Tennessee’s Thompson-Boling Arena that night.
Get the ball to Tyler Smith.
Though Smith, a transfer from Iowa, is a newcomer in his first season at Tennessee, he has by this early date in SEC play become a go-to player, in part because of a mild shooting slump by All-American guard Chris Lofton, but mostly because he can deliver.
He proved as much by scoring a clutch basket to tie the score at 83 with 1:17 to play, and now Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl was returning to the 6-foot-7 sophomore, entrusting him to make the difference in a game that could set the tone—good or bad—for league play.
Lofton sets a back screen for Smith and circles behind him to present another option for the final play, but he ultimately chooses to throw the ball to Smith in the paint. Smith pump fakes to draw defender Kenny Williams off his feet, wheels to his left and banks the winning shot off the backboard with his left hand. The partisan crowd erupts in eardrum splitting applause and Smith is mobbed by his teammates.
There have been other bright moments in his young Tennessee career, but with that clutch basket, a journey that began when, at nine years old, he declared to his mother that he was going to put Tennessee basketball “on the map,” had come full circle.
To be sure, the Vols had already gone a long way toward attracting national attention under the direction of the relentless, emotional Pearl after two NCAA Tournament appearances and scores of nationally televised wins in his first two seasons. But on this night, scoring the winning basket for his home state school was the realization of a dream for Smith, a dream that had been put on hold for two years.
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In 2004, Tyler Smith was about to enter his senior season at Giles County High School in Pulaski, Tenn., but a tough decision had already been made. In early September, he committed to Tennessee after an intense recruiting battle that then-Vol coach Buzz Peterson couldn’t afford to lose. His three-year record in Knoxville was 47-42, and Tennessee fans, spoiled by a four-year NCAA Tournament run pulled off by Peterson’s predecessor, Jerry Green, were growing more restless with each passing season. In Peterson’s mind, Smith was an impact player, a must-get guy that had all the requisite skills and, just as important, the potential to attract other in-state players during an unusually fertile period in Tennessee high school basketball.
Peterson and his staff got the job done off the court by signing Smith, who would be chosen Tennessee’s Class 2A Mr. Basketball in 2005, but that wasn’t enough to save him after a 14-17 record and fifth-place finish in the SEC’s Eastern Division had driven all but the die-hard fans away from Thompson-Boling Arena and dropped the interest level in Tennessee basketball to an alarming low. Athletic director Mike Hamilton was forced to make a move.
After the season, Hamilton fired Peterson and hired Bruce Pearl, fresh off leading his Wisconsin-Milwaukee team to an improbable Sweet 16 appearance after wins over Alabama and Boston College. The move was almost universally applauded, but in Pulaski, Tyler Smith and his chief adviser, father Billy, weren’t so sure.
One of Pearl’s first official acts as Tennessee coach was to visit the Smiths. And though Tyler nodded in eager anticipation as Pearl outlined his pressing, attacking, up-tempo style, Billy wasn’t so certain. He had developed a relationship with Peterson and his staff, notably assistant coach Chuck Benson. He didn’t know if he could trust Pearl.
Billy Smith asked Pearl to keep Benson on his staff, but when Pearl chose to go in a different direction, Tyler suddenly asked out of his scholarship. Pearl believes to this day other influences were at work in that decision.
“He wanted to come to Tennessee and play for me,” Pearl said. “But there were just too many people pulling him in so many other directions. There were a lot of different people that did not want him coming to Tennessee; a lot of people serving their own selfish interests.”
Ultimately, the only opinion that mattered to Tyler Smith was his father’s. And when Billy said to pull out of his Tennessee scholarship, Smith dutifully honored his father’s wishes.
“It was just a case of my pops looking out for his son,” Smith recalls. “He wanted to make sure I played for the right coach.”
When Pearl wouldn’t let Smith out of his scholarship, thus blocking his ability to sign with another school for a year, it essentially severed all ties. Smith’s boyhood dream of putting Tennessee basketball on the map had seemingly been dashed.
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In the fall of 2005, Smith’s journey began in earnest when he enrolled at Hargrave Military Academy in Chatham, Va. After all the turmoil surrounding his decision to ask out of his scholarship and Pearl’s refusal to let him do so, it ended up becoming a moot point. Because he didn’t make the required score on the ACT, he was academically ineligible.
Thus the detour to Hargrave, which, as Smith recalls, wasn’t a bad thing. On the court, he was surrounded by talent—11 players off a team that finished 28-2 signed Division I scholarships, including Vernon Macklin (Georgetown), Marreese Speights (Florida), Armon Bassett (Indiana), Jonathan Mandeldove (Connecticut) and Stefan Welsh (Arkansas).
Despite that wealth of talent, or perhaps because of it, Smith averaged 20 points 10 rebounds and five assists.
“Playing with guys like Marreese Speights every day, that’s got to make you better,” Smith said. “That’s where my passing skills evolved. You’ve got great players all around you. You can always find an open guy who can score.”
Hargrave coach Kevin Keatts, now in his 10th season, recalls Smith putting in the time to improve his game.
“He worked really hard,” Keatts said. “One of those guys who got to the gym early and left late. I think he came here with the reputation of being a great athlete, but he became more of a complete player by working on his dribble drive, his jump shot.
“We used him a lot of different ways. He was one of the best competitors I’ve had here and would do whatever we needed to win. He was one of the only guys I can remember here who could literally guard every position on the floor. He could score in a variety of ways, rebound and pass it. He was just a complete player who had an unbelievable year, and on top of that he was a great kid.
“Everybody here loved him as a person.”
Hargrave was useful to Smith in other ways. He got his academic affairs in order, learned how to live away from home and just generally matured.
“Going to a prep school turned out to be a great thing for me,” Smith said. “Me being younger, I didn’t have a lot of discipline, as far as meeting curfews and things like that. At Hargrave, I had to be in at a certain time, be on time to everything. It’s a military school, so you know it’s going to be strict. That ended up helping me a lot.”
Hargrave has long been a popular stop off for college recruiters, so Smith wasn’t forgotten during his season there. Quite the contrary—after Scout anointed him as its No. 2 postgraduate player in the class of 2006, he got more attention than ever from dozens of upper-tier Division I schools. Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Alabama, Memphis, Kentucky and Iowa recruited him heavily. Tennessee was never included among his final list.
He ultimately chose Iowa and coach Steve Alford, but he traveled to the Midwest with a burden only a few of his closest friends and family knew about.
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Throughout his year at Hargrave, Smith lived with the knowledge that his father was battling lung cancer. But in typical fashion, Billy Smith put on a brave face for his son. “Chemo is a piece of cake,” the elder Smith would say, and Tyler believed him.
There was more. Before Smith left for Iowa, his high school girlfriend, Brooklyn Russell, gave birth to a son, Amare. It was difficult for Smith to leave home, but basketball, he believed, would be his way of ultimately taking care of his family. Iowa would be just another step toward the NBA and financial freedom.
Smith’s debut season at Iowa was predictable. He averaged 14.9 points, and led the Hawkeyes in rebounding and steals. He was second in assists.
“He’s a freshman who knows and understands the game and knew it long before he arrived here,” Alford told the Iowa media midway through last season. “He’s special. There aren’t many freshmen out there who are putting up the kind of points he is and contributing in the number of ways he is.”
Smith ended up on the Big Ten All-Freshman team and was also chosen third-team All-Big Ten. But even as he was receiving those accolades, he knew his time at Iowa was nearing an end. In January 2007, he received word that his father’s cancer had returned.
“That’s when I started thinking about leaving,” Smith recalls. “His cancer had come back. He started going to chemo again. You just never know what’s going to happen. I knew I needed to get back.”
Slowly, word began leaking out that Smith wanted to leave Iowa, but his planned destination school shocked people. It was Tennessee. Unbeknownst to all but a few, the much-publicized rift between the Smiths and Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl had long before been mended.
“I had reached out to Tyler when he was at Hargrave and Iowa,” Pearl said. “I had connections at Iowa [where he worked under Dr. Tom Davis as an assistant coach]. I just wanted Tyler to know that I wished him well and I felt badly how things had gone down, because I liked him. I knew he had wanted to come to Tennessee, and I certainly would have loved to have coached him.”
Pearl’s chance to coach Smith would come, and come sooner than anyone could have imagined.
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After Iowa’s season ended and Alford, surprisingly to some, bailed out to New Mexico, Smith knew it was time to make his intentions known. He called Pearl.
“I told him he didn’t have to recruit me,” Smith said. “I was recruiting him.”
“You know what, I wasn’t surprised by that call,” Pearl said. “I was pleased, but I wasn’t surprised.”
Billy Smith took the news from Tyler with stunned silence, but the truth was, he too had always wanted his son to play for Tennessee. And after having watched Pearl’s teams play for two seasons, he knew the recruiting pitch the coach had made two years before was true. The Vols, who had just completed their second straight NCAA Tournament run with a heartbreaking, last-second lost to Ohio State in the Sweet 16, were a running, pressing, attacking team, and it just so happened they were losing one player, power forward Dane Bradshaw, that was the heart and soul of their team. Not only did Tyler Smith have a team, he had a starting job waiting for him.
Todd Lickliter, who had come from Butler to replace Alford, couldn’t have been more gracious when Smith walked into his office last April seeking his release.
“We respect his decision to be near his family,” Lickliter said at the time.
In May, Smith announced he was transferring to Tennessee. Pearl immediately called it a “market correction.” Along with Arizona transfer J.P. Prince, both highly rated Tennessee high school players from the class of 2005, Pearl and his staff had signed two players they hadn’t had the chance to recruit previously.
Lest any Tennessee fans were worried about chemistry problems with such an accomplished player joining what had been a cohesive unit, those fears were quickly dashed. When Tennessee players heard about Smith’s decision, they were excited about the possibilities.
“My first thought was that we could contend for a national championship with Tyler Smith on our team,” said senior guard Jordan Howell, who played against Smith in AAU and high school basketball and eventually became friends with him.
Tennessee immediately appealed to the NCAA for a hardship ruling that would enable him to transfer without sitting out a season. Smith’s case was so clear-cut the NCAA didn’t even pass it on to full committee for consideration. Smith would be eligible immediately.
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It’s a hot June day in Knoxville, Tenn., and more than 3,000 Tennessee basketball fans crammed into a high school gym with no air conditioning to watch play in the Rocky Top League, a summer league in its first season that includes high school and college players from across Tennessee. Vol fans were hungry to see what Tyler Smith was going to offer, and they weren’t disappointed.
Team with J.P. Prince, Smith thrilled the crowd with a high-wire act the likes of which hadn’t been seen at Tennessee in several seasons. And just as important, he wandered through the gym between games, signing autographs and chatting with fans.
Tyler Smith would have no problem fitting in.
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Smith enrolled in summer school, and in between classes and summer league games he visited his father, who had moved to McMinnville, Tenn., and his son as often as he could. As far as he knew, Billy’s second round of chemotherapy was going well. Tyler looked forward to the season, when his father, who had been a vocal supporter even from his earliest days of youth basketball, would be able to make the short drive to Knoxville and watch him play every game.
By this time, Billy Smith had developed a relationship with Bruce Pearl, who called him weekly, just to check in. It didn’t surprise Pearl one day in late summer when Billy drove to Knoxville for a visit. What he told Pearl, though, was a shocker.
“He told me, ‘You know I’m not going to be around his whole career,’” Pearl said. “I’m trusting you to take care of my son.”
Billy Smith had even less time than he thought. He passed away on Sept. 19, but not before Tyler rushed to a Nashville hospital to share his final hours. When Tennessee players and coaches learned of the elder Smith’s passing, their outpouring of support, just as Billy had hoped, was like that of a family protecting one of its own.
“We just wanted him to know that we were there for him,” said senior guard JaJuan Smith. “We wanted him to know we had his back.”
“Here’s what kind of guy Tyler Smith is,” recalls Jordan Howell. “When I found out about his father, I sent him a text, not expecting an answer or a call back, but just to let him know that I was praying for him. As soon as he got the text, Tyler called me. I couldn’t believe it, with everything that he had on his mind, that he would take the time to call me.”
The entire Tennessee team and support personnel made the trip for Billy’s funeral.
“It was amazing,” Smith said. “But I think it was even more amazing to the people there. Some of them probably thought coach Pearl and my dad were still feuding. But that’s how my dad would have wanted it. When the team showed up, all the focus wasn’t on him.”
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When Smith returned to school, he bore a permanent reminder of the special bond he had with his father. Two teardrops had been tattooed under his left eye.
“I got them so I could always remember,” said Smith, who dedicated his first season at Tennessee to his father.
Billy Smith would have been proud to see how well Tyler has fulfilled what many believe is his destiny.
Through mid-February, Smith had helped lead Tennessee to a 21-2 record, and true to form had become a stat-sheet stuffer, leading the team in rebounds and assists, second in steals and blocks, third in scoring.
The Ole Miss game might have been the best example of Smith’s ability to take over a game, but there have been numerous other occasions where a key pass, rebound or defensive stop helped lead Tennessee to victory.
“We’re not 21-2 without Tyler Smith,” Pearl said.
“He’s our security blanket,” said assistant coach Steve Forbes. “We run a lot of stuff through him. And late in games, when we get him the ball, we know something good will happen.”
Smith’s exploits haven’t gone unnoticed by the national media. ESPN color analyst Jimmy Dykes has worked several Tennessee games, and the former Arkansas player and Kentucky assistant coach has come away impressed with Smith’s versatility.
“He’s the one ingredient Tennessee had to have to consider itself a Final Four contender,” Dykes said. “He’s so versatile. And the fact that he was a high-profile guy who has blended in so beautifully tells you a lot about his character and the character of this Tennessee team.”
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Smith and Pearl are both believers in fate, that everything in life happens for a reason. Smith’s journey through prep school and the Big Ten, both men believe, served to better prepare him for the role he now plays at Tennessee.
“Coach Pearl told me that when I first started talking to him about transferring,” Smith said. “He’s said it’s not how you start, but how you finish.”
Sounds like advice Smith might have received from his father. Pearl admits he treats Smith no differently than the rest of his players, but he’s happily dispensed fatherly advice when it’s needed. And he’s quick to point out to Smith the younger that his father, long since freed from the pain and suffering that became the final months of his life, is always nearby.
“Tyler’s faith is strong, and so is mine,” Pearl said. “So we both believe that Tyler is fulfilling his destiny. He came home to play in front of his dad. Now his dad gets to see him play at home and on the road. Billy Smith is still very much a part of things.”
