San Antonio ? Shaka talka
Led by one of the hottest young coaches in the game, VCU’s run to the Elite Eight has allowed the rest of the college basketball world to learn a little more about Shaka Smart.
Raised by his mother and brought up on the belief that good grades were the most important thing a young man could obtain, Smart’s road to VCU has been filled with interesting twists and turns. Accepted into Harvard, Yale and Brown out of high school, Smart chose Div. III Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, because of his relationship with the basketball coach. After his freshman year, the coach left, and Smart was heartbroken.
“My mom didn’t have a lot of rules,” Smart said. “I didn’t have a curfew when I was a kid. I never had to make my bed. But if I came home with a bad grade, then I wasn’t able to do what I wanted to do, which was play basketball and the other sports that I competed in. And sometimes a bad grade was as high as a B, so I had to excel in the classroom. I didn’t really have a choice.”
After starting for four seasons and serving as team captain for three years at Kenyon, Smart graduated magna cum laude in 1999. His first coaching job came at California University (Pa.) as an assistant. From there, he worked under Oliver Purnell at Dayton from 2001-03, at Akron from 2003-06, at Clemson from 2006-08, and he spent the 2008-09 season under Billy Donovan at Florida.
As for his name: “It’s about the best thing my dad ever did for me,” Smart said. “Because I was raised primarily by my mom. Shaka is an African name, named after a king in southern Africa who united hundreds of thousands of people. He was a warrior, he was a tough dude, and my dad chose to name me after him. You may have seen the movie ‘Shaka Zulu.’ That’s who I’m named after. When I was growing up, and still to this day, I (was) kidded a lot about that, you know, people call me that, or Chaka Khan, different things. Doesn’t bother me, I’ve heard it all before.”
No watch party
Unsure of what the outcome would be, Smart chose not to have a watch party at the school’s basketball facility on Selection Sunday, two weeks ago, because he couldn’t stand the thought of bringing his guys together and watching their hearts break.
“I thought we would get in because a guy I trust had us in his projections,” Smart said. “But I didn’t know for sure. And I didn’t want our season to be defined by that night.”
Hair today, gone tomorrow?
Already a close-knit team, the Rams decided to display one final act of solidarity before their opening-round game in Dayton, Ohio, two weeks ago.
“Going into the tournament, we didn’t have time before going to Dayton to get a haircut,” Rozzell said. “So once we got to Dayton, we said, ‘Let’s just rough it out for the tournament.'”
The Rams are sporting a variety of hairstyles, but nearly each one looks a little scruffier in person than in his media-guide photo.
“This is for the tournament,” said Rozzell, scratching his beard. “No player on our team has cut their hair or got a trim. It’s just something we all did to show how much we enjoy being with each other and show that connection.”
This and that
• Senior forward Jamie Skeen, a transfer from Wake Forest, leads the Rams in scoring at 15.1 points per game. Skeen also leads VCU in rebounding, with 7.3 per game…. The Rams shot 44 percent from the floor this season, 37 percent from three-point range…. They also were outrebounded by an average of four boards per game.
• VCU was 2-1 in overtime games this year (including a double-OT victory against Delaware in February) and lost three of its final five games before ripping off four straight victories in the NCAA Tournament.
