Coach leads the Rams to first Final Four
They came to Virginia Commonwealth to play for Anthony Grant, a man who not only looked the part of a basketball coach, but of a GQ cover model.
So two years ago when Grant departed for Alabama and the Rams met their new coach, Shaka Smart, they were unimpressed.
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“I was thinking, who is this little guy coming into our building?” junior Bradford Burgess said. “[He was] completely different from coach Grant. His reception with the team wasn’t that great.”
Almost anyone would suffer by comparison, but especially Smart — a short, narrow-shouldered, 31-year-old with no head coaching experience. Instead of GQ, Smart was suited for Boys’ Life.
But two years later, Smart looms as a major figure on the college basketball landscape. He has guided the school to its first NCAA Final Four. Eleventh-seeded VCU (28-11) faces No. 8 Butler (27-9) on Saturday in Houston with the winner advancing to the championship game Monday night against No. 3 Connecticut (30-9) or No. 4 Kentucky (29-8).
During VCU’s improbable run to Houston, Smart has gone from relative anonymity to the unlikely name and face of this year’s tournament.
“I don’t sing very well,” Smart said. “If they want to make me a rock star because of what Joey Rodriguez, Jamie Skeen, Bradford Burgess and the rest of the team has done, then I guess that’s the way it works. But it won’t change me.”
Winning over the Rams upon his hire was difficult. Rodriguez considered transferring to a Division II school close to home in Florida. Skeen, who had just arrived via transfer from Wake Forest, wondered what he had gotten himself into.
“I came in, I knew coach Grant was a really great coach. I was excited to play for him,” Skeen said. “I got here in January and in late March he was gone. I was upset. I haven’t spoke to him since.”
But the players began warming to Smart when he held a meeting and wrote “200” on a white board. The coach explained those were the available minutes of playing time in a game. Smart asked each player how much time they deserved per game. Smart wrote the answers on the board and they added up to more than 500.
His message was clear: Playing time would be earned in practice.
“We had very competitive, intense practices,” Burgess said. “It got to the point where some guys were fighting.”
The results were evident in Smart’s rookie season as VCU went 29-7, failing to notch an NCAA berth but winning a consolation prize — the CBI tournament.
“It allowed us to end the season on a very positive note,” said Smart, who was a four-year starter at Division-III Kenyon College in Ohio. “We won our last five games. We won a championship. We beat a very good team [St. Louis] two games in a row in a championship series. We also got a chance to play a lot of our young guys.”
A year later, Smart and the Rams are the toast of Richmond and beyond. On Monday, fans waited in line for four hours to purchase VCU Final Four T-shirts.
“It’s a great reaction. I love it,” Smart said. “It’s very humbling. You realize that in coaching — you know this all along — it’s such a fine line between big-time success and lesser success. We’ve been fortunate to be on the right side of that line.”
