SAN ANTONIO — Its leader bolted for a junior college. Its leading scorer washed out at Wake Forest. Its most clutch player was a McDonald’s All-American from Virginia whom the Atlantic Coast Conference ignored.
And coaching America’s newest NCAA Tournament darling is a Madison, Wis., scholar named for a Zulu warrior and who’s coaching for a dying grandfather so sick he can’t watch his grandson’s remarkable run to the Elite Eight.
Virginia Commonwealth is still alive and well. Jay Bilas’ and Dick Vitale’s caustic comments over its inclusion in the NCAAs seem as distant as the Gettysburg Address. Read it and weep, Colorado Buffs fans. The No. 11-seeded Rams (27-11) meet top-seeded Kansas (35-2) at 12:20 p.m. MDT today for a spot in the Final Four.
“Make no mistake about it,” coach Shaka Smart said Saturday. “Our guys believe we can win. I know we can win.”
But it begs the question: Who is VCWho? And what is it doing here?
It goes back to Jeff Capel, the recently disposed Oklahoma coach who recruited Eric Maynor to VCU in 2005. He became VCU’s career scoring leader and lifted the Rams to two NCAA Tournaments under Anthony Grant.
In 2007, the former Florida assistant went to his old recruiting ground and found an undersized point guard in Joey Rodriguez. Grant also signed Ed Nixon, the guard Rodriguez’s team beat for the 2007 Florida state title, and 6-foot-10 Larry Sanders, who went to Milwaukee in the first round of the 2010 NBA draft.
The next year, Grant signed Bradford Burgess, a McDonald’s All-American overshadowed by his teammate at Benedictine High in Midlothian, Va., Ed Davis, who signed with North Carolina. Then add Jamie Skeen, VCU’s leading scorer (15.1 points per game) and rebounder (7.3), who started 24 games as a Wake Forest freshman but transferred after struggling academically and socially.
When Grant parlayed his NCAA success into the Alabama job two years ago, VCU nearly unraveled. Rodriguez, the two-year starting point guard and son of a NASA executive, announced he would leave for a junior college at the end of the semester.
“I should’ve listened (earlier),” said Rodriguez, who led the Colonial Athletic Association the last two years in assists and steals. “I was so devastated when Coach Grant left, I was out of it.”
Coming to the rescue was Smart, an assistant at Florida and Clemson who landed on VCU’s radar via its Villa 7 Consortium. Started in 2005 in Villa 7 in Las Vegas’ Mirage hotel, it’s a forum designed to introduce the nation’s top assistants with mid-major programs.
Hunger was Smart’s middle name. His first name comes from a southern African king who united hundreds of thousands of people.
“It’s about the best thing my dad ever did for me,” Smart said.
That’s because his dad wasn’t around long enough to do much else. He bolted back to his native Trinidad when Shaka was 2, leaving him to his mom, an educator who gave him no curfew or chores but with a warning that he’d better not have bad grades.
Harvard, Yale and Brown wanted him to play point guard, but he chose Kenyon (Ohio) College, a tiny Division III school where he had an iron-tight bond with the coach, Bill Brown. Smart graduated magna cum laude in history.
“In college I found a subject matter that I really enjoyed and classes that I loved,” Smart said. “All of a sudden I started learning because I enjoyed it and because I wanted to.”
Smart is the hottest coach in the country and getting linked to Georgia Tech. What he’d like as much as a stunning victory over Kansas, an 11-point favorite, is to share it with his paternal grandfather, who’s living out his final days in a Chicago hospice.
Walter King was told about his grandson’s Sweet 16 win over Florida State on Friday night. The rest of America won’t have to be told if he wins again today.
