Louisville’s Russ Smith brings sheer speed, and as Wichita State coach Gregg Marshall put it, the finishing ability of a “contortionist.”
Michigan’s Trey Burke is Mr. Smooth, calm and cold-blooded from 3-point range. Michael Carter-Williams of Syracuse is the long, lengthy, point guard in a small forward’s body. And Wichita State’s Malcolm Armstead, the lefty of the bunch, is the tough-minded bulldog eager to prove he belongs with the other three.
This is a Final Four built in the backcourt.
“The reason we’re all here is we have great guards,” Louisville coach Rick Pitino said.
As unique a set of skills as each of these guards brings, one thing they all have in common is that somewhere along the line they were underestimated. Oops.
Smith, who is 6-feet tall, weighed 142 pounds as a senior in high school. He played at Archbishop Molloy in New York City under a storied coach with alumni such as former Georgia Tech guard Kenny Anderson — not exactly off-the-beaten path. But the kid his late coach Jack Curran affectionately called a runt initially didn’t have a single Big East school recruit him.
His interest came from mid-majors such as La Salle, St. Bonaventure, and Nevada. Louisville got in only after Pitino’s assistant Ralph Willard went to Smith’s prep school, South Kent, to scout his teammate J.J. Moore, now at Pittsburgh. Willard still had to convince Pitino.
“I’m just thankful I had somebody in my corner,” Smith said.
He felt the same way Friday at the Georgia Dome when he was asked about being named third-team Associated Press All-American, even though he has emerged as the best player on the best team in the tournament, averaging 26 points in four games.
“I’ve always been overlooked all my life,” said Smith, who weighs 162 now. “No matter where I get put, first, second, third team, at least I was recognized.”
Marshall said he almost didn’t recognize Smith coming off the floor Thursday as Wichita State headed out between practices. This is a coach who’s spent the better part of this week breaking down Smith on film.
“He’s just a little guy,” Marshall said. “He is so incredibly talented for his build.”
Pitino tells a story about how Smith’s backcourt mate Peyton Siva challenged him to a pull-up contest one day. Siva insisted Smith wear sand weights around his neck because Siva outweighs him by 15 pounds. Smith put on the weights and did 39 slow pull-ups to Siva’s 38.
“I work hard,” Smith said. “And when I say I work hard, there’s no punch line. I work intensely, ferociously hard over the summer. My work ethic is unmatched. If I get put in the gym with anybody, I feel like I’ll outwork anybody. That’s the way I’ve been getting by, through high school, through prep school, now through college.”
Point guard can be a prima donna position, but not for these guards. Not even Trey Burke, who was named John Wooden Award winner Friday as the national player of the year.
The sophomore who flirted with becoming the first Big Ten player since Magic Johnson in 1979 to average 17 points and seven assists, who nailed a 30-footer to send the South regional semifinal against Kansas to overtime, was nobody’s blue chip early in high school.
He committed to Penn State as a junior to assure he could play in the Big Ten and come home to play in Columbus, Ohio.
“It put a chip on my shoulder,” said Burke, who later reneged on Penn State and chose Michigan over Cincinnati. “It made me work harder.”
After a rival guard scored 35 points in a summer-league game against Burke’s team his freshman year, Burke asked about the trainer the player was using. Burke met the trainer that night, worked with him for 90 minutes after the game and has worked with him every summer since.
Burke blossomed into Ohio’s Mr. Basketball his senior year, but was just coming out from behind the shadow of his friend, now-Boston Celtics forward Jared Sullinger.
“He was the No. 1 player in the country at the time,” said Burke, who had not yet grown into his 6-foot, 190-pound frame. “It’s not hard to get overlooked when you’re playing with a guy like that.”
It’s hard to imagine Syracuse’s 6-6 sophomore Carter-Williams getting overlooked, but that’s what happened to him as a high school freshman at a basketball camp at Stonehill College, a Division II school in Easton, Mass.
“We had evaluations at the end,” Carter-Williams said. “My evaluation was I’d be a good Division III basketball player. I saved it, put it up on my wall, used it as motivation.”
Carter-Williams thinks that evaluation might have been lost in the fire that destroyed his family’s home in Hamilton, Mass., two weeks ago, during Syracuse’s second-round win over California.
Creating new memories for his family has been his latest motivation, and Carter-Williams led Syracuse over No. 1-seed Indiana in the East regional semifinal with a season-high 24 points, five rebounds, four steals and only one turnover.
“When we recruited him, people questioned whether he was a point guard,” Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim said. “I think he’s proven to everybody that he’s certainly a point guard.”
Armstead came to Wichita State a point guard looking for a team. But he had to sit out a season after transferring from Oregon, where a coaching change prompted him to make an unorthodox move. Not only did the former junior college player leave a starting job at a BCS school to sit out a year at a mid-major, he had to pay his own way. Marshall didn’t have a scholarship for Armstead until this season.
So he took out student loans and got a job working as a runner at a car dealership in Wichita.
“I was driving cars back and forth from dealership to dealership or detailing cars or watering plants,” Armstead said. “Anything to help make money.”
He couldn’t travel with the team last season, including to Portland where the Shockers lost to Virginia Commonwealth in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Now thanks in large part to Armstead, Wichita State is this year’s VCU, a mid-major that has crashed the Final Four.
“It was a gamble that paid off to get us to this point,” said Armstead, who was recruited by Marshall out of junior college.
Waiting at home in Florence, Ala., this summer will be bills he owes for student loans. But his perseverance could help with that, too.
“I think he’s going to get a chance to play for a lot of money with his performance in this tournament,” Marshall said.
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