UNGODLY pressure

Sporting News, The, Jan 3, 2000 by Mike DeCourcy

In a state where basketball is a religion, Saul Smith's greatest sin is being the Kentucky coach's son

This is the sort of peaceful moment Lexington does best. The air is clean and clear and warmer than a December afternoon deserves to be. Thoroughbreds graze through acres of green behind miles of white picket fence. Not much traffic on the downtown streets, as usual. The local sports talk shows do not begin for four more hours.

So Saul Smith can finish final exams practice with his teammates and feel reasonably certain his character is not being publicly impugned at this particular moment. However comforting this notion may be, it is fleeting. When the radio conversation turns to basketball in the evening then comes Lexington at its worst.

It would seem there should be a level of anonymity for a college point guard averaging 7.5 points and 3.1 assists, but this is UK basketball, which could be classified as a religion if only its followers took matters less seriously. In Saul's circumstance--playing for his father, Tubby Smith, on a team struggling to live up to Kentucky's late-'90s championship legacy--he faces more daily pressure than any player in the sport. Saul Smith is not so much a player as an issue.

In Kentucky's sports talk universe, a new format could be conceived: all Saul, all the time.

"With all the stuff I have seen through the years, this still surprises me," says Alan Cutler, who has worked as a broadcast journalist in Lexington for 15 of the past 18 years. "No one has come close to taking the crap this kid has."

Cutler hosts a daily talk show on WLXG-AM. He likes Saul Smith. This does not matter. His callers, most of them, do not. They do not like him because he is the coach's son. They do not like him because he is not Jason Gardner or Jason Williams--or Jason Kidd, for that matter. Mostly, they do not like him because the Wildcats lost half of their first eight games.

The week before the Wildcats played Louisville, there were so many apparent inventions regarding Smith's character by callers to Cutler's show that an assistant athletic director at UK, Sandy Bell, was compelled to call and defend him on the air.

"I really don't know many people who don't like me," Saul Smith says, "except for people who call in to shows."

Saul came as part of the package when Tubby Smith was hired to succeed Rick Pitino as coach of the Wildcats in the spring of 1997. Recruiting analysts barely noticed. He frequently was forgotten when UK's 1997 recruiting class was discussed. Now, he is all that is left.

Wings Myron Anthony and Ryan Hogan and center Michael Bradley, the lot of them recruited by Pitino, transferred. Saul Smith, a junior, went from occasional sub as a freshman on UK's 1998 national championship team to key backup as a sophomore. He established himself in his coach's mind as the successor to pint guard Wayne Turner.

This was shocking to many who make a living following college basketball. With Kentucky's allure' it seemed certain the Wildcats could attract a prime point prospect. Tubby Smith, did want to bring in an elite point guard--for next season. But UK overemphasized the pursuit of Louisiana's Chris Duhon when it was fairly apparent he would choose Duke. Duhon did. The Wildcats missed out on Adam Boone of Minnesota and the New York triumvirate of Omar Cook. Andre Barrett and Taliek Brown, winding up with a last-second commitment from 6-2 Cliff Hawkins of Oak Hill Academy in Virginia. Hawkins is considered an excellent athlete and defender but a suspect creator and shooter.

As for last season's recruiting class, though, Tubby Smith insisted--and still believes--none of the prep playmakers outside of Williams and Gardner was comparable to what he had.

That was quite a chance to take for any coach, more so for one working where the margin for error is nonexistent. Saul Smith did not have the same pedigree as many of his teammates. He entered this season with a career 3.7 scoring average. Smith's mother, Donna, privately fretted about what the fans' reaction would be if Saul and the Wildcats started slowly.

Through three games, as UK defeated 1999 NCAA participants Penn, Utah and Maryland, Smith took only 12 shots and averaged 6.0 points, and his assist-to-turnover ratio was dead even. When he went 1-of-7 in UK's loss to Arizona, assessments of his ability became increasingly harsh, even though he held Gardner to 3-of-9 shooting. Smith's 11 points in a stunning loss to Dayton did nothing to detract from the fact that it was a loss to Dayton.

The people who were beating the 'Cats, though, departed with considerable respect for Smith.

"I was really geeked up to play him," says Dayton point guard Edwin Young. "It was like, `Saul Smith, if he could play at UK, I know I can.'

"I figured he got to UK because of his father. When I played against him, my thoughts really changed. He deserves to be them. He's deceivingly quick. He was his team. You don't really see it on TV. He never got too rattled, never got too high. And he almost brought them back."