Tubby Smith
1955–

Basketball coach

Tubby Smith is one of just six coaches to have led three different programs into the NCAA tournament's sweet sixteen, capped by the 1997–98 University of Kentucky squad that won a national title. In thirteen seasons, he has never posted a losing record, and his teams have qualified for the NCAA tournament eleven straight times. He became one of the highest paid collegiate coaches in the profession, as well as one of the most generous.

Orlando Henry Smith was born in Scotland, Maryland on June 30, 1951 to Guffrie and Parthenia Smith. The sixth of seventeen children, Orlando grew up on a farm on the tip of the southwestern peninsula. Orlando acquired his nickname "Tubby" early on, owing to his delight in bathing in an old utility tub. Guffrie Smith, who had been awarded a Purple Heart during World War II while serving in Italy, was a farmer who worked several other jobs in order to support his large, but close-knit brood, including barber, school bus driver, construction worker, and maintenance man. Though the children were expected to complete their fair share of farm chores, the elder Smiths were keen on seeing their offspring attend school. Tubby attended segregated schools, including George Carver High School, until transferring to the newly consolidated and integrated Great Mills High School in tenth grade. At Great Mills, Smith played football, basketball, and track, earning all-state honors on the court in 1969, his senior season.

Although Smith was recruited by and signed to play basketball at the University of Maryland, a coaching change in 1969 resulted in the scholarship being rescinded. Fortunately, Smith was offered a scholarship by High Point College, a small, Methodist-affiliated school in High Point, North Carolina. Having grown up in a Methodist church, Smith found the college to be a good fit. He excelled in basketball at High Point, where he was a four-year letter winner (from 1970 to 1973) and All-Carolina Conference selection as a senior. This despite the fact that he played under three different head coaches, including J. D. Barnett, who would later play a vital role in Smith's coaching career. Additionally, Smith was honored by being named a team co-captain for his junior season and team captain his senior season. Smith graduated from High Point in 1973 with a B.S. degree in health and physical education.

After graduation, Smith headed home, hoping to be drafted by the NBA or at least get a chance to try out with the league's Baltimore Bullets. Neither of those opportunities, however, came to pass. Instead, a slightly different opportunity arose when the superintendent of Great Mills High School approached Smith when the head-coaching job opened. Rather than following through with his fallback plan to pursue a master's degree before moving into coaching, Smith jumped at the chance to immediately become a head coach. At Great Mills, with the added difficulties of learning on the job and having to coach some of his own brothers and other relatives, Smith compiled a 46-36 record in four years. From there, he returned to North Carolina, where he led Hoke County High School, located in Raeford, to a two-year record of 28-18.

In 1979, Smith was able to make the leap to college coaching when he was chosen to become an assistant coach at Virginia Commonwealth University by J. D. Barnett, Smith's former coach at High Point College. It was under Barnett that Smith began formulating his long-term coaching philosophy. Smith would later say in a news release for Hawaii Pacific University: "I learned the game of basketball from J.D., and still use defensive and offensive plays at Kentucky that he taught me. He has a brilliant mind, is a great motivator, and is someone I still consult with." In all, Smith spent seven years at VCU, the first six under Barnett. VCU enjoyed a 144-64 record while Smith was on the staff, winning three Sun Belt Conference championships and making the NCAA tournament field five times.

Smith's next stop was the University of South Carolina, where for three seasons he was an assistant coach under head coach George Felton. The Gamecocks posted a 53-35 record during Smith's stay. A decade later, Smith would reverse the roles by hiring Felton as an assistant at the University of Kentucky from 1998 to 2000. When Rick Pitino was building his staff at the University of Kentucky in 1989, he took the advice of athletic director C.M. Newton and brought Smith in as an assistant. Newton had been impressed with Smith while the former was the head basketball coach at Vanderbilt University and the latter was an assistant at South Carolina. Smith worked for Pitino from 1989 through 1991, during the time that Pitino laid the foundation for reversing the fortunes of Kentucky basketball, returning it to the lofty heights of previous eras. At each stop, Smith added to, and developed, his coaching strategies. He also learned to network in the profession. In a 1999 interview with Scholastic Coach & Athletic Director, Smith is quoted as saying: "It always goes back to the people you meet. The relationships you develop mean so much down the road. Good people don't burn bridges behind them. They build bridges. I know that concept has helped me every step of the way."

Collegiate Head Coach at Last

When Smith was offered the head-coaching job at the University of Tulsa in 1991, he felt he was ready to take the next step in coaching. However, he did have some misgivings due to the circumstances leading to the vacancy. The firing of one of his mentors, J. D. Barnett, had led to the creation of the opening. Smith accepted the position but faced the difficult task of taking over a team with just five returnees. His first two seasons with the Golden Hurricanes were sometimes trying, but he still managed to guide them to winning records, a 17-13 team was followed by a 15-14 team. Smith's final two Tulsa squads were a different story. Those teams had identical 15-3 conference records, both taking first place in the MVC and qualifying for the NCAA tournament. In addition, Smith was named MVC coach of the year both seasons. The 1993–94 team finished with a 23-8 mark with their NCAA run ending in the sweet sixteen. Similarly, the 1994–95 team advanced to the sweet sixteen, finishing with a 24-8 record that resulted in the third best win-total in school history. That final Smith-coached Tulsa squad finished with an impressive fifteenth ranking in the final CNN/USA Today poll. In four years, Smith compiled a 73-49 record at the Oklahoma school.

Chronology

1951

Born in Scotland, Maryland on June 30

1973

Accepts first coaching job at Great Mills High School as head coach

1979

Joins the staff of head coach J. D. Barnett at Virginia Commonwealth University

1991

Accepts first head coaching job at the University of Tulsa

1995

Becomes first black head basketball coach at the University of Georgia

1997

Becomes the University of Kentucky's first black head basketball coach

1998

Coaches Kentucky to an NCAA championship and a 35-4 record

2003

Wins 10 national coach of the year honors after leading Kentucky to a 32-4 record

The University of Georgia came calling after witnessing Smith's quick turnaround of the Tulsa program. Smith signed on as the first black head coach in school history and immediately produced results. In Smith's first season, 1995–96, he coached the Bulldogs to a 21-10 record in the Southeastern Conference and took the team to the NCAA tournament, where it made it to the sweet sixteen. The next season, Georgia improved its record despite losing eight seniors, including the starting five. Their 24-9 record equaled the school record for wins in a season. Also, those back-to-back 20-win seasons were the first in Bulldog basketball annals. Making those two years even sweeter for Smith was the fact that his son, Orlando Guffrie Gibson Smith, or G.G., was a point guard and a key member of the team. The Bulldogs were ranked seventeenth in the final AP poll heading into the 1996–97 NCAA Tournament with a number three seed but were upset in the first round. That 45-19 two-year record, however, achieved with different starting line-ups, drew attention from the University of Kentucky (UK).

C. M. Newton, UK's athletic director, who had been instrumental in bringing Smith to Kentucky as an assistant under Rick Pitino, was now determined to steal Smith away from Georgia to head one of the most successful programs in collegiate history. Pitino, who was headed to Boston to coach the NBA's Celtics, initially supported the hiring of former assistant Billy Donovan, who had since become head coach at the University of Florida. Eventually, Newton's overwhelming support for Smith caused Pitino to endorse Smith's courting, even calling Smith himself to convince him to take the job. However, Kentucky had once been the home of legendary coach Adolph Rupp, who had had a reputation for racism. Even in the late-1990s, the possible hiring of Smith fueled controversy across the Bluegrass. Nevertheless, Newton interviewed only Smith and offered him the position. After a certain amount of soul-searching, Smith agreed to jump SEC institutions to take over the helm of the storied program. The University of Kentucky's athletic association unanimously approved the hiring in a mere seven minutes. Thus, Smith became the first black head coach in the program's history.

If winning will silence one's harshest critics, then Smith quickly closed the mouths of any Kentuckians doubting his abilities prior to his first season. In spite of a major loss of talent from Pitino's 1995–96 NCAA champions and 1996–97 NCAA runners-up (those teams lost six players to the NBA alone), Smith coached his young charges to take the regular season SEC title, as well as the SEC tournament title. Kentucky entered the NCAA tournament as a No. 2 seed and rolled through the first three games before colliding with top-seeded Duke University in the NCAA's South Region final. Down by 18 points in the first half and still trailing by 17 points midway through the second, the Wildcats rallied for an improbable two-point victory. The final four semi-final was similarly dramatic, as Kentucky came back from a five-point halftime deficit to beat Stanford University by one point in overtime. When the University of Utah led Kentucky by 10 points at halftime of the title game, it looked dire; no team had ever recovered from more than eight points down in a final. The "Comeback Cats," however, once again proved their resiliency, fighting back to post a nine-point win and grab a national title at the Alamodome in San Antonio. Plus, Smith was able to share it with his second son, Saul, a freshman point guard on the 35-4 team. After the season several individual honors rolled in for Smith, including National Coach of the Year by Basketball Weekly.

In the six seasons completed after winning the NCAA title, Smith guided the Wildcats to SEC championships in 2000, 2001 and 2003, as well as SEC tournament championships in 1999, 2001, 2003 and 2004. Through 2004, all seven of his Kentucky squads qualified for the NCAA tournament and none has ever bowed out in the first round, while two have reached the elite eight. None of his Wildcat teams has won fewer than twenty-two games in a season and his cumulative record at the Lexington-based institution is 191-52, for a 78.6 winning percentage. The 2002–03 squad spent much of the year at number one, finishing 32-4, with a number one seed in the NCAA tournament. Though that team came up short in the NCAA regional final, Smith's coaching was universally lauded that season. He won coach of the year honors from AP, USBWA, Naismith, Basketball Times, The Sporting News, NABC, ESPN, Foxsports.com, the Black Coaches Association and College Sports Television in what may have been the biggest ever sweep of national coaching awards. Following the season, Smith signed a new eight-year contract running through 2011 that would be worth upwards of $2 million per year.

In addition to sons G. G. and Saul, Tubby and Donna Smith have a daughter, Shannon, and a third son, Brian, who like his father and brothers before him, has pursued basketball, specifically point guard. After a notable career at Lexington Catholic High School, where he graduated in 2003, Brian received interest from several collegiate programs and chose the University of Mississippi. At Ole Miss, Brian faced his father twice a season playing at the rival SEC school.

Smith's involvement with the community has been exemplary. He established the Tubby Smith Foundation to assist underprivileged children and between 2000 and 2005 raised more than $1.5 million. Given his and his wife's generosity, the United Way created in the summer of 2001 an award in their honor: The Donna and Tubby Smith Community Spirit Award. Not surprisingly, the Smiths were the inaugural recipients, in part for their $125,000 contribution to the organization that year, which was the highest of any individual contributor across the state. Now given annually, the award honors anyone whose outstanding service positively affects central Kentucky.

Tubby Smith is clearly much more than a record of scores. He is a devoted husband and father, a dedicated coach, and a committed community leader. Nevertheless, the numbers do speak volumes. Through the 2003–04 season, Smith compiled a 315-114 record, for a dazzling 73.4 winning percentage in thirteen seasons as a head at three Division I basketball programs. With the exception of his first two teams at Tulsa, he has taken all his teams to the NCAA tournament field. Eight of those eleven squads made it as far as the sweet sixteen, highlighted by the 1997–98 team, which cut down the nets as NCAA tournament champions.

REFERENCES

Books

"Tubby Smith." Contemporary Black Biography. Vol. 18. Detroit, Mich.: Gale Research, 1998.

Periodicals

DeCourcy, Mike. "Ungodly Pressure." The Sporting News 98:10 (3 January 2000): 10-11.

Evans, Howie. "Smith's Hiring at Kentucky Sets Off a Storm of Controversy." New York Amsterdam News, 17 May 1997.

Mazzola, Gregg. "Still Up-Tempo." Scholastic Coach & Athletic Director 68 (April 1999): 46-55.

Wahl, Grant. "Tubby's Terrors." Sports Illustrated 98:10 (10 March 2003): 34-37.

Wolff, Alexander. "State of Anxiety." Sports Illustrated 96:1 (7 January 2002): 54-57.

Online

"Coach Bio: Tubby Smith: Men's Basketball." Kentucky Wildcats / The Official Site of University of Kentucky Athletics. http://www.ukathletics.com/index.php?s=&change_well_id=2&url_article_id=10276 (Accessed 4 December 2004)

"J.D. Barnett Named Athletics Director and Men's Basketball Coach at Hawaii Pacific (24 July 2004)." Hawaii Pacific University. http://web1.hpu.edu/index.cfm?section=seawarriorsports4220 (Accessed 5 January 2005).

                                  Kevin C. Kretschmer