USU men’s basketball coach discusses team’s past success, future

With the start to Utah State’s basketball season nearing closer, Jason Walker and Dalton Renshaw sat down with USU men’s basketball second-year head coach Craig Smith to discuss last year’s results, and what to expect this season. 

When asked about last season and what he was doing for this offseason Smith said, “Nothing’s like last year. When you first get hired, there’s a million things going on. Everyone thinks of the professional side of it. You’re recruiting, guys are transferring out, you’re trying to bring new people in and you’re building relationships with your players. But then every university has a different set of protocol …You’re trying to get a new style of play. There’s some terminology that’s the same, but then there’s other ones where it’s almost like learning a whole new language, quite frankly.”

With these changes under his belt, he has been able to place a greater focus on recruiting. The coaching staff will be in four different cities in four days to look at different players. Along the way, Coach Smith will be heading overseas to watch current Utah State center Neemias Queta play for his home country Portugal in the FIBA U20 European Championship.

While talking about Queta, Smith discussed his experience of helping him through the NBA Combine. He explained the process of sending their paperwork to the NBA, who then distributes that information to each of the 30 teams. Each team then gives feedback as to when they project that individual to be drafted, whether it be in the top half of the first round, the bottom half of the second round or not at all. While Neemias may be coming back to Utah State after considering the information the NBA provided him, Coach Smith only has his players’ best interests in mind.

“Everyone always says, ‘I bet you’re happy to have him back,’ and we are,” he said. “But at the end of the day, we just want what’s best for Neemias.”

USU men’s basketball center Neemias Queta. Photo by Megan Beth Media

Walker asked Smith what it was like having the guys on the team play in international competition, the success that they had last year and what he felt the benefits were. 

“You can’t put a price tag on what it feels like to play in the NBA tournament,” he said. “You can imagine it and you can think about it; you can see that and go through that as much as you want, but going through that is a whole other deal …you have to earn confidence. You have to earn everything in life. But you have to put yourself out there and go through that to see what that feels like. Going through these kinds of things and playing at that level of competition I think is incredibly beneficial.”

Even with this experience that Coach Smith talked about, the team still lost several players. As Renshaw inquired about how he felt about the upcoming season and the changes, Smith became excited as he talked about the possibilities.

“Even though we only have the two seniors [returning], we have a lot of new faces,” he said. “One thing that will stand out when you watch us, is I think we are very versatile. We’re really big …Sam Merrill is our second shortest guy, and Sam is 6’4, 6’5. So, we have very good size. I like our athleticism …I think we can throw a lot of different players into a lot of different positions. Our new guys really fit our style of play and how we play. I’m still astounded when we walk in to workouts and I just feel like we’re staring up [at the players].”

As Smith continued talking about the differences between last year and the upcoming season, he once again showed how much he genuinely cares and respects his players. When addressing the issue of finding how a player is going to fit into team’s system, Smith had all the praise in the world who he deemed fan-favorite Justin Bean.

“He’s such a great person,” Smith said. “He’s an intelligent guy. You could just see him get so mad at himself, but he would never blame anybody…Bean is one of those guys that will never ever throw anyone else under the bus, whether he screwed it up or not. He would take the responsibility and bite the bullet.”

Smith spent two to three minutes heaping praise on Bean and his work ethic, along with the team’s combined efforts.

“He’s such a great teammate, and at the end of the day, he was always in the gym. …When you’re around players or people that work incredibly hard, and maybe they might not be getting it right away, they are going to figure it out. It’s just a matter of when.”

Though Coach Smith respects his players and genuinely cares about them, naturally, he still expects them to perform at the highest level, respect others and improve. Smith demonstrated this when asked what his plans were for the future of the USU men’s basketball program.

In his very candid way, Smith said, “You’re going to hate this answer, but truly we have incredibly high expectations, as we should …Rankings don’t mean anything because you have to go earn it. You have to earn everything. What it does show you, though, is the respect that your program has earned …That’s what was exciting last year. Our guys earned a lot of valuable experiences …Sometimes you’re fighting just to win a game. People forget that it is so incredibly difficult to win at our level.”

As the interview came to an end, Smith had one last thought to share about his players regarding how they fit into the community. Talking about the crowd at the USU men’s basketball home games, Coach Smith ended with a quote that should be up on the walls in the Aggie’s locker room: “We want to have a great demand. We want it to be an event for the community and the fans and the young children. I want our guys to be what every five-year-old aspires to be and to have every 85-year-old remember what he once was.”