HofF Profile: Bob Smith
May 19, 2009 10:44 AM | General
May 19, 2009
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - Bob Smith could never resist a good practical joke. When Jerry West was a freshman and still feeling his way around campus, Smith and teammate Bucky Bolyard thought it would be a good idea to liven things up a little bit after one of West’s freshman games against Syracuse at the Field House.
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| Bob Smith scored 1,127 points in three varsity seasons for the Mountaineers from 1957-59.
WVU Sports Communications photo |
Even then, West preferred anonymity to celebrity.
After the games all of the young kids patiently waited outside the locker room to get West’s autograph – oftentimes not knowing what he looked like because they had only heard about him on the radio or read about him in the newspaper. Painfully shy and embarrassed to sign autographs, West sometimes tired to blend into the crowd so as not to be recognized.
Well, not this time.
Smith and Bolyard made a big sign that read I’m Jerry West and Bolyard discreetly went up to West and put the sign on his back. No sooner had Bolyard done this than a swarm of young kids came up and mobbed West.
“When Jerry found out what we did, he tore that sign off the back of his shirt and went back into the locker room mad,” Smith laughed.
The real problem, of course, came later when Coach Fred Schaus found out about it. The last thing in the world Schaus wanted was a bunch of wise guys upsetting his young, unsure All-American.
“Fred finds out what we did and takes us back into the locker room and starts yelling at us, ‘What the hell are you guys doing? Why are you getting him so mad like that?’” Smith recalled.
Bob Smith, known then by his teammates as Bobby Joe, was the guy who kept things light and interesting on those great West Virginia University basketball teams of the late 1950s.
Smith was usually the one breaking up the monotony of long practices. And he was the one guy on the team with the courage to challenge authority and speak his mind. Once during practice after watching Smith make mistake after mistake, a disgusted Schaus ordered Smith to turn his blue practice jersey to gold and play with the second team. Instead of turning it around, Smith fired it about 20 rows up into the bleachers. Schaus blew his whistle.
“All right, go get it!” Schaus yelled.
Smith glanced at Schaus with a disgusted look and he slowly started to walk up the steps to retrieve it. This time, Schaus blew his whistle loud enough for it to be heard across the river in Westover.
“Damned it, I mean now!”
Smith flew up the stairs to get his jersey and wound up running for the rest of practice.
Schaus dealt with these minor nuisances because Bob Smith was a heck of a basketball player. In three seasons with the Mountaineers from 1957-59, the 6-foot-4 guard/forward averaged 12.3 points and 6.3 rebounds per game. He scored a career-best 29 points in a 72-70 overtime loss at NYU in 1959.
All three years from 1957-59 he averaged double figures and wound up scoring 1,127 points during a career sandwiched between the school’s two best players Hot Rod Hundley and Jerry West.
“My job was to take the fast break,” Smith said. “If I had a 15-foot jump shot and Jerry was open you got it to Jerry. Jerry couldn’t dribble very well with his left hand then – he developed that later. He would wait and get me the ball in the middle and then go because they didn’t want him taking the ball down on the fast break.”
West would then come in from the left side and Smith would usually find a way to get the ball to West as he was soaring well above the rim.
Smith first learned to play the game in the early 1950s at the Charleston YMCA where some of the most well-known players in the state were playing.
“It was sort of a status symbol,” Smith said. “I started going down in the eighth grade and playing there was George King, Hot Rod Hundley, Sonny Moran and those guys. I would just play on the side and watch them.
“Well, I’ll never forget this, one day Tom Crutchfield, a teammate of Rod’s at Charleston High School, got hurt or something. Rod said, ‘Why don’t you come in and fill in for him?’ I played with those guys when I was in the eighth grade when they were in high school, college and pros.”
The games were winner-stay-on and teams put their names up on the chalk board.
“You lied, you cheated … you did whatever it took to win,” said Smith.
Smith idolized Hundley and when he became good enough to attract interest from other schools, his mind was already set on West Virginia University where Hot Rod was starring.
“When Fred Schaus recruited people I think he believed in recruiting the West Virginia kids that were proud of their state and so forth,” Smith said. “He didn’t go out and try and get five All-Americans. He had somebody that he wanted to be a rebounder (Willie Akers), somebody that was a fast-break person (Smith) or a defensive specialist (Bolyard).
“Of course Jerry was Mr. Everything. Fred sort of recruited in that fashion and we knew what our roles were,” Smith said.
Years later whenever they would get together, Smith would often joke with Schaus.
“Coach, let me tell you something, when I played for you I could have averaged 20 if I wanted to,” Smith would say. “I passed the ball to Jerry. If I had to do it all over again I would have got my 20 points.
“Fred would look at me and say, ‘And your ass would have been right on the bench!’”
Smith said one of the secrets to West Virginia’s great success was the team’s willingness to perform their specific roles.
“Schaus worked us so hard in practice. We absolutely cussed him after practice,” he said. “But many times when that ballgame was tight and there was a minute to go in the game and he called timeout and after we huddled around him, we would huddle away from him and we would all say, ‘We can’t let him down.’ That was the attitude that we had for Fred Schaus.”
Years later, Smith fully realized the brilliance of Schaus when he became an assistant coach on Gale Catlett’s staff at WVU.
“Fred would never put his arm around you. (Assistant George) King was the guy that came in because that was what assistants did,” Smith said. “I was an assistant for Gale Catlett for eight years and that was my job.
“Gale would chew them out and if it was a player that I recruited I would go to the room that night and explain to them, ‘Hey, you’ve got to understand him. He wants you to be better.’ That was our job because as a head coach, these high-strung kids … if you give them an inch they will run you ragged.”
Smith was likely referring to himself.
“When I came to West Virginia Fred was going to have to prove himself to me,” Smith admitted. “He told me my senior year at the team banquet, ‘Bob I’ve put up with more stuff from you than any player I’ve ever played with or coached.’ I looked at him and I said, ‘Coach, you loved every minute of it.’”
A wide smile then formed on Schaus’ face and he began to laugh. Yes he did enjoy every minute of it.
