LaMarcus Coker II, anyone? That’s what this reminds me of
When I received the call that Duke Crews and Ramar Smith would not be back with the team next year sometime early Friday afternoon, I had to first make a couple of phone calls to inform some UT fans that we were back on the market for a point guard.
Then, the rest of the 40-minute drive to Huntsville I sat back and thought on the careers that weren’t. The 2006 class was really Bruce Pearl’s first, and it brought huge excitement to The Hill, especially with a pair of big men slated to come in: Four-star from Bolivar Central Wayne Chism and five-star from Hampton, Va., Duke Crews.
I remember looking at Crews’ mugshot on Rivals.com and thinking, “This guy’s mugshot looks like an actual mugshot. He looks like one of the meanest, most unsavory characters I’ve ever seen.” Though Crews reportedly didn’t run with the right crowd and looked like he’d rather stab you than block your shot, that was part of his intrigue. We were very, very excited to have a big man — though undersized — come in and be ready to play on this level. We were even more excited that he was nasty, and he would be learning from another nasty-looking dude, Major Wingate. As it turned out, he may have learned more than just basketball from the big man.
After one weed suspension, Crews was kicked off the team along with Smith yesterday, for what is thought to be more of the Sticky Smoking. It turned out you can take the boy out of Hampton, Va., but you can’t take Hampton out of the boy. A Vols fan can only hope Crews’ buddy, Brent Vinson, has a better career and a longer career than Crews. We’re doing a lot of football recruiting up there this year, and while it is a veritable hot bed of talent, you run the risk of running into character issues like Crews, the Vick brothers, Allen Iverson and Jimmy Williams. Still, it’s a price you pay for talent.
Look, I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t disappointed when I heard about Crews. Despite the marijuana suspension last year, he did have the heart ailment, which had all of the Vol Nation and a lot of the country pulling for him. He looked like it genuinely made him happy to be a member of the Vols when he returned and sparked us during a midseason stretch where UT outrebounded something like seven consecutive opponents upon his return. Though an undersized 6-foot-6, he gave Chism, Tyler Smith and Brian Williams some fresh legs and always seemed to pull five to seven rebounds in limited minutes. All that, and he wasn’t playing at 100 percent. I was very excited to see his ceiling and see if he could live up to the expectations a five-star brings.
But there was one player that really thrilled me coming out of school — late-term signee Ramar Smith from inner-city Detroit, who had all the baggage and all the stars of Crews. Except this was a guy who supposedly could play point guard. This was a guy who wasn’t a great shooter but allegedly could break anybody down off the dribble. This was the guard we needed to run the show. Like many, I ignored the high-school bouncing around. I ignored UCONN backing off of him in recruiting, and I ignored the inner-city Detroit pedigree.
You can’t pigeon-hole these kids. You can’t paint them into a corner. So, I didn’t.
Well, fool me twice. The only two players who had character issues coming out of school are now gone from the Vols. Memphis, we ain’t.
It has been uncovered that the downfall of the two was academics and smoking da ganja. Well, big surprise there, huh? It’s the same woes that have followed them from their hometowns.
Here’s the thing with Ramar. I have friends who are friends with him, and he’s a super-good kid. Apparently, he has been a great kid since he arrived at UT. But marijuana isn’t legal, guys. It probably won’t ever be, and as far as I know, he had to medical ailments that would be a good excuse. Plus, ya know, you’re a student-athlete. Gotta pass to play. It’s always been that way, unless you go to school at Auburn or Florida.
As much as it stinks about Crews, I really could care less about Ramar on the court. He failed in so many major opportunities that he’s dead to me. During last year’s NCAA tournament, Ramar played like a star against Long Beach State, scoring 22 points and showing flashes of the player he could be. Though he took a step back against Virginia, scoring just seven points and missing three free throws, he again looked the part in a battle of strong freshmen against Ohio State’s Mike Conley Jr. Though Conley abused him in the Sweet 16 game, Ramar scored 15 points to hold his own. But in the waning seconds after Chris Lofton inexplicably missed the front end of a one-and-one, Ramar — as would become his M-O — did the same, and instead of dishing the ball to an upperclassman on the final play of the game, decided to drive against Greg Oden and was blocked as Ohio State beat UT in the Sweet 16 by a bucket.
From there, Ramar never really panned out. In the SEC tournament and NCAA tourney over the past two years, Ramar was 25-for-58 from the floor, and 31-for-53 from the free-throw line. It’s impossible for me to emphasize for you how many of his 22 misses at the free-throw line were clutch, game-in-a-pinch shots. Then, this year, he was so schizo in the regular season that Pearl over-tinkered with his lineup come NCAA tournament time, playing J.P. Prince — who’d never played the position at UT — there during the postseason. Point guard play cost us a deep run into the tournament, and I’ll forever believe that. In my mind, that goes on the shoulders of senior Jordan Howell and his complete offensive wilting down the stretch, and Ramar, who never could handle the big-game pressure.
Remember when I wrote that Ramar Smith was the key to the postseason? Remember when Ramar shut down Jeremy Pargo in the Gonzaga game? Well, that Ramar Smith never really showed up again other than one little spurt during overtime of the Butler game.
I wish him the best. I wish Duke the best. But much like former Vols running back LaMarcus Coker, they’re going to go down as players with all the potential in the world, all the excitement and possibility bottled up in their bodies. And all of it either went up in a cloud of weed smoke or stayed asleep with them during all the 8 a.m. classes they skipped.
It’s simply hard for me to be sad to see them go.
Recent Comments