m e n ' s
b a s k e t b a l l
f e a t u r e :
b a s i l
s m o t h e r m a n
COMING OF AGE
Freshman's transformed through recent years
BY BRIAN NEUBERT
BNeubert@GoldandBlack.com
A
mazing how times have
changed, how the environment young people — particularly young athletes — come
up in has become so drastically different.
In the case of many teenagers, particularly those
athletes whose ability sometimes makes them popular
draws for scores of e-friends
and e-"haters" alike, social
media is their world in many
ways.
Basil Smotherman didn't live on
Twitter — the beyond-popular social
media platform that's changed culture
— but it was, he admits, a significant
portion of his existence.
"I stay away from that stuff, don't
really look at it anymore," the Purdue
freshman now says, looking back at
his high school days. "It's helped that
Coach (Matt) Painter takes us off social media during the season to not get
us caught up in the hype or anything.
I'm good with it and if the season ended tomorrow and we got our Twitter
back, I wouldn't even get on it, I don't
think. It leads to just negative stuff,
nothing really good coming out of it."
He'd know.
It was during his junior season at
Lawrence North High School in Indianapolis, a school known nationally
for turning out not only countless
college prospects but countless
pros, where doubt started to sur-
f
round the Boilermaker recruit.
He'd just transferred to L.N. after
playing his first two seasons of high
school ball for his dad, Basil
Smotherman Sr., at
Heritage Christian. After Senior left Heritage, Junior
followed,
moving to the
prominent public school in his
district.
The transition was a
struggle for a naturally deferential personality looking to
fit in.
Smotherman barely averaged 10 points per game for a
team that struggled relative to
its reputation.
"He's not going to go out
there and be ultra-aggressive,"
said Purdue associate head
coach Jack Owens, who recruited Smotherman, then tracked
his progress closely. "He's the
ultimate teammate, a guy who
fits in. He's going to pass and
share the basketball. That's
part of the reason his numbers
may not have been what people
thought they might be. It's not
in his nature to go out and put
Tom Campbell
Only a freshman at Purdue,
Basil Smotherman's career has
already seen ups and downs,
but those trials have helped him
make an early impact.
IllustrateD volume 24, issue 3
61
