Smythe’s hard work paying off
RAVENS: Tupper alum wins third CIS title
Within the most special university men’ s basketball program in the country, Cameron Smythe just might have the most unique package of skills.
And 11 days ago, as he jumped for joy along with the rest of his Carleton Ravens teammates in celebrating the program’s sixth straight CIS national title victory, a 101-79 win over the Calgary Dinos at UBC’s Doug Mitchell Arena, you could almost hear the pages being turned on the next chapter in the career of the sevenfoot forward from Vancouver’s Sir Charles Tupper Secondary.
“He is going to start to be one of the veterans on the team, so he’s going to be the guy setting the culture,” Ravens’ longtime assistant and 201516 interim head coach Rob Smart said of Smythe and his three-year apprenticeship (with two more seasons remaining), which seemed to have a figurative ending following his third straight national title with the team.
“This season, he was in that ‘showing flashes’ stage,” continued Smart. “At times over the last two months, he was our best player. There’s a bit of confidence that needs to get there. There’s some physical development and some skill things that need to get there. A lot of it is going to be his own drive. But what we started to see was all of his hard work start to pay off.”
In the language of Ottawa’s dynastic Ravens, the program which has won 12 of the last 14 national titles, that’s code for having your game broken down to its very basics over the first two to three years, than having it built back up to the stage where unique attributes are once again allowed to flourish.
And in the case of Smythe, that was the most enticing part of watching him find his fit with the Ravens over their week of CIS Final 8 competition in front of hometown fans on the Point Grey campus.
“I was not ready for it, coming out of high school,” Smythe readily admitted. “It was a big step for me to learn how to do it. You have your base from high school, your main skill set, but you have to develop everything else, and for me it was putting more focus on my overall game.”
Despite sprouting from 6-foot-3 in Grade 7 to seven feet by senior day graduation at Tupper, Smythe never lost, by different measure, an inch of his fluid, natural running stride, or an ounce of his near-guard-like ability to dribble the basketball.
And now that he has learned a new level of toughness and team accountability in the Ravens’ system, Smart can easily see just what is possible over the final two years of his collegiate career.
In fact, after Carleton gained its separation from Calgary in the national final by dropping a spree of 16 triples, Dinos’ head coach Dan Vanhooren specifically noted in his post-game comments that when a 7-footer like Smythe was able to hit two of those treys with letter-perfect shooting form, forces beyond reasonable control are at work.
“He’s got great hands, good vision and he is intelligent,” continued Smart. “He really understands spacing on the court. And what’s rare is that, when most bigs dribble, they look at the ball and don’t understand where everyone else is.”
And what’s to say he won’t win five national titles in five seasons?
“I think we’re going to see an awful lot come of the process that he has been under the last three seasons, and over his whole five years,” said Jeff Gourley, his coach at Tupper.
“He loves it there and he is so passionate about the game. And the one thing we always talked about was the philosophy of the journey and not the destination. That’s what Cam believes, and now, he’s even got that saying tattooed across his chest.”