North Hills grad back for more
When the COVID-19 pandemic wiped away Nova Southeastern’s chance to compete in the 2020 NCAA tournament, Nick Smith tried not to dwell on it too much. After all, it was out of his control — and at least he’d be back in the winter for his senior season, right? Not so fast.
With the cloud of the pandemic still looming over the country and the rest of the world, Nova Southeastern chose not to participate in basketball during the 2020-21 school year. That left several players in a bind, including Smith. He graduated in the spring with a bachelor’s degree in finance, but with a year of eligibility remaining, he had to decide how he wanted to use it. Should he stay at the school that took a chance on him coming out of high school, or transfer elsewhere for his final year of college ball?
“Being down here in South Florida has been nothing but great,” Smith said. “The people, the facilities, the school itself. This place is too good and the coaches are too good to me. There was no doubt in my mind that I was coming back to Nova for my fifth year.”
Smith earned a starting spot as a freshman at Nova Southeastern after his prolific high school career at North Hills, where he was a two-time Post-Gazette Fabulous 5 selection. He averaged 13.2 points per game while knocking down 3-pointers at a 44.9% clip in his 2017-18 debut season, and the Sharks finished 17-10 after going 6-20 the previous year.
His numbers took a step back in 2018- 19, but the team’s performance skyrocketed. Nova Southeastern finished 29-4, earned a No. 3 national ranking and reached the Elite Eight of the NCAA Division II tournament for the first time in school history. Smith then averaged 13.9 points per game while knocking down 41.2% of his 3-pointers as a junior in 2019-20, and the team finished 23-6 going into the NCAA tournament before it was canceled.
Since legendary coach Jim Crutchfield took over going into Smith’s freshman season, the Sharks have gone from bottom feeders to perennial title contenders in the Sunshine State Conference. Nova Southeastern is 69-20 over that three-year span, with back-to-back trips to the conference championship game along with a regular-season conference title.
Crutchfield, who went 359-61 in 13 seasons at West Liberty, has the highest winning percentage of any coach in NCAA history — at any level. His teams’ runand-gun, full-court press style of play established West Liberty as one of the most exciting teams to watch in the nation, and he quickly transformed Nova Southeastern into a mirror image of the Hilltoppers. The Sharks averaged 96.6 points per game in 2018-19, then raised that to 101.8 points per game in the 2019-20 season.
“He’s evolved as a player who understands the game going on around him,” Crutchfield said. “If you really have a good vision of what’s going on in the game around you — why do you win, why do you not win, the team concept on both ends of the court, like a coach’s mentality I think he’s developed a better sense of the game.
“He’s going to be successful in any direction he goes, I know that for sure. But if he wants to be a coach, I think he’s going to be a good one.”
The foundation for the speed and efficiency of Nova Southeastern’s offense is laid during Crutchfield’s unorthodox practices, where the team eschews more traditional drills and instead battles it out in a simulated game environment.
“It’s kind of weird how we practice,” Smith said. “We don’t practice like anybody else. The whole entire COVID year, we played open gyms to like 100 or 140 every single day, pretty much. Our practices aren’t really practices. It’s more fun. It’s uptempo. It’s always competitive. It gives us something to wake up for and makes things interesting.”
The Sharks scrimmaged against each other nearly every day after their 2020-21 season was canceled, and Smith believes those grueling practices helped the team maintain its focus as well as its top-notch conditioning throughout the lengthy offseason.
As for this summer, Smith found a new way to keep himself busy and sharpen his skills. A former teammate of his started up a team in the prestigious Miami Pro League, considered one of the top summer basketball leagues in the country. Several NBA players have taken part in the league, including James Harden and Ja Morant.
Smith’s team reached the semifinals of this year’s league, and they even knocked off a team featuring NBA All-Star Andre Drummond along with several other current and former NBA players in the quarterfinal round.
“It’s awesome,” Smith said. “Like people always say, you grow up watching these guys on TV, and then one day you’re on a court with them. It’s kind of cool, seeing yourself stack up with those guys. It’s just a good experience.
“I think playing against those dudes, playing against all the guys from overseas and the NBA this summer — when we get into our regular season, it’s going to really help us.”
Taking part in the elite summer league should help prepare Smith for his final season at Nova Southeastern, while also bolstering his prospects of possibly playing professionally after college. Smith isn’t focusing on the future now, though. After all, he and his teammates have some unfinished business to take care of — business almost two years in the making.
“We talk about it in practice,” Smith said. “We won the conference in the regular season, we won the South Region championship, so now we’re just missing the conference championship and the NCAA championship. Hopefully we can bring those two to Nova this year.”