February 9, 2021

By Jack Soble

On Monday afternoon, Missouri guard Dru Smith took home his third SEC Player of the Week award of the season.

Smith, not one to brag about individual accomplishments, didn’t tell his immediate family.

“It’s funny because I didn’t even know that he got that again,” Kendra Giles, Smith’s mom, said. “He definitely does not tell anybody any of that kind of stuff. You just have to find out.”

Smith won the award after All-SEC-caliber performances against Kentucky and Alabama, further cementing his case for first-team All-SEC honors once the regular season ends. It also came just two weeks after Smith eclipsed 1,000 career points, spanning across a little over 3 1/2 seasons at Evansville and Missouri.

Smith scored many of those points, as people who follow Missouri basketball will tell you, “quietly.” The redshirt senior is a player who will make you look at the stat sheet in the middle of the second half and say, “Wait, Dru has 20?”

As Missouri’s season moves along, with each passing game adding another bullet point on Smith and the Tigers’ resume, his points are getting louder.

“Unless you really know basketball, I think he gets passed up a lot,” Giles said. “So it’s just neat to see him get recognized for all of his dedication to the game.”

***

When Smith looks back on his time at Evansville, a mid-major school in the southwest Indiana town where he grew up, one unconventional memory tends to stick out.

“It may not seem like a good memory, but it was just one of those times I was getting in trouble,” Smith said, laughing. “Coach [Marty] Simmons was kind of making fun of me, about me turning it over in practice. He just kind of called me out in front of everybody.”

Smith said that Simmons acted out Smith’s errant passes by throwing the ball at the wall.

“I was just trying to get Dru to understand the importance of taking care of the basketball,” Simmons said.

Smith’s never been bothered by taking criticism, saying that everyone on the team jokingly gave him a hard time about the demonstration after practice. Simmons, now an assistant coach at Clemson, remembers Smith as one of the better teammates and players he’s ever coached.

“One of his teammates, Ryan Taylor, who was a great player for us, he said it best,” Simmons said. “He said he loved playing with Dru because he played both ends. He was as dedicated on the defensive end as he was the offensive end.”

Smith, who is fourth in the SEC in steals per game after leading the league last season, has always taken pride in his defense. Giles, who only missed “five or six” of Smith’s games throughout his childhood, said that he started focusing on defense shortly after he started playing basketball.

“He started AAU basketball around when he was like seven,” Giles said. “I would say around nine, 10, his defense was pretty good, and then it just, of course, kept growing from there. His shot was his main area that he needed to focus on.”

He didn’t score much in his freshman year, in part because his coaches typically used him as a screener and facilitator on offense. But despite only scoring 5.3 points per game as a freshman at Evansville, he earned both playing time and his teammates’ respect from the moment he stepped on the court.

What many agree set Smith apart from being a typical defensive specialist, though, is his commitment to the little things.

“He always made the right play, whether it was the extra pass, taking a charge,” Blake Simmons, Smith’s teammate at Evansville and Marty Simmons’ son, said. “He just had a great, great understanding for basketball and how to play.”

When Smith arrived on campus, he drew Blake Simmons’ attention right away.

“His go-to move coming out of high school, and if you ask him he’ll tell you, is he liked to back-tap people, meaning when someone got by him, he would reach from behind and back-tap it,” Blake Simmons said. “Now, as you know in basketball, you never want someone to get by you, but Dru would always do it on purpose, always thinking he could get that steal.”

In high school and as his Evansville career moved along, Smith realized that he wouldn’t be able to beat top-level competition with athleticism alone — or get away with reaching in so often, though the steals indicate that his active hands are an asset when used responsibly.

“You’ve seen it this year,” Blake Simmons said. “I mean, he gets in foul trouble, doesn’t he?”

He does, probably more often than Missouri coach Cuonzo Martin would like. Smith has reached four or more personal fouls in seven of the Tigers’ 16 games this season.

However, in the aforementioned time period, Smith learned to build up his basketball IQ and develop the savviness he showcases today.

“As you move up, they’re picking from the best of the best at that level,” Smith said. “I may not be able to just sprint right past you, but I’m able to get a shoulder by you or get something past. Just understanding angles and changing speeds, changing directions, stuff like that.”

Smith’s defense and intelligence helped him make a name for himself early, but by his sophomore year, he started scoring. Simmons called upon Smith to score more, and his average jumped to 13.7 points per game.

“My sophomore year, I stepped more into that scoring role,” Smith said. “Coming off of screens, just being a little more aggressive. I had the ball in my hands a little bit more, heading toward the basket.”

“I think it was just maturity, more than anything,” Marty Simmons said. “And I think again, he’s very cerebral. I think he just saw that he needed to kind of look to score a little bit more. And he never took bad shots.”

Smith’s percentages in his sophomore year were eye-opening: 57.8% from the field, 48.2% from three-point range and 86.2% from the free-throw line.

And like at Missouri, he did it quietly.

“It’s almost like you’re begging this guy to shoot, but then when you look at the scoreboard, you’re like, ‘Well, Dru just had 25, I guess he is scoring pretty well,” Blake Simmons said. “You would see that a lot here, you’re like, ‘Hey Dru, go get a bucket!’ And he’s like, ‘Man, I got 15 points already!’”

Smith left Evansville after that year for a few reasons. One of them was that Evansville unexpectedly fired Marty Simmons, with whom he was close, after 12 years.

“The talk of some of the new coaches coming in, I think that Dru wasn’t really interested in them,” Giles said.

Smith’s instinct on that front was correct — Marty Simmons’ replacement, Walter McCarty, was fired after only a season and a half in the midst of sexual misconduct allegations. He was later arrested after failing to appear in court for a civil case after he defaulted on a “$75,000 ‘private select line of credit,’” according to the Evansville Courier & Press.

Other than the coaching change, Smith chose Missouri because he connected with Martin and the Tigers’ coaching staff, was clearly ready to make the jump to the SEC and didn’t want to move too far from home. The decision to leave Evansville, where he had lived his entire life, was difficult.

Leaving Evansville meant moving away from Giles, his fiancee Marley Miller — who played basketball for the Purple Aces, too — and his five-year-old brother Jaxon, with whom he has a strong relationship.

“I felt like I was leaving a lot, honestly,” Smith said. “I had always been there, and it was comfortable. But at the end of the day, it was a decision that kind of had to be made, and it was a step in my life that helped me grow up and helped me mature. Looking back, it was definitely the right decision to make.

It didn’t take more than two or three weeks for Smith to feel comfortable in Columbia.

“After you get to know the guys, get with your team, get in practice and stuff like that, it just happens naturally,” Smith said.

***
What does “scoring quietly” mean to Dru Smith?

“The baskets I’m getting, they’re just simple, usually,” Smith said. “Either a layup or an open three; a pull-up in the mid-range. I’m usually not shaking somebody, as [Missouri point guard] X[avier Pinson] is. He might hit you with a cross-over, step-back and hit the three.”

Pinson is also known for high-flying, fast-break dunks that fire up the Mizzou Arena crowd. Smith, as far as research shows, has not dunked in a game since he arrived in Columbia.

Blake Simmons said that Smith can dunk, but it’s not pretty.

“And I definitely can’t give you celebrations afterwards,” Smith said.

On the court, that’s definitely true.

It’s not like Smith is grumpy or even just stoic when he’s locked into a game. He can often be seen smiling, goofing around with his teammates, especially during pregame warmups.

Smith and a couple of Tigers might race off the court, laughing all the way, as Missouri heads back to the locker room. Even his headshot on Missouri’s website is beaming. B he won’t swing a fist at the air and yell like Mitchell Smith did after his game-saving block.

Off the court, though, celebrating is very much an option.

“Dru was there when I hit my first hole-and-one in golf,” Blake Simmons said. “I remember him and I doing like a chest-bump on the green, in the middle of the golf course. I’m sure people are thinking we’re morons, but we’re running and high-stepping on the green.”

Smith can showcase a fun-loving side at home, too.

“He’s hilarious,” Giles said. “He jokes, he dances, he acts silly. … He always has that positive energy that he brings.”

“Not many people get to see Dru’s goofy side,” Miller said.

Smith tries to come home every time he gets a break in his schedule, and his family will play games like Uno and Sequence. Whenever Smith wins, or even when he doesn’t, he’ll break out whatever dance move comes to mind. His mom struggles to keep up with the dancing.

“I don’t know, because now with TikTok, I’m old now, so I don’t keep up with all that stuff,” Giles said, laughing. “But I would definitely say he likes TikTok dances.”

Smith and Miller filmed a few TikToks during the spring when the COVID-19 pandemic first hit, which they posted on Miller’s account. Miller deleted her account since then, but she’ll always have some of those videos saved to her phone.

“He has sarcastic jokes, does accents a lot, dances, he’s very witty, he likes to impersonate people,” Miller said. “We were driving one day and his front tooth fell out and we both just shared at each other like ‘well… [laughing emoji].’”

Occasionally, Smith’s goofiness can border on recklessness.

“One time, we both are coming back from knee surgeries … and all of a sudden, we decide to challenge each other to a dunk-off,” Blake Simmons said. “So we’re trying to dunk on each other, both are like a month or two into really recovering, and we’re just two goofballs out there trying to dunk on each other.”

Blake Simmons is 26, just over 3 1/2 years older than Smith, but the two became close at Evansville and are best friends to this day. Simmons will be the best man at Smith’s wedding.

Even with Smith in Columbia and Blake Simmons now living in Dallas, the two have stayed close throughout the years.

“We play video games together to this day,” Blake Simmons said. “Call of Duty Warzone, man.”

***

Jeremiah Tilmon, and to a lesser extent Mark Smith, have received credit for the way they’ve rebounded from injury-riddled 2019-20 seasons — and rightfully so. Missouri is full of players who have fought through seasons like that and come together in 2020 to form an experienced, battle-tested roster.

Smith, though he started all 31 games last year, is no exception.

“He was hurt a lot of his sophomore year and still played through plantar fasciitis until he ruptured it,” Marty Simmons said. “And then he was out for 10 days and came back and played again. One of the toughest, toughest players that I’ve coached.”

That toughness might finally pay off in the form of an NCAA Tournament berth. Smith spent four years in college before this one, including one he was forced to sit out due to the NCAA’s transfer rules, and all of them ended before March Madness.

“Yeah, I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about it,” Smith said. “But you can’t look forward. You can’t look past anything at this point, and we’ve learned that over the past few years.”

Smith’s college career nearly spans his brother Jaxon’s entire life, but from a family perspective, he might be about to enter the tournament at a perfect time. Since last year, Jaxon has started to understand what Smith does.

“I don’t think he understands the level that Dru’s at, but he definitely knows he’s on TV and he gets to watch him,” Giles said.

In mid-March, Jaxon may get to watch his brother play on the biggest stage in college basketball, and by that point, he might look up to his brother even more than he already does.

“He plays basketball all the time around the house, and he plays in leagues already,” Giles said. “He acts like he’s Dru Smith.”

_Edited by Kyle Pinnell | kpinnell@themaneater.com_