Just 14 years old, Mark Smith could throw a baseball 89 miles per hour.
At 15, the radar gun registered at 91.
At 16, the ball started going where he wanted it to, and his college baseball future was secure with a commitment to Missouri of the mighty Southeastern Conference in December of his junior year.
When he put away his basketball shoes and pulled out his spikes a few months later, his powerful right arm didn’t feel right.
As spring 2016 turned to the all-important summer before his senior year, Smith’s strained flexor pronator tendon in his elbow wasn’t getting better. Emotionally, in the words of his mother, he was “down and out.”
“He kept pushing himself to make it better, but the only thing he could do was rest it,” Yvonne Smith said. “He had aspirations of having a great summer. He had big dreams. He wanted to play in the Area Code Games.
“He just never got better. He seemed to be really down in the dumps. My husband finally said, ‘Instead of just moping around, let’s go play basketball.'”
Seven months later, Smith is the subject of an intense recruiting battle between Illinois, Northwestern, Missouri, Indiana, Ohio State, Texas, Alabama and Kansas State.
Those schools are clamoring for him to play for their basketball team following Smith’s off-the-charts senior season in which he averaged 21.9 points, 8.4 assists and 8.2 rebounds per game and led Edwardsville to a 30-2 record.
A 6-foot-5 guard, Smith may be the most unlikely Mr. Basketball of Illinois winner in the 37-year history of the award.
He received 251 points in the statewide vote, 76 more than runner-up Nojel Eastern of Evanston. Belleville Althoff’s Jordan Goodwin, the preseason favorite, finished third after missing the final 11 games of the season with a shoulder injury.
“I dreamed about it, but I never thought it would happen,” Mark Smith said. “I wasn’t even a candidate. I didn’t think seriously about winning.”
“Mark has always been a good player, but the way his game changed from last season to this season was unbelievable,” said Edwardsville senior A.J. Epenesa, Smith’s longtime teammate and friend and the top-ranked football recruit in Illinois.
“Everything about his game improved. The big thing was confidence. He has always been confident, but this year he knew he could make these plays and he knew there was no doubt he would. It was fun to watch him and fun to be his teammate.”
At his own pace
While Edwardsville is a three-sport-athlete, play-sports-with-your-friends-from-elementary-school-through-high-school kind of town, the Smiths are a basketball family.
Yvonne played four years at SIU-Edwardsville, while Anthony Smith spent three years in Carbondale before transferring to Edwardsville for his senior year.
Bucking the trend of sports-minded parents, they enrolled Mark in school a year earlier than they had to — he won’t turn 18 until late August — and didn’t intend to coach his teams.
He always was tall for his age, and the coach of one of his first organized basketball teams planted him underneath the hoop and told him to stay there.
“We thought he needed to know how to handle the ball,” Yvonne Smith said. “When kids are young you have to develop their skills. Kids change all the time. Some grow early, some grow late. So my husband said, ‘I guess I’m going to coach his team.'”
While he was known best for his fastball, Mark Smith played three sports throughout his childhood and actually thought he was a better at quarterback than anything else before a series of nagging injuries convinced him to give up football after his freshman year.
Anthony and Yvonne always felt he had an extremely bright basketball future, but they never tried to talk him out of pursuing a baseball career.
“I really thought he had special talent,” Yvonne Smith said. “His court vision is special. He played two passes ahead of the game. That is rare. It is hard to find guys like that with his size. But it had to be Mark’s decision.
“My husband always wondered what would happen if he played basketball in the summer. I told him, ‘Don’t rush God. You can’t play with things like that.'”
Focus shift
If Mark Smith didn’t see the elbow injury as a sign, perhaps, he thought, last summer’s resignation of Missouri baseball coach Tim Jamieson was.
After “moping around” while the rest of the state’s top basketball players were showcasing their talents on the AAU circuit, Smith warmed to his dad’s suggestion.
“We took him back to the orthopedic and asked if he can play basketball,” Yvonne Smith said. “The doctor said, ‘Mark, you’re not going to throw a basketball 92 miles an hour, are you?'”
Just like that, Smith switched his focus from baseball to basketball.
“It wasn’t that tough of a decision,” Smith said. “I come from basketball anyway.”
Kudos to coaches at Northern Illinois, Wright State and Indiana State for immediately recognizing a golden opportunity. They were there for the first AAU event Smith played in, and they did not hesitate to offer him a scholarship. He even took official visits to all three campuses, but stopped short of committing.
“Mark said, I haven’t played for 12 months, but I think I’m better,” Yvonne Smith said. “I think I’m going to have a great season, I just know it. My husband said, ‘Let’s roll the dice.’ He definitely rolled something great.”
“I knew from the first game we played that I was going to have a good season,” Mark Smith said. “I just ran with it. My game kept increasing.”
Decision time
While the Chicago Public League has undoubtedly earned its reputation as the best basketball conference in the state — it boasts three of this year’s four state champions — there was arguably more high-level individual talent in Southern Illinois this season.
In the Southwestern Conference alone were Edwardsville’s Smith and Epenesa, Illinois recruit Javon Pickett of Belleville East, precocious 6-7 sophomore E.J. Liddell of Belleville West and the state’s top recruit, Illinois-bound center Jeremiah Tilmon of East St. Louis.
Throw in two matchups with Goodwin and Belleville Althoff, and college coaches had plenty of opportunities to see evaluate Smith against future college players.
The modern-day recruiting process makes it difficult for players to become big-time recruits during their senior season, but Smith quickly became the exception.
They showed up to see him score 37 points in an 81-78 victory over Althoff in the championship game of the Highland Thanksgiving Tournament and never left.
“We had college coaches at every single game,” Epenesa said. “There was a two- or three-week span where they were at every practice.”
“Mark had a lot of guys watching him play during the season and it never affected him,” Edwardsville coach Mike Waldo said. “We might play a team that wasn’t good inside, and Mark would be perfectly willing to throw ball to A.J. on the first 10 possessions whether Indiana was there or not.
“I tried to talk with him some during the year and he didn’t want to talk about it much. He said, ‘Coach, what I have control over now is what we are doing in the season.'”
Smith turned his attention to recruiting following Edwardsville’s loss to Simeon in the Class 4A supersectionals, and his phone hasn’t stopped ringing since.
That included phone calls from new Illinois coach Brad Underwood and new Missouri coach Cuonzo Martin on the days they were hired.
“For them to think of me that highly to call me when they got the job and start to build a relationship,” Smith said, “it is a pretty special feeling.”
Smith’s next order of business is deciding where to spend his two remaining official visits. He’s eager to restore a sense of normalcy, but doesn’t plan to rush a decision he never intended to make.
Once he decides, though, he doesn’t intend to wait any longer.
“What I’m looking for is a place to come in and have an impact as a freshman and develop into the best basketball player I can be,” he said.
As for baseball, those closest to him aren’t ruling that out either.
“You never know what he’s going to be doing when he’s 23 years old,” Waldo said.
“I always wanted Mark to do both,” Yvonne Smith said. “One thing about being a pitcher is you can always go back. I don’t think you can do that in reverse and start in baseball and go back to basketball.”
Mike Helfgot is a freelance reporter for the Chicago Tribune.
Mr. Basketball of Illinois winners
2017: Mark Smith, Edwardsville
2016: Charlie Moore, Morgan Park
2015: Jalen Brunson, Stevenson
2014: Jahlil Okafor, Young
2013: Jabari Parker, Simeon
2012: Jabari Parker, Simeon
2011: Ryan Boatright, East Aurora and Chasson Randle, Rock Island
2010: Jereme Richmond, Waukegan
2009: Brandon Paul, Warren
2008: Kevin Dillard, Homewood-Flossmoor
2007: Derrick Rose, Simeon
2006: Jon Scheyer, Glenbrook North
2005: Julian Wright, Homewood-Flossmoor
2004: Shaun Livingston, Peoria
2003: Shannon Brown, Proviso East
2002: Dee Brown, Proviso East
2001: Eddy Curry, Thornwood
2000: Darius Miles, East St. Louis
1999: Brian Cook, Lincoln
1998: Frank Williams, Peoria Manual
1997: Sergio McClain, Peoria Manual
1996: Ronnie Fields, Farragut
1995: Kevin Garnett, Farragut
1994: Jerry Gee, St. Martin de Porres
1993: Rashard Griffith, King
1992: Chris Collins, Glenbrook North
1991: Howard Nathan, Peoria Manual
1990: Jamie Brandon, King
1989: Deon Thomas, Simeon
1988: Eric Anderson, St. Francis de Sales
1987: Marcus Liberty, King
1986: Nick Anderson, Simeon
1985: Ed Horton, Springfield Lanphier
1984: Brian Sloan, McLeansboro
1983: Marty Simmons, Lawrenceville
1982: Bruce Douglas, Quincy
1981: Walter Downing, Providence
