If you follow me on twitter, than you surely know by now that Russ Smith, the diminutive Louisville scoring machine, is my favorite player in the country.
He was last year as well, but that was before Smith decided to turn off some of his off-court hijinks and focus himself entirely on hoops. Now, Smith is putting together an all-american caliber season, which means that the rest of the country has been let in on my secret.
Luke Winn of SI.com shares the same infatuation with the little guy that Rick Pitino has dubbed “Russdiculous”, and while I will claim the glory of “discovering” Smith, I’ll allow Winn his time to shine. Because he not only wrote an amazing feature on Smith -- who calls himself the BasedKing, as a roommate he calls Dark Slime and who lives in a fantasy world where he has tea parties at Waffle House (seriously) -- but he also put together 11 Russdiculous facts that he couldn’t fit into his feature.
And seriously, everything about this kid’s story is awesome. Which is why you need to go read both of those stories. But I’ll give you my four favorites facts that Winn dug up:
- He once got stuck in an icebath because he drinks too much tea:
- His dad once tried to stay in jail to play a basketball game:
- Russ Smith almost left school during his freshman season, but what saved is season was a pep talk and a 1-7 shooting performance ... in his boxers:
“The crazy thing is, I didn’t even get fully dressed for it -- I had ankle socks on, and I normally play in three thick socks. I didn’t have an undershirt. And instead of my normal compression shorts I was just wearing boxers. I was saying to myself, ‘This is it, I’m going to sit through this game and then leave after.’
“But the team was playing bad against West Virginia and coach Pitino came to me at the end of the bench and said, ‘You’re going in. Go out and play hard, because no one is playing hard right now.’ I was like, alright, every time I touch the ball, I’m going to do something. I think I was 2-for-8, with a few steals, a few rebounds, and we came back from down 11. I subbed out with three minutes left, everybody was happy, and we ended up winning by one on Peyton [Siva]'s layup at the buzzer. After that, I stayed.”
This kid is so awesome.
You can find Rob on twitter @RobDauster.