COLLEGE PARK, Md. — Coming off of freshman campaign in which he averaged 11.7 points, 6.8 rebounds, and 1.2 blocks per game for the Terps, Maryland sophomore Jalen “Stix” Smith was named a Third-Team Sporting News Preseason All-American Oct. 24, and he has prepared himself this offseason to live up to the hype.
Smith was visually emotional after Maryland’s 69-67 loss to LSU in the Round of 32 of the NCAA Tournament back in late March. After posting team-highs of 15 points and five blocks in the game, Smith was part of a defensive breakdown at the end that led to Tigers’ guard Tremont Waters’ game-winning layup.
But after the dust settled and the emotions of a devastating loss calmed down, Smith gathered his thoughts and spoke with his father on the way back to the team hotel following the game. They talked about the bad taste 6-foot-10 former McDonald’s All-American had in his mouth after the defeat and not wanting to leave Maryland on a loss like that.
Smith didn’t. Instead, he took just 16 days to announce that he would be returning for his sophomore season — one that will be played with a chip on his shoulder because of the way his freshman year ended.
“Pretty much I always knew I was going to come back for my second year because the one-and-done thing isn’t really my thing,” Smith said at Maryland’s media day Oct. 15. “I knew I could come back and work on a lot of things. I knew I had a lot of things to work on, and I sat down with my family and talked and they felt the same way. So I just decided to do another year.”
The first thing Smith knew he needed to work on was his body. He came to College Park weighing just over 200 pounds and is now hovering around the 225-230 mark after an offseason of hitting the weights hard.
“With Jalen, we want to continue to make him bigger and stronger — which he did,” Maryland head coach Mark Turgeon said at media day. “I think he's up 35 pounds from when he set foot on campus.”
Smith’s weight gain wasn’t for aesthetics — although, Turgeon joked that he doesn’t miss an opportunity to take his shirt off and show off his new physique. Rather, bulking him up was part of getting Smith ready for what Maryland needs him to be able to do moving forward, which is help fill the void at center left by current Atlanta Hawk Bruno Fernando.
“[Smith] struggled when he had to guard a five last year,” Turgeon said. “Hopefully the weight helps, hopefully the experience helps. We will guard a little bit different on the post this year with him. Bruno [Fernando] was such a terrific post defender for us. We're going to play Jalen at the four and the five for us this year. There are a lot of things we worked on. I think he really improved his game. I think his confidence is continuing to grow and he is feeling comfortable being out there.”
Smith’s versatility for his size is something that makes him a blue-chip college player and potential NBA lottery pick. He’s been able to score in a variety of ways since his high school days at Mount Saint Joseph (Baltimore, Md.) and he has continued to build upon that skill set in his time in College Park.
“We really worked hard on getting [Smith] to score in a lot of different ways,” Turgeon said. “He’s pretty good on the right block, he's a pretty good catch and shoot three guy, but we tried to do a lot of different areas on the floor.”
One thing that should help Smith showcase his full offensive arsenal this season is the addition of freshman bigs Makhi and Makhel Mitchell, 6-foot-10 twins that both bring a major presence to the post for Maryland.
“I think that’s going to help me a lot because now that we have Makhi and Makhel it’s just going to allow me to push even further out onto the wing and just attack and find them and find other open players,” Smith said.
Defense was the part of the game that Turgeon repeatedly said throughout Smith’s freshman season was a work in progress for the Baltimore native. Much of that had to do with his size and ability to compete physically down low, but now that Smith’s frame shouldn’t be an issue, work is being done to make Smith a complete defender by getting him to guard out on the perimeter.
“He played a ton of one-on-one since the season ended to this point,” Turgeon said. “We don't play as much one-on-one when practice starts. We really worked on his perimeter defense, he played a lot of one-on-one with Anthony [Cowan]. His perimeter defense got so much better as the year went on last year, it was all new to him. And now I'm very confident in his perimeter defense and what he can do.”
The Terps, in general, are very confident in what Smith can bring to the table for the No. 7 team in the country. Although he said he still watches parts of the LSU game from time to time as motivation, Smith is ready to put the past behind him and make the same type of strides with his team this season as he has with himself.
“I want to do better than what I did last year and just take my teammates as far as I can,” Smith said.
