‘It’s a movie’: Northeastern basketball retires all-time leading scorer Tyler Smith’s number

FOUNTAIN CITY, Ind. — Tyler Smith was the star of the show as soon as he joined the Northeastern basketball program just over 10 years ago. The 2017 graduate led the Knights to their first sectional championship in team history, was a three-time Tri-Eastern Conference Player of the Year and became Northeastern’s all-time leading scorer during his four years in the green and gold.

Nearly six years after his departure, Smith’s story reached yet another climax. Last Friday, Northeastern retired Smith’s No. 2 jersey, making him just the third Knight basketball player to ever have their number retired.

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“It’s a movie, man. I couldn’t have dreamed a better night,” Smith said. “My family is here, all my loved ones are here and it’s amazing seeing everybody get back together just for me … I put blood, sweat and tears into this gym and this school. All this hard work isn’t for nothing, and it shows. Not everybody gets an honor like this, and for them to choose me, I couldn’t be more blessed.”

Smith couldn’t stop smiling Friday, not as he took the court to endless applause from the packed Larry Moore Gymnasium, not as he embraced all his former coaches and certainly not as he looked up at his No. 2 hanging on the wall right behind the east basket. It made him think of “everything we did to get here.”

Notice how he said “we.” Yes, Smith has an impressive list of individual accomplishments. Here are the highlights:

• 1,947 points (Northeastern all-time record and top 100 in Indiana history)

• 689 points in 2016-17 (Northeastern single-season record)

• 445 assists (Northeastern all-time record)

• Three-time TEC Player of the Year

• Member of 2016 Indiana Junior All-Star Team

And that just scratches the surface. All that stuff is great, but again, Smith said “we,” and that’s because his list of team accomplishments might be even more impressive.

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While Smith was at Northeastern, the Knights never lost a Wayne County Tournament game, never lost a TEC game and never lost a sectional game. Before Smith, the Knights didn’t have a single sectional championship. By the time he was done, they had four. Northeastern was a regional finalist is 2016 and 2017. With Smith, Northeastern won 89 games, the program’s most over a four-year period. Its 23 wins in the 2015-16 season are the single-season program record. Smith also led the Knights to their first-ever No. 1 ranking in the Associated Press Indiana Class 2A poll.

“We built a tradition here, and we did everything we could to keep carrying it on,” Smith said. “The success is great, but I couldn’t have done it without the people I got to play with.

He’s the most successful player in Northeastern history, and he played on the most successful team in Northeastern history, but he doesn’t take credit for any of it. That’s why Smith’s No. 2 is hanging on the wall.

“He’s one of those once-in-a-lifetime kids. Those kids are few and far between,” Northeastern head coach Brent Ross said. “The one thing I don’t want people to think is we’re getting in the habit of retiring numbers. What Tyler’s team accomplished was amazing, just as big as the individual. We don’t worry about individual records. We worry about the team success, and the records will come.”

Ross quickly realized he might have something special in Smith soon after his family moved to the Northeastern district going into his eighth-grade year. Smith started going to the high school’s open gym sessions and practices, and he competed with the varsity players. He was so good that Ross had him play on the junior varsity high school team as an eighth-grader, and he took plenty of heat for that.

“Somebody said, ‘I can’t believe you’re playing him.’ I said, ‘He’ll start as a freshman.’ ‘You don’t know that,’” Ross recalled with a smirk. “Well, he had 20 points in our first-ever sectional championship win against Union County.”

Smith started and led the Knights in scoring all four years once he got to high school, proving Ross right and then some.

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Smith’s 1,947 points are third all time in Wayne County and 91^st in Indiana, but there was a chance those numbers could have been much higher. Ross said he sat Smith quite a bit during blowout wins, and his one Achilles heel was free throws; Smith’s career free-throw percentage was 63.6, missing 211 of them in total. Ross believes Smith, if he had played the entirety of every game and made more foul shots, had the potential to be Wayne County’s all-time leading scorer and top 20 in the state.

Smith said he’s grateful Ross took a chance on him when he first arrived, and their relationship has grown ever since.

“He’s been like a father figure to me since I came here in eighth grade,” Smith said. “He’s taught me about life, cars, basketball, you name it. He’s been there every step of the way. Truly, honestly, I couldn’t be here without him.”

After graduating from Northeastern, Smith went on to play at Florida Southern College in Lakeland, Florida, and then the University of Saint Francis in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where he got his degree.

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He’s now an assistant coach at Holy Cross College and a fifth-grade teacher at Madison STEAM Academy in South Bend, Indiana, where his class recently had the second highest rise in test scores in the whole school.

“This school is 98 percent free and reduced lunch, so these kids go through the struggle for real, man. It’s not easy to live the life they live,” Smith said. “To see them be happy to come to school and see me every day and get to hang out with me for a day — that just means volumes to me. I couldn’t be any happier to be in the position I am to impact our youth.”

That’s what Ross and the rest of the Northeastern basketball community is most proud of Smith for.

Only 15 of Ross’ players have gone on to play college basketball, and “very few” end up playing all four years. Smith did that, but he also stayed diligent in the classroom. He has a career outside of basketball now, which is something Ross has preached to players every year, and he wants to keep teaching and try to get a head coaching job for a college program.

“He’s texted me several times in the last two or three months saying he understands now,” Ross said. “He made his grades, he got his degree and now he understands the big picture. So many people said, ‘Oh, he’ll never make it. He won’t graduate from college. He’ll drop out.’ We’re proud of what he’s done.”

That’s why Smith’s No. 2 is hanging on Northeastern’s wall.

Zach Piatt is a reporter for The Palladium-Item. Contact him at zpiatt@gannett.com or on Twitter @zachpiatt13.

This article originally appeared on Richmond Palladium-Item: Northeastern basketball retires top scorer Tyler Smith’s jersey number