Texas Tech basketball all-decade team: The small forwards

2nd team: Zhaire Smith

Putting Texas Tech’s first-ever one-and-done player into one positional label is tough.  That’s because the 6-foot-5 Garland, Texas native was built like a shooting guard and developed a nice outside touch but he also guarded the other team’s post players because of his insane athleticism.

Thus, he was the quintessential do-it-all player which sounds just like a classic small forward.  Though he was only a Red Raider for the 2017-18 season, he will not soon be forgotten by Tech fans because he was critical in helping the program reach the Elite Eight for the first time.

He began that year coming off the bench but before the end of November, he was a starter. That year, he was second on the team in scoring at 11.3 trailing only Keenan Evans, our first-team all-decade point guard and his 17.6 points per game.

A player with the best vertical jump that we’ve ever seen from a Red Raider, Smith averaged 5 rebounds and 1.1 blocks per game.  And it was as a defensive player where he was at his best.

His athleticism allowed him to guard elite point guards while his frame and upper-body strength made him capable of holding his own in the paint against much taller players.  Of course, his leaping ability also came in handy against bigger players.

Though we all wish we could have seen Smith in Lubbock for more than just one season, his ability to go from an unknown 3-star prospect to a first-round NBA pick in one year did wonders for Chris Beard by giving the Red Raider head coach a success story to point to when trying to convince elite recruits that he could get them to the NBA.

That’s a huge part of his legacy because he was the first player in program history to be drafted in the first round since Tony Battie in 1997.  So even when leaving early, Zhaire Smith made Texas Tech basketball better.