Why VCU’s Smart owes DePaul’s Purnell

Shaka Smart and his VCU squad are one win away from the most improbable Final Four run in NCAA Tournament history.

Already the proud owner of four NCAA wins — the usual number needed to reach the Final Four in the modern era — Smart’s 11th-seeded Rams still need to shock top-seeded Kansas in Sunday’s Southwest regional final because they had to fight through the inaugural “First Four” in Dayton.

As the 33-year-old Smart exhorts his players and directs traffic on the Alamodome sidelines Sunday (1:20 p.m., Ch. 2), his primary coaching influence might not be obvious to the casual observer.

But the perpetually upbeat Smart believes, to a large extent, he channels DePaul coach Oliver Purnell.

Smart earned his first Div. I job in 2001 when Purnell hired him to be Dayton’s director of basketball operations.

“His personality and work ethic, they just came out,” said Purnell, who interviewed eight candidates over an extended period of time as they worked Dayton’s summer camps. “Shaka rose to the top.”

They’ve remained close ever since. When VCU was assigned to the United Center for last week’s subregional games, DePaul opened its gym to the Rams for their “real” practice on March 18 before they crushed Georgetown.

Several DePaul coaches, including Purnell, sat in the VCU cheering section for both United Center games.

“He’s a terrific mentor for me,” Smart said. “I really emulate him in a lot of ways. I find myself doing things as a head coach sometimes that, almost subconsciously, I got from him.

“The biggest thing I got from Oliver was just his unbelievable optimism and positivity. It really becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. When you’re in a situation and you think positive and you really believe it’s going to work out and you dwell on positive thoughts, it ends up working out.”

Things have worked out at an unbelievable rate for Smart. When Purnell took the Clemson job in 2003, he tried to bring Smart with him as director of basketball operations.

But the charismatic and intelligent Smart (he was accepted at Harvard, but opted to play at Div. III Kenyon College) was scooped up by Akron as an assistant at the age of 25.

Purnell brought him back to be a Clemson assistant in 2006, where they worked together for two seasons before Smart moved on to Florida.

He spent just one year working for Billy Donovan before earning the VCU gig in the spring of 2009.

“I’ve got nothing but great things to say about Shaka,” Purnell said. “If there’s anything that rubbed off on him from me, that makes me proud.”

Now Smart has his team on the precipice of the coaching achievement of a lifetime — and a multi-million dollar deal whenever he wants to jump to a high-major school such as Tennessee or Missouri.

Yet he took time to laud his former boss and predict a DePaul renaissance similar to the ones Purnell orchestrated at Dayton and Clemson.

“It’ll work that way at DePaul: You watch,” Smart said. “The next 3-4 years as he builds it — he’s never a quick-fix guy — but as he builds it up he’ll get better and better and better. He’ll be optimistic and positive and, before you know it, he’ll be in the tournament.”