INDIANAPOLIS — Russ Smith walked up the steps to the podium coughing, and 40 minutes from the Final Four, in a game where Rick Pitino may very well need the basketball gods to let Smith be his Christian Laettner against Mike Krzyzewski and Duke 21 years later in another region final, he is no longer Russdiculous, he is Russsickulous.
“I‘m on Mucinex, I took antibiotics, and I’m on … it’s some pill schedule that I take — six the first day, five the second day, four on the next — and I have to take those all at once,” Smith said.
It would be natural for fans in the Commonwealth State, mostly outside of Lexington, Ky., to fear Grant Hill sneaking into the trainer’s room and heaving Russsickulous’ medicine 75 feet from one end of the court to the other.
“I’m still clogged up … it’s nothing I’m not used to. … I’ll definitely be ready to play, it’s nothing that’s not going to keep from playing but … I wish I could be better,” Smith said.
As he began walking out of one of the breakout rooms, someone wanted to know what percent he thought he was, 27 or so hours from Duke.
“I’m probably like 80 or so … then after some treatment I should be close to 90,” Smith said.
A few minutes earlier, at the podium, he had said: “I’m definitely not 100 though from a conditioning standpoint. That cold is definitely kind of wearing me down a little bit.”
He comes out of the projects of Brooklyn, and Jack Curran’s Archbishop Molloy, which prepares you for predicaments such as these, and even in his weakened state, Russsickulous — no longer Russdiculous in his shot selection — dominated Oregon on Friday night with 31 points.
“Every Sunday, in my neighborhood, they’ll ring my bell at like 12, ‘Russ, come down, we’re hoopin,’ and I just go right across the street, and there’ll be maybe 20-something people in the park, and we’ll just play all day, maybe for about four hours, or we’ll go somewhere in Queens and meet up, particularly I’ll be with my friend Jamel Fuentes, we’ll go to Hoffman Park … actually, we used to hoop with Mo Harkless … we’ll go to the park and play ball all day,” Smith said.
How beneficial were those New York playground days?
“It was like isolations and work on all our moves and just get better every day from a conditioning standpoint … it’s nothing like playing six, seven hours outside in a hot sun on concrete against everyone’s who’s good one-on-one,” Smith said. “Nothing can compare to that.”
Except this is Coach K waiting for him.
“He’s courageous,” Krzyzewski said. “He plays with great heart. I’m getting old, and if I need a transplant, I hope he would give me hisHe could give me part of it and I’d have more courage than I have right now.”
Smith would rather give him his lungs in their current state.
“Coach K has coached the greatest — so since I’ve been on a little roll, I definitely assume he’s not going to let me do that anymore, so I’m going to have to find other ways to be effective,” Smith said.
In Pitino’s world, that also means more effective pressure defense.
“We didn’t play a stitch of defense [Friday] night,” Pitino said. “We’re well-rested — especially Russ.”
That prompted Smith to shake his head and smile. Asked if Pitino tore into the Cardinals, he said: “A little bit.”
Pitino will be yelling plenty if Smith is given the daunting task of containing Duke sharpshooter Seth Curry and coughs it up.
“We’ll probably do the same thing we did before [in November] — put Russ on him,” Wayne Blackshear said. “Try to make it tough on him to get his shot off and to get an open look.”
Curry knows he may have to outgun Smith.
“He puts pressure on you the whole game, attacking, attacking, attacking non-stop,” Curry said. “It’s tough to hold him down, but you just got to be patient with him and just stick to your game and not let him get good rhythm.”
Would Smith welcome the chance feel to hit the game-winning shot?
“I just hope we’re winning favorably where it doesn’t even get to that point,” he said.
Time to make Duke sick.