Ishmael Smith - 2006

49ers Basketball Forum 🏀 Basketball Recruiting
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Wake reels in whale of a point guard
By Bill Hass, Staff Writer
Greensboro News & Record
July 3, 2005

Call him Ishmael – or just Ish.

Either way, point guard Ishmael Smith of Central Cabarrus became the fourth men’s basketball recruit for Wake Forest’s class of 2006 when he gave the Deacons an oral commitment Thursday.

Central Cabarrus coach Scott Brewer said Smith chose Wake over offers from Charlotte, Clemson, South Carolina and Xavier and strong interest from Maryland.

Although Smith averaged 25.4 points as a junior, Brewer said that was because the team needed his scoring.

“He’s a true point guard who thinks pass first,” Brewer said. “He chose Wake Forest because of their style of play. He’s as fast a point guard as there is in the country.”

Brewer said Wake’s coaches noticed Smith when he played in the State Games at Joel Coliseum after his freshman and sophomore seasons.

Although only 6-feet, 150 pounds, Smith should get bigger and stronger by the time he reports to Wake.

“With work in the weight room and a year-and-a-half of physical development, he’ll easily add 20 pounds,” Brewer said.

Smith joins forward Jamie Skeen of North Mecklenburg, wing player L.V. Williams of Yadkinville and guard Anthony Gurley of Massachusetts in Wake Forest’s 2006 class. They will be able to sign letters of intent in November.

The signing of Smith is important because the Deacons lost out on point guard Mike Conley, as well as big man Greg Oden, high school teammates from Indianapolis who committed to Ohio State earlier in the week.

Smith is the heir apparent to Chris Paul, who left after his sophomore year and was the fourth pick in Tuesday’s NBA Draft by the New Orleans Hornets.

“I think they feel they’ve got their guy,” said Dave Telep, recruiting analyst of bluechiphoops.com. "The first thing that stands out about him is how fast he is. He pushes the ball with tempo and intelligence. He’ll have to shoot with confidence and consistency, but pushing the ball and finding open guys are what he does."Telep does not have Smith rated among his top 100 players nationally, but said “he’s clearly good enough” to play at the ACC level.New rankings are due out next week, but Telep currently ranks Skeen No. 41, Gurley No. 50 and Williams No. 86.

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Call him Ish? No, call him owned. Harris > Ish

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[QUOTE=NLP;272283]Call him Ish? No, call him owned. Harris > Ish[/QUOTE]
Yeah, depending on what part of the game he was in tonight, he looked either…

A) overmatched
B) frustrated
C) completely lost

Love it. Dijuan is a stud.

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[QUOTE=NLP;272283]Call him Ish? No, call him owned. Harris > Ish[/QUOTE]

Beat me to it…I rather have Harris than Ish.

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Ish…Ish…Ish…ISHH…WHO?! Gesundheit! I feel better now.

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I wasn’t sure where to put this video but it’s about why this player didn’t commit to Charlotte back in 2005

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Not sure what in the heck Ish is talking about here. Cincinnati, DePaul, Louisville, Marquette, Saint Louis, South Florida, and TCU all left C-USA in 2005 as well.

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Yeah it was a bit of a conference blowup at that time for CUSA.

But without living it, I do think the move to the A10 was the worst thing this program ever did. Especially now with the transfer portal, I don’t expect us to ever be a contender.

3 Likes
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I’m was okay going to the A-10 because it was a lateral move and being the hoops nerd that I am, I was very aware of the A-10’s very similar hoops history. C-USA didn’t want us because we didn’t have a football team at that time. That’s why Saint Louis was shown the door as well. 2005 definitively marked the end of C-USA as a major conference in men’s basketball.

I have hopes the Niners can be a contender again though it won’t be easy in the AAC. Although the conference can lay claim to 7 NCAAT titles - all belonging to UConn (1 MBB and 6 WBB) - nothing close since. It is quite apparent currently that hoops are not a priority for the AAC, but perhaps that can change in the near future.

Going back to 2005, not sure what other options were there for the Niners. Saint Louis could have returned to the Missouri Valley but that wasn’t an option for us. Perhaps the Colonial would have worked for those 5 years or a return to the Sun Belt. All just “what if” now.

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Yeah, I’m unsure of the inner-workings of how the conference ran at the time, but I was aware that we were forced out due to football. I’ve always been curious how public that sentiment was or if it was just fan conspiracy.

I see it as a shame that we had to change conferences. We were in the national ethos consistently until that shift. I saw an interview of Lutz that was from the late 00’s where he was expressing how the A10 made recruiting more difficult. The recruiting difficulty is especially apparent when we shifted coaches and our performance throughout the 10’s. Just the lineal relationship between poor recruiting in A10 and then the shift back to CUSA.

However, it’s hard to look at the other programs we shared a conference with for years and where they are now. I’m afraid that because of that move and the shift outside of the national scene, we’ve cemented our fate. It would have been fun to attend a school with any amount of sports identity. I think a lot of kids getting recruited feel the same way.

Kids can transfer in and out of schools with ease. The prestige of the AAC is waning though it has attracted good talent, just not talent that stays. Charlotte doesn’t have the presence of larger programs. When I was growing up I never knew of this school, though I sure did know of many many others around the country.

It’s a positive feedback loop. We can’t build a prestigious program because we’re too many years separated from accomplishments, and as a result we further become separated from our accomplishments.

Soccer, baseball, and softball are allowed to become great because although there are defined prestigious schools in those sports, the general public can’t name them. The parity comes from their obsolescence. So the shift to the A10 didn’t hit them, and the return to CUSA didn’t matter. Same for the shift into the AAC. It helps that we won a couple conference championships in men’s soccer and baseball while in the A10.

It’s the big sports like MBB and football that suffer. We could have caught the uprise of WBB, but never achieved the height we could have. We beat South Carolina in the WNIT back in 2011 if my memory serves, but now look at them and look at us.