A Heart-to-Heart Talk with Neal Brown Could Lead to a Breakout Season for Reese Smith
Reese Smith was 15 years old when he met his now-head coach Neal Brown.
Smith, who came to Morgantown in 2020 from Danville, Ky., has a relationship that goes back to childhood with Brown. Both played football for the Boyle County High School Rebels, even training under the same head coach: Chuck Smith.
The 900-student school in the middle of Kentucky managed to seed two West Virginia transplants into a happy reunion, hours away from The Bluegrass State. In a true, small world Appalachia moment, Smith's father, Jimmy, used to watch games at Boyle County High School Football Stadium, where a teenage Neal Brown caught passes.
When Brown grew up and was hired as the head coach of Troy University in 2015, he scouted his alma mater and found wide receiver/safety Reese Smith waiting patiently.
"I knew Coach Brown ever since my sophomore year of high school when he offered me at Troy," Smith said. "We stayed in touch ever since. When he got the head coach here, he offered me here as well. I respected him for always keeping in touch. He kind of knew where I was coming from and what I'd been through from getting the same coach and playing in the same school."
When Smith was picked up on Brown's radar, the sophomore was already making moves to become a stand-out basketball player and track star. He was a starter all four years of high school basketball, even passing the 1,000-point threshold as a guard and forward. It was football, though, that Smith pursued most fervently.
"Before I wanted to play football in college, I wanted to play basketball in college," Smith said. "I had some interest from schools and stuff. I got to high school and played football and started liking it and proceeded more interest into football. I had a sit-down with my dad and stuff. Just based off my size, I thought I had a better chance of playing football at a higher level."
"A better chance" was right.
Smith concluded his high school career as a three-time All-State First Team receiver and Advocate Messenger Male Athlete of the Year. He became the only player in Kentucky high school football history to finish in the top-5 in career interceptions (26) and career touchdown receptions (64). On offense, he wrangled in 4,378 yards receiving, 214 rushing, and 65 touchdowns, while at safety, he notched 185 tackles and received all-state honorable mention honors. Football had effectively become the vehicle for upward mobility.
His three-star ranking attracted the likes of Kentucky, Tennessee, Cincinnati, Michigan State, UAB, Duke, Army, Ball State, Louisville, Wake Forest, and Troy.
When he visited Brown's program in Oct. 2019 after committing in March, it was the environment at Milan Puskar Stadium that drew him in.
“It was one of the craziest atmospheres I have been around," Smith said. "I can’t wait to play at Milan Puskar Stadium in front of 63,000 fans."
Smith couldn't wait to be a part of the program. He enrolled as an agribusiness management major in Jan. 2020, and began practicing with the team in the spring.
He played in 10 games during the 2020 season, primarily on special teams. He added 151 snaps at receiver, but wasn't happy with his usage. Brown had him tacked onto the special teams unit, but Smith knew he could contribute more.
He put his nose to the grindstone and started working on his technique. If he could succeed on special teams, the path to a perpetual slot receiver role wasn't far from reach.
"So I had no idea how important special teams was before I got here," Smith said. "I didn't play them in high school. I just did punt return and that was it... When I got here, it was kind of a slap in the face, but once I got playing, I loved special teams. I played offense and defense in high school. It's hard to play both in college so special teams kind of kept me in the game and kept me focused."
2021 saw him in 13 games, with a pair of starts. He worked diligently to become a go-to special teams implement, and Brown and the coaching staff agreed.
He saw more than 350 snaps during the 2021 season, finishing with 12 catches for 124 yards and his first career touchdown at Kansas State.
Steady improvements seemed to be paying off.
Then, a nagging hamstring injury from high school made its presence known. During spring practice, Smith was sidelined with a serious hamstring strain for all but one week.
"Spring, I got unlucky and pulled my hamstring," Smith said. "I've gotten a lot faster and a lot stronger and I knew I had to do that in order to play. I think just building and stacking those days and years and stuff definitely helped.
"In high school, I pulled that hamstring before," Smith said. "I had a problem with it here in the spring, and then it's been all maintenance pretty much ever since then."
Maintenance requires two to three treatments a day, and Smith's discipline to returning a better receiver is been noticed by his coaching staff.
"Nobody is more disciplined than him, because he got injured in the spring and he didn't get to practice as much," Brown said. "He had a pretty significant hamstring issue there, the first day of pads in the spring and really wasn't himself."
Smith admits that getting back to his brand of football was difficult. He had to get back to the speed and agility that he had lost while rehabbing.
"Going into the off-season, I knew I had to improve on a lot of things," Smith said. "I knew where I stood and me and Coach Brown had one of those sit-down-heart-to-hearts. I knew I had to get better in certain things. I attacked winter workouts with Coach Mike [Joseph] and his staff."
During that sit-down with coach Brown, Smith's takeaways were clear. He would need to kick his production into high gear in order to see time in 2022.
Reese Smith tracks a ball during fall camp.
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"I went in there with the mindset just, 'How can I be better on the field,' more importantly, and he's going to tell me straight up just because he's recruited me ever since I was a sophomore in high school," Smith said.
"We had one of those conversations where it was, 'Coach, I need to play more. I played a lot of special teams, but I want to play a lot more offense.' He told me what I had to do and was straightforward. And Coach Mike was there as well, and he told me what I had to do as well. I attacked it every day and kept it in the back of my mind that I had to get going.
"A big part of it was playing fast and not overthinking things," Smith said of his areas of off-season emphasis.
Two weeks into Fall Camp, the coaching staff has seen enough. They're ready to trust him again.
"He's been as consistent as anyone through fall camp," Brown said. "He's faster.
"People sleep on his speed, and that's fine," he said. "His numbers on the GPS are really impressive. He's pushing in that receiver room. He's going to get a bunch of receiving snaps because he makes plays, and the quarterbacks have a lot of confidence in him because he has no intimidation. He catches just about everything thrown to him. It's year three for him. He's been really solid for us on special teams, but I think he's ready to be a trigger on offense."
Of Smith, wide receivers coach Tony Washington said, "Reese has had a phenomenal camp. He's been one of those guys who have been stacking up days repeatedly, playing fast. He's repeatedly been one of the highest GPS guys in terms of speed. Reese is definitely one of those guys that's going to see a lot of early action."
Smith is also excited for offensive coordinator Graham Harrell's impact.
"I actually knew when he played at Texas Tech," Smith said of Harrell's hiring. "I watched him growing up a little bit. I feel like I fit into the offense very well. He likes to throw it and likes to go four-wide, which is good for me."
Smith is gearing up for 2022's slate, and is more than ready to slot into a veteran receiving corps stacked with redshirt juniors Bryce Ford-Wheaton and Sam James, and fellow sophomore Kaden Prather. That foursome, as well as redshirt freshman Preston Fox, will take Acrisure Stadium by storm on Sept. 1, when the Mountaineers travel to Pittsburgh to open the season against the Pitt Panthers.
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