By GREG MENGELT
Greg.Mengelt@newsandtribune.com
FLOYDS KNOBS — Floyd Central center Jennifer Smith was the best player on the best team in Southern Indiana, making her The Evening News and Tribune Sonya Wahl Memorial Area Player of the Year.
With all due respect to her teammate and fellow first-team performer Brigid Morrissey, area coaches agree that the junior was the biggest reason that the Highlanders went 25-2 and won Hoosier Hills Conference, sectional and regional titles.
“She made everyone around her better, because she’s the focal point of every game plan,” New Albany coach Amanda Carmichael said. “I think that made her teammates so much better.”
Smith averaged 19 points, 8.8 rebounds and 2.9 blocks per game — all team-bests — while shooting nearly 50 percent from the field for the season. She went over the 1,000-point total for her career during a 62-44 sectional win over Jennings County and is on target to finish as the Highlanders’ second all-time leading scorer.
“She’s a 6-footer, and she plays bigger than a 6-footer,” Floyd coach Joe Voelker said. “She plays more like 6-2, because she has such length and such a vertical leap. Really, I thought she did a great job on the defensive end. She did a nice job of blocking shots without getting into foul trouble and staying in games this year. It’s a credit to how she learned how to defense and use her size well.”
Carmichael was one of many coaches who got to see Smith talents at their best. The junior center had 23 points, 13 rebounds, two steals and two blocked shots in a 93-47 victory over Carmichael’s Bulldogs.
“Jennifer is just so tough to defense,” Carmichael admitted. “She’s so mobile for a post player. She goes left-handed and right-handed and is equally good both ways. The biggest thing is she runs the floor so well.”
Voelker agreed that Smith’s versatility has been the key to her success.
“She’s able to finish on both sides of the rim,” Voelker said. “She uses her left hand as well as her right inside. Sometimes, I think she has a little better touch with her left than her right.”
Voelker said her versatility has come from hard work — hard work that has helped Smith improve dramatically between each of her three varsity seasons.
“She came a long way during her freshman year, then from her freshman to her sophomore year,” Voelker recalled. “This year, she just got more consistent. She was able to go off of the dribble more as a junior, and she just got physically stronger.”
Those comments surprised Smith.
“I don’t even know if I’ve improved a ton,” she said modestly. “I guess I don’t look at it that way. I guess I have (improved), because I can hit more shots, and I’m stronger.”
Smith said she has judged her improvement by the team’s advancement. During her freshman year, Floyd went 15-8. Last year, the Highlanders won a school-record 20 games, leading to this year’s record-shattering season.
“It was pretty awesome,” Smith admitted. “I didn’t know we were going to be that good. It’s exciting that we accomplished so much, broke so many records, won that many games and went that far (in the tournament).”
When informed that she was the News and Tribune Player of the Year, Smith expressed disbelief.
“I couldn’t have done it without my teammates,” she admitted. “I think it’s more of a team thing, not an individual thing. That’s the way basketball is.”
Smith thought Morrissey could have very easily been the honoree.
“Brigid is an awesome player,” Smith said of the Highlanders’ senior point guard. “We could rely on her to do anything we needed her to do. Next year, I’m going to miss her a lot.”
Smith, who also led the Floyd volleyball team to the state finals in the fall, will play volleyball at Indiana University following her senior year. If she did choose to play basketball instead, Voelker said she could be a great collegian.
“I’ve had a lot of phone calls about her from different schools,” Voelker said. “She would definitely be a Division I basketball player. If she really dedicated herself over the summer, she could go play at a very high level of college ball. I think she could be heck of college basketball player.”
