Former UCLA Big Man Joshua Smith Earning His Redemption at Georgetown

It took five years, two schools and a dietitian, but Joshua Smith is finally reminding us why he was supposed to be the next big thing in college basketball.

He just got too big.

Rated as the No. 18 overall recruit in the class of 2010 by 247Sports, Smith—then listed at 270 pounds—was the only 5-star recruit committed to play for a school west of Kansas. He was expected to be the centerpiece for a UCLA team coming off a woefully uncharacteristic 14-18 season in 2009-10.

Early on, he was every bit as good as advertised.

Five weeks into Smith's college career, he had 15 points and eight rebounds to pace the Bruins to a key win over BYU. After the game, BYU head coach Dave Rose said, "He's as difficult a matchup as we've had here and this is the sixth season I've been a head coach."

Thanks in large part to Smith's play in the post, the Bruins won 23 games and returned to the NCAA tournament. Smith averaged 10.9 points, 6.3 rebounds and 1.0 blocks in just 21.7 minutes per game and was named to the Pac-10 All-Freshman Team. 

Following his freshman year, the big man sent out "feelers with NBA teams" to gauge where he'd be drafted if he were to declare, according to NBADraft.net's Aran Smith.

The sky was the limit for a young man who could be a bona fide star with just a little more focus on conditioning. 

That's what made his fall from grace so frustratingly buzzworthy.

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In its preview of UCLA's 2011-12 season, the Blue Ribbon College Basketball Yearbook alluded to the major question surrounding the big man: "The only question with Smith is how much of his immense potential he is going to actually reach this time, a question that is believed linked to his weight. Smith finished high school somewhere in the neighborhood of 350 pounds."

"The better cardio shape he's in, the better player he'll be," UCLA head coach Ben Howland said in the season preview. "At the end of the (2010-11) season, I thought he was starting to come on."

However, his playing time decreased during his sophomore season, as he averaged just 17.2 minutes per game. Smith himself put it best the following October to David Wharton of the Los Angeles Times.

"I'd be out of position and reaching to the ball too late," he lamented. "The next thing I know, I've got four fouls and I'm heading to the bench."

Regardless of how many stories focused on his weight and conditioning issues, it didn't get any better. He played just 13.5 minutes per game for six contests during the 2012-13 season before deciding to leave Westwood.

He transferred to Georgetown in January 2013 and had trimmed 40 pounds by August, according to ESPN's Andy Katz.

As it turns out, he just needed to eat more frequently to lose weight.

"I had a bad rap at UCLA because I didn't eat breakfast. I didn't eat lunch. I would wait until after practice and workouts and then think I had to eat X amount of calories," Smith told Katz. "I've worked with a dietitian since I got here in January. Now I'm eating (those calories) with small meals throughout the day."

Alex Brandon/Associated Press

Talent was never the problem with Smith.

His problem was self-control.

His problem was commitment. 

"A committed Josh Smith, I'm not sure there is a better big man in the country," Georgetown head coach John Thompson III told Katz. "He has the instincts and the physical tools to be better than any big man I've had."

That's incredibly high praise from the man who coached Jeff Green, Greg Monroe and Roy Hibbert, but we've seen flashes of that promise all throughout his career. In his first game with the Hoyas, he scored 25 points in 27 minutes against Oregon.

Even after trimming those pounds, he's still a mountain of a man in the paint. More than just being an immovable object, though, Smith has great footwork and vision. Many centers are black holes once they get the ball, unable to get closer to the hoop and unwilling to find the open man, resulting in a low-percentage shot.

The same isn't true for Smith, though. While it doesn't show up in his assist totals (1.2 per game this season), he's a great asset in the inside-outside offense, able to reset by finding guys on the perimeter. Even if he gets the entry pass in the high post, he's nimble and assertive enough to work his way down to the low block.

He became an indispensable and reliable part of Georgetown's rotation as the Hoyas opened the 2013-14 season with a 10-3 record. Smith was averaging 19.9 minutes and 11.5 points per game while shooting 65.5 percent from the field.

In remaining committed in the kitchen and the weight room, though, Smith fell behind in the classroom and was officially ruled academically ineligible for the rest of the season in late January. Without him in the lineup, Georgetown squandered its hot start by losing 11 of its last 18 games and missing the NCAA tournament.

Though Smith was granted another two years of eligibility upon his arrival at Georgetown, we were left to wonder if we'd ever see him play college basketball for a high-major program again. After all, Greg Whittington was one of Georgetown's leading scorers when he was ruled academically ineligible in January 2013. Whittington was dismissed from the program the following November and has been something of an urban legend ever since.

But Smith did come back, and he has been better than ever for a tournament-bound team.

Smith had recorded just four double-doubles in 84 career games before this season, but he already has six this year. He also has seven games with at least 15 points, including a 20-point game against Kansas in which he made the Jayhawks look absolutely hopeless in the paint.

Playing 21.3 minutes per game might not seem like much for most 5-star players, but it's significantly better than the past three seasons for a big man who is scoring, assisting and rebounding at a career-best rate. And it has been enough for Smith to be named one of the 15 candidates for the inaugural Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Center of the Year Award.

His odds of finishing ahead of Jahlil Okafor and Frank Kaminsky to actually win the award are slim to none, but to even be recognized as one of the 15 best big men in the country after all he has gone through is an incredible accomplishment.

If 2014-15 Joshua Smith had shown up three years ago, he probably would have been a lottery pick. Nowadays, he isn't even showing up as a projected draft pick on DraftExpress.com, but that hasn't stopped him from resurrecting his college career.

"I think the light's going to come on," UCLA's Tony Parker told Wharton in October 2012. "(It's) just that for some people it takes longer. When Josh wants it, he'll get it."

Nearly five years after his college career began, it looks like Smith finally wants it. Georgetown fans are hopeful the light stays on long enough for him to carry this team at least to the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2007.

Kerry Miller covers college basketball for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter @kerrancejames.