Nick Smith Jr. wasn’t about to quit on Arkansas: “I made a commitment”

Those who said Smith was using Arkansas only to get to the NBA were foolish.

Nick Smith Jr. is the highest-ranked recruit Arkansas basketball has ever had. He was in-state talent that chose his home state’s flagship school.

And for months, some of the people who should have been his biggest supporters were dogging him. Allegations from the Twitter-verse, largely by folks without a name attached to their profile, were that Smith was just using the Razorbacks to further his professional hopes.

The remarks were mean-spirited and dumb. And false.

Smith cleared the air Tuesday night during coach Eric Musselman’s radio show.

“Whatever happened in those months that I went through, I was going to come back and play regardless,” Smith said. “I made a commitment to Coach Muss and the coaching staff. I feel like it wasn’t in my character to just go and leave.”

Smith is projected to be an NBA lottery pick in the draft. He could go as high as No. 3, though most have him around the seventh or eighth spot. Smith played healthy for just three games with the Razorbacks in December before tweaking a right knee injury that had kept him out of the first several games to start the season. He returned Wednesday at Texas A&M, but only played five minutes.

Against Florida on Saturday, however, in a must-win game for the Hogs, only one Arkansas player logged more minutes. Smith’s 10 points were a primer for the Razorbacks’ 19-point win as the Razorbacks kept their NCAA Tournament hopes alive.

Now, with four games left in the regular season and Arkansas squarely on the bubble, Smith doesn’t have to prove anything to anyone, least of all those who doubted him.

But Wednesday’s words show he wants to, anyway, because he is Arkansas through and through.

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