Former Kentucky star and '58 champion Odie Smith has passed away
A Kentucky basketball legend has passed away.
Adrian “Odie” Smith, a member of Adolph Rupp’s “Fiddlin’ Five” national championship team in 1958, died on April 28 at the age of 89. After starting his career at Northeast Mississippi Junior College, he played two seasons in Lexington from 1956-58, racking up 518 career points and 146 rebounds before going on to win a gold medal with the U.S. Olympic basketball team in 1960.
Not only is he a member of the UK Athletics Hall of Fame, but also a member of the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame for his Olympic success.
“I never thought something like this would happen to me,” Smith said of being inducted. “The Olympic team was a very special team and just having the opportunity to go in to the Naismith Hall of Fame, I just really don’t have any words for that. I’m so thankful for Northeast Mississippi Junior College, that’s the only scholarship I had, and then UK giving me the scholarship to come on there.”
Smith was fifth on that Olympic team in scoring, averaging 10.9 points per contest in Rome. The U.S. team finished the Summer Games undefeated, winning each game by an average of over 42 points.
“The Olympics was an unbelievable experience. We had four NBA Rookies of the Year (Oscar Robertson, Walt Bellamy, Terry Dischinger, Jerry Lucas) on that team, and just to be a part of the talent of that team, I never thought I’d be a part of something like that,” Smith continued. “… The day we got the gold medal, when you stood up on that stand and they put that gold medal around your neck, that was a very special thing too.”
He is a native of Farmington, KY, where he averaged over 28 points per game at Farmington High School as a senior. Scoring 1,524 points in 64 games at Northeast Mississippi, Smith became the third JUCO player to receive a scholarship to play at UK at the time. He’d go on to score seven points and pull down six rebounds in the team’s 84-72 victory over Elgin Baylor and Seattle for the title.
After winning a national championship as a Wildcat, he joined the Army and played for two Army All-Star teams while also winning a gold medal for the U.S. in the 1959 Pan-American Games in Chicago before that historic run in Rome.
That led to a 10-year NBA career with the Cincinnati Royals and San Francisco Warriors. He even earned MVP honors of the 1966 NBA All-Star Game, a matchup that also featured the likes of Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell and Rick Barry. The UK great then retired from basketball in 1972.
Rest in peace to a Kentucky basketball legend. Once a Wildcat, always a Wildcat.
