Shaka Smart studied Rick Pitino's coaching tapes. Now the Marquette coach gets to compete against him in the Big East.

Shaka Smart found what he was looking for at his high school coach's house.

Kevin Bavery lived directly across the street from Oregon High School, and in the early 1990s Smart was hungry for anything related to basketball, so he was a frequent visitor.

"We had an adjustable hoop that I probably put about 6 feet of cement in, it was crazy," Bavery said. "That thing had a breakaway rim and all that. We had different players over all the time, but he and his probably best friend at the time, Will Smith, would come over and play one-on-one and they’d have dunking contests and all that.

“Of course my young kids were around, and it was a great experience for them. And the amount of lunches cooked for Shaka and Will; we made this crazy combination that they just loved, it ended up basically being some kind of meat-and-bean dish that I threw whatever was in the refrigerator in it."

The real bounty was Bavery's collection of coaching tapes on VHS. Smart gravitated to the ones that featured Rick Pitino. Like a lot of coaches, Bavery was heavily influenced by Pitino's running-and-pressing style.

"I remember sitting in his living room," Smart said. "And watching Coach Pitino on the video talking about the 'black' and the 'white' press.

"And that was probably my favorite part of playing when I was that age because I was pretty good at it, so it was fun."

Smart became an indirect branch of Pitino's coaching tree on a career path that has led him back to his home state at Marquette. They have never coached each against each other, but that could change on Saturday, when the 17th-ranked Golden Eagles (12-5, 3-3 Big East) face St. John's (12-6, 4-3) at Madison Square Garden in New York, provided the 71-year-old Pitino is back on the sideline for the Red Storm after a bout with COVID.

When it happens, the meeting will be years in the making.

Shaka Smart learned press at Oregon High School

By the time Smart was in high school, Pitino was a coaching legend who was returning Kentucky to NCAA glory. Pitino had long been a favorite of coaches with his clinics and videos, a charismatic New Yorker who could make footwork and pump fakes sound exciting.

“I was a big Pitino guy," Bavery said. "When Stu Jackson came to UW (as coach in 1992), he was a Pitino disciple and I went and watched some of those early Badger practices when he first came.

"He was probably the first one to really change the culture here. Not only the drills. The details, the voice inflections, everything was right out of a Rick Pitino tape. You could just tell that he was indoctrinated into that so much."

Bavery studied all he could. His favorite tapes came from when Pitino was a 34-year-old wonder at Providence and leading the Friars to the 1987 Final Four behind a workhorse guard named Billy Donovan.

"It was diamond press, it was matchup press," Bavery said. "He called it the 'black' press and the 'white' press.

"It was pressing depending how you scored. If you scored this way, you would do the 2-2-1. If you scored that way, you would do the 2-2-1 matchup. If you scored that way, you were in a diamond. If you scored at the rim, you stayed over the ball."

Soon Oregon looked like a team coached by Pitino.

"Shaka and Will were really masters at the front of that press," Bavery said. "I think most of it had to do with their ability, their instincts, how hard they practiced and trained.

"But also I think Shaka’s insights and intuitiveness from putting that coaching hat on and digging into the tapes. And just understanding if we’re going to make it work, we’re going to make it work with detail."

Smart kept getting deeper into his basketball studies.

"(Pitino) was just so unique with his individual workout concepts," Bavery said. "Shaka and I actually co-wrote articles for a publication called Winning Hoops and we submitted them before he even graduated. And it was the first one ever that they published from a coach and a player.

"I gave my take on individual workouts and he did as well. That was kind of a big thing at the time. Shaka came through maybe my second or third year as a head coach, and we just got really into that individual workout concept."

Billy Donovan is connection between Shaka Smart at Rick Pitino

When Donovan became a successful coach at Florida, Bavery went to Gainesville to observe a few practices. In 2000, as Smart was getting started in his career, he got a gig working at Donovan's summer camp with help from his old high-school coach.

Smart's coaching philosophy had been informed by that pressing style, and he sought out coaching mentors who had similar philosophies.

"How we played when I was in high school, then I was fortunate to work for three great pressing coaches," Smart said. "Oliver Purnell, first and foremost, he was the best pressing coach (at Dayton and Clemson). Keith Dambrot (at Akron). And Billy Donovan, who obviously his stuff is all the same as Coach Pitino’s stuff in the press.

"So those influences really affected me and I would say all three of those guys were influenced by Coach Pitino as well."

Just before becoming a head coach at VCU in 2009, Smart spent an influential season on Donovan's staff at Florida. He heard a lot of stories about Pitino from when Donovan was "Billy The Kid" at Providence.

"Every day," Smart said. "He had a lot of stories. One story I love is how when (Pitino) was a young coach at Providence, he was on the court all the time with the guys playing.

"The rules were different then. They were playing pickup. They were playing 1 on 1, 2 on 2, 3 on 3. That’s pretty cool just to think of the energy and the competitiveness that he had then and obviously still has now."

Shaka Smart and Rick Pitino have never squared off

Smart became a coaching phenomenon with his "Havoc" full-court pressing at VCU, which was similar to Pitino's concepts.

"I’ve studied him a lot," Smart said. "I try to study all the great ones, and he’s certainly that.”

Relentless full-court presses aren't as commonplace in the college game these days. Officials have cut down on physical play, especially with ball-handlers. There are so many timeouts that the biggest advantage of pressing – wearing out your opponent – has been mitigated.

But MU and St. John's still deploy multiple pressures, designed mostly to get foes out of rhythm or cause them to be late in starting their offensive actions.

What hasn't changed is Smart's admiration of Pitino. The St. John's coach looks different from the young up-and-comer in tiny shorts in those VHS tapes. He had a messy exit at Louisville after multiple recruiting scandals, but is back in high-major Division I hoops after three seasons at Iona. Pitino's coaching acumen is unquestioned.

"He’s one of the best to ever do it," Smart said. "So it’s an honor to coach against him. His teams always have an energy and a passion and they reflect him. I think it’s really, really powerful and significant for the Big East that he’s a big, big part of this league."

As for those VHS tapes? Bavery, now the head coach at Middleton and a 2023 inductee into the Wisconsin Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame, still has them somewhere in his house.

"The problem is I don’t have a VHS player," Bavery said. "But I could probably dig and find it.

"I don’t need to watch it anymore, I know it by heart because I watched it so many times."

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Shaka Smart studied Rick Pitino's coaching tapes with Billy Donovan