Smith Feeling at Home in Cavaliers’ Secondary

By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Kendren Smith made sure to point out to University of Virginia teammate Tyler Neville that Harvard recently lost to Brown in football. Brown is not a traditional power in the Ivy League, and “that was a really bad loss” for his former team, acknowledged Neville, a tight end who graduated from Harvard last spring.

Smith “has been in my ear about that, but we always got the best of Penn,” Neville said.

The University of Pennsylvania is where Smith, a 6-foot-1, 207-pound defensive back, starred before graduating last December and transferring to UVA. The Quakers went 0-3 in games against the Crimson teams for which Neville played.

“He was a baller,” Smith said of Neville.

The former rivals are now classmates at UVA, where each is pursuing a graduate certificate in public policy from the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy.

Smith and Neville are not the first Ivy League graduates to play for Virginia during Tony Elliott’s tenure as head coach. The Wahoos’ roster in 2022 included offensive lineman John Paul Flores (Dartmouth), and Paul Akere (Columbia) lined up at defensive end for the Hoos in ’22 and ’23.

They’re high-character young men who adjusted quickly to life on Grounds socially and academically, Elliott said this week, “because they’ve already been in that environment. So you can take that piece out of the equation.”

On the field, “their body of work illustrates to us that they have the capacity from a football standpoint to make that transition pretty quickly,” Elliott said.

Smith, a graduate of Mallard Creek High School in Charlotte, N.C., twice was named All-Ivy League during his four-and-a-half years at Penn, where he majored in political science.

He left Charlotte for Philadelphia in the summer of 2019 and played in nine games for the Quakers that fall. The COVID-19 pandemic wiped out the 2020 season in the Ivy League, and an injury limited him to three games in 2021. But he started every game for the Quakers in 2022 and ’23 and helped them post records of 8-2 and 6-4, respectively.

Knowing he had another year of eligibility, Smith began weighing his options near the end of the 2023 season. “I just kind of had that mindset that I wanted to go to a bigger stage,” he said. “I wanted to go to a Power Five program and live that dream.”

After he entered the transfer portal, Smith heard from UVA defensive coordinator John Rudzinski and scheduled a visit to Charlottesville. Among the players with whom Smith spoke during his visit was Akere.

As undergraduates, each had participated in a program offered by the Make A Play Foundation, a not-for-profit organization whose stated mission is “to prepare underrepresented athletes for executive careers in competitive industries, including Fortune 500 companies, and they found they had much in common.

Akere, now a first-year student at Columbia Law School, said he remembers emphasizing to Smith “the importance of going to a school like UVA and being able to benefit from playing the most competitive brand of college football while meeting teammates who are striving to be excellent in life. I also remember conversing about how it might be an uphill battle at some points to shake the preconceived notions that come with transferring from the Ivy League, but it makes it all the more worthwhile.”

Virginia (4-1 overall, 2-0 ACC), which hosts Louisville (3-2, 1-1) at 3:30 p.m. Saturday at Scott Stadium, is off to its best start since 2019. Smith has yet to start a game as a Cavalier, but he’s totaled 10 tackles and effectively sealed UVA’s comeback win over Boston College last weekend with an interception late in the fourth quarter.

“It felt great,” Smith said.

Secondary coach Curome Cox and defensive analyst Antonio Fenelus have talked to him about “trusting your talent and being confident out there and feeling like you belong,” Smith said. “I feel like last week was just a real testament to understanding I belong, and I’ll be ready to make plays against Louisville.”

Smith, who hopes to play professionally next year, trains at both cornerback and safety, and he believes his versatility will boost his stock.

“I’ve always been a fanatic for defenses,” he said, “so I can pick it up pretty fast.”

That adds to his value on a defense whose secondary has been hit hard by injuries and attrition. “He’s having to do a lot,” Elliott said when asked about Smith after the BC game, “but he’s just shown consistency and performance to earn the opportunity to be out there. And then he made big plays when he was out there.”

Asked about the transition from Ivy League to ACC football, Smith noted that Power Five linemen are generally much bigger than those in FCS. “But a lot of it is the same,” he said. “A lot of schemes are the same, a lot of everything is really the same. It’s a kids’ game at the end of the day, but just played by big-time athletes.

“I think the biggest thing is just the speed is different, everything is a lot faster, and the margin for error is obviously a lot smaller. But it’s all essentially the same. You’ve just got to really understand that going into the game and not overcomplicate it at the end of the day.”

Smith, who was born in Houston, lived in several other places while his father, who was an officer in the U.S. Navy, served in the military. The family moved to Charlotte when Smith was in the fifth grade. His mother is a teacher who instilled in her children the importance of academics.

At an early age, Smith learned to read, and his mother made sure his summers weren’t just for fun and games. “She had me reading books and doing extra and just taking pride in academics,” Smith recalled.

And so when the opportunity arose for him to attend Penn, Smith said, he saw it as “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” Such players as Justin Watson (Penn) and Andre Iosivas (Princeton) have made it to the NFL from the Ivy League, so Smith was confident he’d be well-prepared in football, too.

Smith, who’s engaged to be married in June, spent the spring semester in 2023 as an intern in Morgan Stanley’s wealth management division. He’d been named a team captain at Penn that year, and he’d work out with teammates in Philadelphia at 5 or 6 a.m. and then drive across the Delaware River to a Morgan Stanley office in New Jersey.

“I’m always just a grinder, ready to work,” Smith said.

Whenever his football career ends, Smith said, he hopes to find work that allows him to give back to the community. For now, he’s focused on growing as a player and helping the Cavaliers continue their ascent in the ACC.

“Great decision,” Smith said of his transfer to Virginia.

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