That said, it's nevertheless safe to assume that HoopGurlz.com, and others who operate in the sphere of covering, observing and evaluating girl's and women's basketball, wouldn't be around - at least, wouldn't be doing what we're doing the way we're doing it - without the likes of Joe Smith.

For decades, Smith has been as much a part of the female basketball landscape as ponytails and held balls. Yet it took his passing on Tuesday, at the age of 65, for many to take note of the impact Smith had on the sport he'd grown to love so much.

As Vincent Cannizarro, who coached at Christ the King in Middle Village, N.Y., from 1980 to 1999, said, "People will tell you that Joe was a bigger-than-life character who many people admired and respected. The women's game has lost a champion today."

Joe Smith, with longtime friend Lynn
Flanagan, associate head coach at Loyola
Marymount

Clay Kallam, the longtime publisher of Full Court Press, a website covering women's basketball for which Smith wrote, said the Forest Hills, N.Y., native was "one of the very first and most important figures in women's basketball journalism."

That Smith was a man who championed women's sports will stand as a critical development in the evolution of girl's and women's basketball. Big-time athletics has been, and remains, a male-dominated club, requiring some to break ranks with the status quo before any doors could open. And Smith could break ranks with the best of them.

Sometimes solitary and, as Kallam put it "cantankerous at times," Smith always seemed to have time for the players and coaches he clearly cherished. He also was, in a very New York way, highly opinionated. In fact, it was one of his opinions that led to what many consider to be a landmark moment in women's basketball journalism.

Writing for Dick Vitale's 1993-94 College Basketball Preview, Smith wrote of Kansas: "The Jayhawks are loaded with talent.... But coach Marian Washington usually finds a way to screw things up. This season will be no different." Washington sued Smith, as well as Vitale, for defamation. Smith was granted a summary judgment in district court, which noted, among other things, that Washington had failed in 22 years to take Kansas to a Final Four. The judgment was affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals.

"His battle with Marian Washington gave journalists really a place in the sport," Kallam said. "Obviously we're all to be taken seriously."

Smith originally had to be dragged to his first women's game at Queen's College, according to Lisa Liberty Becker, author of "Net Prospect: The Courting Process of Women's College Basketball Recruiting." Immediately hooked, Smith and a friend compiled statistics for the AIAW, a precusor to the NCAA for women, and started attending summer girl's basketball tournaments. His reports on the top players led to the formation of the Women's Basketball News Service, a scouting service that branched into awards and all-star teams that were widely recognized in the media.

Steve Kozaki, director of the prestigious Nike Tournament of Champions, at which Smith was a fixture, plans to name a trophy or bracket for the deceased writer. HoopGurlz.com has named its main, national forum for him. We actually could not think of a better way to memorialize Joe Smith. After all, the forum is a place to do something he did so long and so well - love and talk about girl's and women's basketball.

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