No. 2 — WR Tevaun Smith

No. 2 . . .

Tevaun Smith has turned himself into a top-flight Big Ten wide receiver. He led the Hawkeyes last season with 43 receptions. He probably led the Big Ten in pass interference penalties against. Of course, there is no stat for that, but if you watched Iowa, you know it's likely true.

So, from what football factory did Iowa pluck this top-flight, all-Big Ten caliber wide receiver? Some huge Chicago suburb? A super-duper Ohio football industrial complex? Cali? Gotta be Florida, right?

Nope, Iowa recruited Smith out of the Kent School, a Connecticut prep school that sends more students to the Ivy League than the Big Ten, via Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

This is where Smith's story gets fun. Keep in mind that Toronto is a beautiful, cosmopolitan city and not the lumberjack cafe that you have in your mind's eye.

Smith does have a cluster of maple leafs — the symbol on the Canadian flag — tattooed on his right biceps. The leafs curl around and lead into a beautifully drawn picture of the Toronto skyline, punctuated by CN Tower, an 1,800-foot high needlelike structure.

Let's throw in the fact that Smith's mom and dad, Maureen Smith and Denzel Forbes, are from Jamaica. Smith said they speak with the distinct accent. He catches himself sliding into that when he's home.

'I eat a lot of Jamaican food when I'm home, it's always healthy,' said Smith, who earned the nickname 'Canadian Missile' during the 2010 Team USA vs. World All-American game.

Where does the Kent School come in?

Smith didn't come to Iowa City directly from Toronto. Canada exports hockey players to the rest of the world. Canadian football players are lightly scouted if at all. Smith is a case-in-point. When he was a prep player at Chaminade College High School in Toronto, college football recruiters from the states where a rare sight.

'The only school I remember coming over was Buffalo and that was really it. They're only an hour and a half away,' Smith said. 'The Canadian schools would come, but other than that, no major schools. It was pretty much us going to football camps.'

Smith went the camp route for exposure, but ultimately he found his way to Kent School (Conn.) for a year of postgraduate academics and exposure to colleges in the United States. Kent is a prestigious boarding school located in bucolic Connecticut that isn't known as a factory for high-level football recruits, longtime Kent School head coach Todd Marble said. And the woodsy, 1,200-acre campus is off the beaten path.

When asked how Iowa found Smith, head coach Kirk Ferentz, who played football and graduated from the University of Connecticut, said the Hawkeye caravan got kind of lost.

'We could have been in Germany for all I knew,' Ferentz said with a laugh. 'I had no idea where the heck we were. All of a sudden we popped out near Bristol after driving around places I had never been.'

In football, Kent, a solid day's drive from Toronto on the Connecticut-New York border, is allowed to take four postgraduate students who also have to meet admissions requirements.

'Tevaun had a great background, but wanted to get a little better educational background before he went to college,' said Marble, who was Smith's coach at Kent. 'At the same time, like a lot of our postgraduate prospects, he wanted to get a little more exposure playing football.'

Marble is quick to point out that Kent 'isn't in the business of Division I athletes.'

'Tevaun was an anomaly,' Marble said. 'Most of our kids are going to Ivy League schools, so to get a kid like that was a real bonus. Right from day 1, he fit in personality-wise, work ethic-wise, character-wise.'

Smith's offseason mantra . . .

Smith is Iowa's best wide receiver. You know this. He knows this. The world knows this. That's nice and all, but Smith has his eyes set a little higher. Of course he does, that's what these guys do.

'Not only have I tried to compare myself with other receivers in the Big Ten, I've tried to compare myself with other receivers in the country,' Smith said. 'So, whoever that No. 1 wide receiver is in the country, I've tried to work hard and get to the point where I can be better than that person.

'I don't want to be looked at as the best receiver in the Big Ten, I want to be looked at as one of the best receivers in the country. I'm doing whatever I can to work hard. I'm grinding every day and I'm doing all the extra little stuff that will make me better.'

Does that kind of talk make you squeamish? Or is it exactly what you want to hear from your No. 1 WR?

Outlook . . .

There was some talk this spring about moving Smith around to find favorable matchups. Wide receivers coach Bobby Kennedy mentioned it, as did offensive coordinator Greg Davis.

'We're moving Tevaun around formationally, that was one of the things that we went into the offseason in trying to find some ways to put him in spots that he hasn't played in as a slot receiver, for example,' Davis said. 'When he's an outside receiver it's easier to low coverage to him. It's harder to do that to a slot receiver. So, yes, we've done some things that we feel like will give him some opportunities to get more advantageous coverages.'

It's intriguing. Smith drew a lot of double coverage when he was on the outside (which was 90-plus percent of the time in '14). Now, if he's able to move into the slot, it's harder to double cover and if defenses do, then something opens up on the outside for someone.

It's interesting in concept. Let's see if it actually happens.

l Comments: (319) 398-8256; marc.morehouse@thegazette.com