By ADAM ZAGORIA
HERALD NEWS
WEST PATERSON – Whenever Daryl Smith goes to the Rutgers Athletic Center with Corey Chandler, he points to the banners on the wall and reminds Chandler about his own piece of history.
The 6-foot-5 Smith, known as "D-Train," was a member of the last Scarlet Knights team to make the NCAA Tournament in 1991. A three-year starter under former coach Bob Wenzel, he also helped the Knights notch a couple of Atlantic 10 titles and reach the National Invitation Tournament in 1990 and 1992 and the NCAAs as a freshman in 1989.
"(When he looked at the banners), he just kind of laughed and said, 'I'm going to break all your records,' " Smith, a South Orange resident, said Wednesday. "And I said, 'If you finish up better than me, I'll be the first one to congratulate you.' "
Now a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS), Smith has trained both Chandler and Rutgers freshman Mike Coburn, as well as numerous other high school and college standouts. He also worked this summer as the lead trainer on the Jordan Brand's nationwide Breakfast Club Tour. He hopes to link the success of Rutgers past to its future, beginning with Chandler.
Chandler is a 6-2 combination guard and the most heralded freshman in head coach Fred Hill's four-man recruiting class. He is expected to be a valuable contributor for the Knights when they tip off the 2007-08 season on Friday against Tennessee Tech in the Blue Ribbon Classic.
Chandler knows the recent history at Rutgers – which was picked by Big East coaches to finish 15th in the 16-team league -- and he knows it will be an uphill climb to put more banners on the wall over the next four seasons, but that is his aim.
"Absolutely, that's a goal," said Chandler, who was named second-team All-State by The Associated Press and rated the 10th-best point guard in the Class of 2007 by Rivals. "Our whole goal is to make the NCAA Tournament."
The list of players Smith has trained in recent years reads like a Who's Who of area basketball talent: former St. Patrick of Elizabeth stars Corey Fisher (Villanova) and Jeff Robinson (Memphis), as well as current St. Patrick junior Dexter Strickland, who is considering North Carolina, Michigan State and Florida; Lance Stephenson, the talented junior out of Brooklyn's Lincoln High; Seton Hall freshman Mike Davis; Indiana recruit Devin Ebanks of Brooklyn; and Rutgers' freshmen Chandler and Mike Coburn.
"There are a lot of guys running around claiming to work guys out and basically there you get a lot of guys standing under the basket passing the ball around," Smith said.
"Whereas not only did I play at an extremely high level under NBA-caliber coaches, I have an exercise science background that allows me to understand how to develop players' strength, speed and agility and put all that together to be the total package."
Smith credits Jeff Van Gundy, who was an assistant at Rutgers in his freshman season, with turning him on to the benefits of hard workouts.
"I would always bug him about giving me a private workout and he took me out one day and I lasted about 10 or 15 minutes," Smith said. "At that point I realized how hard you have to work out on your own to be a great player.
"That same feeling is sort of what I give the kids who work out with me so they have the same feeling."
It was Van Gundy and Eddie Jordan, the former Rutgers star and current Washington Wizards coach, who gave Smith his nickname after he began to train strenuously during the offseason.
After playing professionally in Italy and Croatia, Smith came home and formed his company, D-TRAINED.
He works with various high school programs, most notably St. Patrick, a two-time Tournament of Champions winner.
Through his work with Newark East Side, he also developed a close relationship with Chandler, whom he has known since the eighth grade. And it was during the summer after Chandler's junior season, the same summer he committed to Rutgers, that Smith noticed a real change in Chandler's attitude toward basketball.
After playing well at Sonny Vaccaro's ABCD Camp in Hackensack, Chandler roomed with several big-name players at the Five-Star Camp, including Robinson and current college sophomores Larry Davis (Seton Hall), Wayne Ellington (North Carolina) and Gerald Henderson (Duke).
"He was among greatness," Smith said. "I was on Corey every day. First thing in the morning, I told him to work as hard as you can and tomorrow would be better.
"When we drove back, he thanked me numerous times. I could tell he felt he'd done a great job of putting himself on the map."
Smith continued to put Chandler through rigorous workouts involving weight training, shooting and ball-handling. Those workouts serve Chandler well now that he's at Rutgers.
"I do a lot of workouts with our new strength and conditioning coach, Phil Dyer, so some of the stuff that he gives me I was used to because I was doing it with D-Train," Chandler said.
The training Chandler did with Smith was one thing, but it was in the many car rides back to the gritty streets of Newark that the two men talked about life and the obstacles facing a young black man from the inner city.
"As a person who looks like him and has experienced some of the things that he had, I have enough perspective in terms of where he's going," Smith said. "I could share and convey life lessons as a person and as a student-athlete."
Said Chandler: "I learned a lot of things. Stay humble. Work hard."
Now, as Chandler embarks on his college career, Smith has no doubt that the young man from the tough streets of Newark can have an impact similar to his at Rutgers.
"The sky's the limit for Corey," Smith said. "He's competitive. He's strong. He's athletic. He shoots with range. He's not afraid to go to the basket. And when he wants to, he can be a great defender because he's very athletic, he's very strong.
"If Rutgers can put the right people around him, he can really flourish and blossom and have a tremendous career."
Newark, NJ / East Side
