When sophomore center Kenyatta Smith walked off the court in Salt Lake City for the final time this season, he did so with his head held high.

In a game where Harvard basketball’s top scoring duo was held to a combined 14 points and the Crimson’s offense seemed powerless, Smith stepped up.

The Crimson’s season came to a close with a 23-point loss to Arizona in the third round of the NCAA tournament, but Smith wrapped up his season with a team-high 10 points and three steals.

“We knew we needed something, and he delivered,” Harvard coach Tommy Amaker said. “He delivered more than anyone could have imagined.”

Smith—a three-star recruit who was the No. 13 center in his class according to scout.com—was coming off a disappointing freshman year in which he saw limited playing time and put up three points in eight games. At the start of the 2013 season, Smith was tapped to start in the first five games. He averaged 5.4 points per game and found himself on the bench for the next 16 games in favor of classmates Steve Moundou-Missi and Jonah Travis.

But everything changed in February.

Coming off a road loss to Columbia that knocked Harvard out of sole ownership of first place in the Ivy League, Amaker decided to shake up his starting lineup going into the make-or-break home weekend against Penn and Princeton at Lavietes Pavilion.

After playing less than 20 minutes in each of his previous 16 games, the 6’8” center was a unstoppable in the paint, putting up 20 points on eight-for-nine shooting from the field. Smith obliterated the program record for single-game blocks with 10 and grabbed nine rebounds, finishing one rebound away from a Harvard’s first-ever triple-double.

The next night against rival Princeton, Smith followed up Friday’s performance with 14 points on perfect shooting from the field and the line, adding seven rebounds and six blocks.

Smith would not match his Penn-Princeton performance again as the season wound down, but he started every game and provided a much-needed spark on the interior.

Smith emerged as the Crimson’s most consistent performer in the tournament, scoring 10 points in each game and making key defensive plays that energized Harvard down the stretch in its historic win over New Mexico in the second round.

“This was his time,” Amaker said. “This was why I recruited him, to be this kind of player. It was time for him to do that, to step forward and to make his presence felt.”

—Staff writer Hope Schwartz can be reached hschwartz@college.harvard.edu. Follow her on Twitter @HopeSchwartz16