NOTE: This article was released as part of Sam Federman’s 2026-27 Metro Conference Preview. The full preview, featuring previews of all 13 teams, is available at this link
Nate Hager went to grab a newspaper to read the sports section while working at a GymRat basketball event at Skidmore College in the mid-2000s. His coworker for the event, Nevada Smith, an assistant coach at Ithaca College, was ingesting information from a different periodical. With a newspaper and a few little booklets, Smith combed
through tables of data and lists of notes written in such jargon that takes years to master. It certainly wasn’t the basketball.
“What are you reading?” Hager, then an assistant coach at Juniata College, asked Smith.
For anybody who knows Smith best, it’s not a surprise that he was reading time sheets and other information for horse races. As he’s ascended through the coaching ranks from a Division-III assistant to now being the head coach at Siena, he’s gained a reputation for his innovative offensive mind, but also for his obsession with thoroughbred racing. And the two might be more connected than they sound.
“I think people know that I enjoy going up there and watching the horses run,” Smith told Mid-Major Madness. “I really like watching them work out in the morning.”
Alan Seretti, like Smith, grew up in the Pittsburgh area. For the last 20 years, the two, along with Hager and a few others, have shared a text thread where they discuss basketball coaching, Pirates baseball, Pitt football, and of course, horse racing.
When it comes to picking horses, Smith is the one they all turn to.
“He’s good at it,” Seretti, now the head coach at Dickinson College, told Mid-Major Madness. “He’s consistent. Many of us are calling him and saying, ‘Why did you say that? Why did you like that one? What are you seeing?’”
Hager coached Smith in college and saw him reading the horse racing guides a few years later, but he was late to truly understand the breadth of Smith’s horse racing passion. Hager said he was ‘keyed in’ by the fact that Smith’s bachelor party was held at the Preakness Stakes.
Smith got married in Ballston Spa, New York in 2017, near the famous Saratoga Race Course, just a few miles away from Siena. The day after his wedding, he and his friends went to the track.
“He was all business,” Hager said. “He knew his way around and what to do.”
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Since then, as his kids have gotten older, his passion has drifted to more of a hobby, according to Seretti.
Smith said that he wasn’t able to go to Saratoga very often this summer. Even when he did, he didn’t always come prepared with picks. But when he puts in the effort, he’s still got it.
Smith did an interview on TV with FOX Sports horse racing reporter Maggie Wolfendale and revealed his pick for the Travers Stakes – Leading Chance. A few days later, he was proven right.
Siena fans haven’t let him forget it.
“I think when you hit one, people get excited that you can do it all the time,” Smith said. “Some of those days, a lot of people were asking me questions about the horses and why I liked them and who I liked.”
For his longtime friends, they see characteristics in Smith’s horse racing fandom that describe who he is as a person and why he’s been successful.
“He’s so meticulous with his process,” Hager, now the head coach at Regis College, told Mid-Major Madness. “You hear the quote, respect the process. He is just meticulous and just very smart. I think that’s a direct correlation with how he runs the program, how he runs his team.”
“He’s very consistent in how he evaluates,” Seretti said. “There’s not a piecemeal thing. He’s not just taking stabs. He’s going for what he believes and sees.”
Smith won’t give out the secrets to his process, but when he sees a horse that he likes, it doesn’t matter what the odds say; he will not be convinced otherwise.
“If you’re looking at favorites or trying to read opinions,” Seretti said. “He doesn’t care. He’s going to take the numbers that he believes in and follow through on those.”
“Nevada believes in himself,” Hager said. “He believes in his process, and you can see that he’s not going to just go with what the trend is. He’s self-made, so he’s a guy who believes in his work and how he does things.”
It’s the same way when he’s coaching basketball.
He built an offense unlike what anybody else was doing in college basketball as a Division-III assistant coach, basing it on the Phoenix Suns’ seven-seconds-or-less, and emphasizing spacing and the 3-point shot to an extent most didn’t for many more years.
That uniqueness of thought and ability to develop his own system based on numbers that he believed in is what turned heads in the NBA, getting him a chance to go straight from Division III to the G League.
Now though, Smith compares it more to a different aspect of coaching.
“It’s like recruiting, right?” Smith said. “You’re going to have some swings and misses. You’re going to be pretty confident that what you’re seeing is right, and sometimes you’re going to be completely off.”
But he’ll never go away from his instincts.
