BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- Alabama-Birmingham football coach Watson Brown gave linebacker Mastaki Smith something to take home for Christmas last year. Not so much a present, as a prediction.

Brown approached Smith moments after the Blazers' loss in the Hawaii Bowl, which was the career-ending game for UAB's trio of starting linebackers -- Gaylon Black, Nigel Eldridge and Zac Woodfin -- as well as their top two backups.

Before all the sweat and tears from that loss had been wiped away, Brown already was thinking about the future and the impending departure of five linebackers. Which was why he gave Smith something to think about as well.

"Coach Brown told me in the locker room immediately after the Hawaii game, 'It's your time to step up. I'm going to need you to be a leader,'" Smith recalled. "Over Christmas break, I really took that to heart. I wanted to come back and try to help lead the defense."

A leader who never has started a college game. A leader who has 15 tackles in his two-season career. A leader who is nearly as inexperienced as all those around him at the position.

None of that matters, according to Brown.

"He's the guy. He's the leader," Brown said. "You can watch him on the field. He's the one kind of holding the others (linebackers) together out there. He's been the one who has really stuck out.

"Mastaki has had a great preseason. He's been real steady, he knows the system well, and he has leadership qualities. I'm really counting on Mastaki this year."

A native of Mobile, Ala., Smith spent his first two seasons at UAB seeing action mainly on special teams. He rarely played at linebacker, recording a meager six tackles as a freshman and nine as a sophomore.

Those are hardly the type of statistics that would rocket a player to the top of his position. And indeed, at the beginning of preseason practice, Brown repeatedly said the Blazers had as many as nine players capable of playing at linebacker this season, and that none of them was noticeably ahead of the rest.

But as preseason practice progressed, Smith steadily emerged as the team's top linebacker.

"He's had a phenomenal (training) camp," senior cornerback Carlos Hendricks said. "He's kind of been forced into a leadership role, but the way he's handled it has been great. He came in with the attitude that he was going to be a leader, and he's stepped up tremendously. Of everybody on defense, he's had the best camp. He's stepped up and made plays every day in practice."

Maybe so, but Smith won't go strutting into the season-opener at Tennessee on Saturday with any overconfidence. He readily admits there are still plenty of things he needs to learn, and that he does not hesitate to turn to his teammates for help.

"We have vets all around us, on the defensive line and in the secondary," Smith said. "So when we get a little discouraged and need help, it's easy to look to them.

"We're all trying to help each other. Sometimes I might not know something, and somebody else might help me out. We communicate. We all talk a lot."

By the end of the season, however, Hendricks said he thinks Smith will be making plenty of noise on his own.

"I think he's going to have a great year," Hendricks said. "He's going to be one of the guys who anchors this defense."