Dempsey's hoop dreams delayed

Published: Thursday, February 1, 1996

Despite a recruiter's broken promise, this UCLA forward strives for redemption

By Scott Yamaguchi

Daily Bruin Staff

Where there are promises made, there are bound to be promises broken. And in the world of collegiate basketball, well, it just isn't any different.

You hear of the promises everyday, of the guarantees of full-ride scholarships and television exposure and post-collegiate opportunities. Hollywood even produced a movie about those illegal agreements involving automobiles and houses and new tractors.

But you never really hear too much about the broken promises, the sour deals that drop talented young athletes from the top of the world to the bottom.

You don't hear of them, that is, until you sit down and speak with Kevin Dempsey.

Dempsey is a 6-foot-7-inch senior on the UCLA men's basketball team - the only senior on this year's roster, and he is averaging just 3.2 points in just under nine minutes per game.

Low numbers have been the story of his career, though it wasn't supposed to be like this for the Santa Teresa High School graduate who was a preseason selection to the Long Beach Press-Telegram's Best in the West poll before his senior year in high school.

For that matter, Dempsey wasn't even supposed to be at UCLA.

He had committed to the University of Arizona during his senior year, and after averaging 26.7 points, 14 rebounds and seven assists, he had received a commitment from Wildcat head coach Lute Olson.

"That's the school I wanted to play for, and that's the school where I knew I would be successful," Dempsey says. "That's my style of play, and there's no doubt in my mind that I would have been successful."

But he never even got the chance to prove himself. Not too long before Dempsey was supposed to leave for Tucson, Olson had one of his assistant coaches call the Dempsey household with a bit of bad news.

There had been some kind of misunderstanding, the assistant coach said. Dempsey had sent his transcripts to the wrong office, and he didn't meet the university's academic standards anyway.

"But that's ludicrous," Dempsey says. "I can get into UCLA, but I can't get into Arizona? It's ridiculous."

Olson, who is one of the most successful and respected coaches in the Pac-10 Conference, never even spoke to Dempsey, who - not surprisingly - holds him in rather low esteem.

"He had three assistant coaches talk to me before he said anything, and then he called my mom and told her to let me know that I don't have a scholarship anymore," Dempsey said. "I hate the man. I'll never speak to him. I think he's a low-class individual, and he's definitely not what everybody makes him out to be."

Apparently not, but nothing was going to change the fact that Olson's promise had been broken, and Dempsey - an all-state selection - was left with no place to develop his basketball talents.

There had been plenty of other recruiters, including UCLA, but none were able to offer a scholarship at such a late stage in the game. Bruin head coach Jim Harrick promised a scholarship for the following year, and so Dempsey chose to attend a junior college in the meantime.

In order to preserve his NCAA eligibility, however, Dempsey opted not to compete at West Valley College, and he watched his weight climb from 185 pounds to 225 pounds during the year off.

"I tried to play, tried to work out, but there's nothing you can do, really," he says. "You get bored playing by yourself, and you get bored playing in men's leagues. I played in a men's league, averaged like 45 points a game and had the fun of my life, but I got no better.

"All I got was worse and worse, and my four years here have shown it."

It is an undeniable fact that Dempsey has struggled in his career at UCLA, though the shortcomings cannot be attributed solely to the Arizona debacle and the one-year layoff from the game. In fact, that year off, he'll tell you, might have been more beneficial than harmful.

It was a year of emotional maturation, personal growth that became all too important in his sophomore and junior seasons, when a debilitating back injury kept him from improving on a freshman season that had been a pleasant surprise.

In his first year at UCLA, Dempsey averaged 4.5 points and 2.2 rebounds in 17.0 minutes per game - the most playing time of any UCLA reserves. He was a leading candidate, along with Charles O'Bannon, for the fifth starting position in his sophomore year, and then three weeks into the season, he hurt his back in the weight room.

Instead of telling his coaches and trainers, however, Dempsey tried to play through the injury. Thus, nobody understood why the Bruins' best outside threat (he made 43 percent of his three-point attempts as a freshman) was mired in such a shooting slump.

Stomach ulcers only compounded the problem, but while those were treated during his sophomore season, the five pinched nerves in his back went undiagnosed until last year.

When the back injury was finally diagnosed, Dempsey took seven weeks off, and his interest in the game of basketball dwindled.

"How can you be interested in a sport that you can't play anymore?" he says. "You get so used to sitting on the bench, you start to believe that you aren't ever going to play again. And my back hurt so bad that I thought I never would play again. It was so bad that I was just like, 'Screw it - I don't even want to play anymore.'"

Surprisingly, the NCAA Championship did little to rekindle that interest.

"I feel that I was no more a part of the championship than a manager," Dempsey says. "But I was on the team, I did contribute something in practice, and it's an amazing accomplishment that I can always look back on."

But Dempsey would not give up. He stayed off the court and out of the weight room last spring to allow his back to heal, then went on a crash diet to bring his weight back down to 205. He been more focused on basketball than ever before at UCLA, and though his playing time has been limited in his senior season, he has contributed when given the opportunity.

He has made 44.7 percent of his three-point attempts this season, and he is fifth on UCLA's career chart for three-point field goal percentage with a 39.8 clip.

"I've had, probably my whole career, every year a guy like Kevin Dempsey," Harrick said. "It's called a fence post guy - you put him in when you need him, and if you don't need him, you probably don't put him in. That's his role, but I do have a lot of confidence that he can help us, and if I were a guy that played eight or nine or 10 guys, he'd be right in there."

It was Harrick, in fact, who helped Dempsey in continuing the emotional growth that started during his year at West Valley College, and the two have developed a relationship of mutual respect off the court.

"He's given me a huge opportunity," Dempsey said. "I have a huge respect for him - I love him like a father, and I'm sure we'll have a relationship for the rest of our lives outside of basketball. I can't say enough positive things about him."

ANDREW SCHOLER/Daily Bruin

Kevin Dempsey is the lone senior on the UCLA basketball team.

FRED HE/Daily Bruin

A former high school standout, Kevin Dempsey has seen limited action for UCLA after a back injury during his sophomore year.

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