Center Has Seen Basketball From Both Sides Now : Losing Has Made Garrett a Winner

Dean Garrett is strictly a role player on the Indiana University basketball team, a 6-foot 10-inch starting center who spends most games getting rebounds and setting picks for Steve Alford, an All-American guard.

But off the court, around campus, in clubs and restaurants in the Bloomington, Ind., area, Garrett is a star.

It seems everywhere Garrett goes, he is besieged by a throng of fans in this basketball-crazed state who seek his autograph, a handshake or some conversation.

How different it was at San Clemente High School, from where Garrett graduated in 1984.

There, Garrett was the star. He averaged 22 points, 13 rebounds and 7 blocked shots a game his senior season.

Garrett could not recall one time when he was approached to talk basketball. The closest he ever came to such a conversation was when a student who didn’t go to the game--and there were plenty of those--would ask him whether the team won or lost.

“At San Clemente, you just went out and played, and if you won, good; if you lost, well, it was all right,” Garrett said.

At Indiana, they want to talk about the game just played and the game coming up, about Hoosier Coach Bobby Knight, about a specific play or about basketball in general.

“The way people treat you and react to you here is something I never expected,” Garrett said. “It’s something I’ve never experienced in my life.

“You appreciate the attention, and it makes you play harder. You’re not just winning for yourself, you’re winning for the fans, for your whole state.”

In high school, Garrett was a winner in a losing program, but when he recalls his prep career, he realizes that losing helped shape his future--not hurt it.

“Losing always made me want to play harder,” Garrett said. “When you’re on a winning team, there’s a tendency to slack off sometimes, but losing forces you to want to be on a winning team. I grew up a little by losing.”

It was this attitude that Garrett battled through two varsity seasons, during which the Tritons went 11-11 in his junior year and 10-14 in his senior year.

“Dean wanted to win as badly as anyone else, and he was a kid who gave 100% all the time,” said Brian Scherbart, former San Clemente coach. “Even when we’d lose four in a row, he never got down. He played as hard as he could and tried to keep the others up.”

The others simply couldn’t play to Garrett’s standards. As a senior, Garrett stood way above his teammates, who were mostly juniors, sophomores and freshmen.

Garrett was one of only two seniors on the 1983-84 team, which lacked an outside shooter.

Although 10-14 is not terrible, Scherbart laughs at the thought of the team without Garrett.

“I really can’t say exactly where we’d be, but the majority of those wins were because of Dean,” he said.

Opponents realized the Tritons’ strength, too. Garrett often was guarded by at least two and sometimes three players.

The pressure was on Garrett to produce, and he had to work for every point, but this only made him better for college.

Garrett was a star at City College of San Francisco, where he averaged 14 points and 8 rebounds as a freshman and 16 points and 10 rebounds as a sophomore. The Rams advanced to the 1986 state final, losing to Sacramento City, 77-71, last March.

As a junior at Indiana, he is averaging eight points and eight rebounds for the No. 3-ranked Hoosiers (14-1).

“Most teams focused on me in high school, which helped me in the long run,” Garrett said. “I’d go against two- and three-man coverage and was still able to score. That improved me as a player.

“But I haven’t been double-teamed in JC or college because I’ve always had good players around me. Everybody is a threat, and that eased things a lot for me. It helped me go about things alone.”

Garrett first experienced a winning atmosphere during the 1984 Orange County North-South All-Star game when he joined such standout players as Mater Dei’s Matt Beeuwsaert, Fountain Valley’s Rolf Jacobs and El Toro’s Jeff Arnold on the South team.

Garrett, in limited playing time, scored 14 points and had 12 rebounds to help the South to a 110-88 victory.

“After that game, I thought to myself, ‘I can be on a good team and still be a good scorer,”’ Garrett said. “A lot of times in high school, I thought I only scored so much because I wasn’t on a good team. But I found out I can play with guys who are just as good as I am.”