COLLEGE BASKETBALL ‘87--88 : THEY’RE GOING WAC-KO : Once He Starts to Play, Dembo Is No Joker; Just Ask the Bruins

When Fennis Dembo was a freshman at the University of Wyoming, he showed up on the first day of basketball practice with an arrow shaved into his hairline at the part, pointing toward the top of his head.

The meaning of the arrow on the head of his prize recruit was unknown to Jim Brandenburg, who was then the coach.

Whatever could it be? Was it supposed to remind him which way was up? Maybe Fennis was really an Indian.

Or was the arrow just a pre-Boz fad, something that you’d find on just about anybody who happened to be a free spirit, rap-talking, jump-shooting, showboat-hotdog combo and future All-American candidate like Fennis Dembo?

Brandenburg thought quickly and came up with a ruling about the arrow in Fennis’ hair. It had no part in Wyoming basketball.

“Coach said get rid of it,” Dembo said.

How come?

“He outlawed any cranial designs,” Dembo said.

That stuff is getting completely out of hand, all right.

When Fennis Dembo was a sophomore, he pulled himself up on top of a rim after a postseason game, raised both index fingers and led the crowd in cheers. He did this because he dreamed it the night before.

“I guess I’m lucky I didn’t, you know, dream something like really crazy,” Dembo said.

When Fennis Dembo was a junior, he took a swan dive into the stands at New Mexico, the home court of the most hostile of the anti-Dembo fans, just to see what they would do. This is something like coating your body with sardine oil and swimming a few laps with a family of sharks to see if they’re awake.

Now, Dembo is a senior working toward a degree in administration of justice. He has decided to become an FBI agent after watching “Dragnet” and “Miami Vice” on television. Meanwhile, followers of major college basketball can only wonder what’s next. Few are likely to figure it out. Fennis doesn’t know either.

“I’m off into my own world,” Dembo admitted.

Fennisworld is a wonderful, mysterious place where basketball is fun and it’s just as important to be able to talk a good game as to play one.

“Basketball players, we’re just putting on a show,” Dembo said. “We’re all actors out there and there are just five of us. Everybody can see your face and you’ve got these small uniforms on out there. Entertainment, that’s what it’s all about. I think a lot more players ought to start looking at it that way. They may get themselves some more playing time.”

For the Wyoming Cowboys, the show stars Dembo, a 6-foot 5 1/2-inch, 220-pound absolutely dynamite player who, pound for pound, may be the best in the nation. He has the body of a dieting Charles Barkley, the talent to shoot threes as easily as he can muscle-drive to the hoop and the mind of a . . . the mind of a . . . well, what are you thinking about, Fennis?

Could it be this? Fennis Dembo: All-American basketball player.

“That sounds good, man, but I’m just hoping for that tab after the year is over,” he said. “Then my boys at home will say, ‘Yo, that’s my boy, right here.’ ”

Yo, everyone. Better brace yourself. Fennis Dembo is here and he’s probably not going to go away quietly.

It’s been two years, but the Clemson Tigers probably remember Dembo vividly. The Cowboys were playing at home against the Tigers in a third-round game of the National Invitation Tournament and it was getting pretty tense. Then Fennis sank a clutch basket and turned to run back downcourt, making a slight detour so he could pass the Clemson bench and point his finger at each of the seated players on his way by.

Brandenburg, now coaching at San Diego State, said he often asked Dembo to tone down his act a little but that never really worked. Another Fennis fire always flared up.

“It was kind of like asking a cat not to chase birds,” Brandenburg said. “You’re talking about an inherent part of his personality.”

Although he was already well known in some circles, a lot of people first heard noises from Dembo last year in the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. playoffs. The Cowboys lost to Nevada Las Vegas in a West Regional semifinal, 92-78, although Dembo had 27 points and 9 rebounds.

Before that, though, the Cowboys upset Virginia in a first-round game at Salt Lake City, 64-60, then shocked UCLA in what amounted to a Dembolition derby, 78-68. Dembo rainbowed seven three-pointers and finished with 41 points, 9 rebounds, 16 of 16 free throws and practically all by himself turned the Bruins to toast.

During that game, Dembo ran down a loose ball in front of the press table and stopped to wink at CBS’ Billy Packer. At least they knew each other. Brandenburg said Dembo was introduced to Packer after the upset of Virginia, when Fennis waited to be interviewed on camera.

“Fennis just said, ‘Hey, man, what’s up, Billy? You need to give me five,’ ” Brandenburg said. “You know, that wasn’t phony or contrived. That’s just Fennis. The thing is, most people can’t pull it off like Fennis.”

As legends go, the one belonging to Fennis Dembo is still pretty new. Chapters are being written all the time. So far, the lore has been confined mainly to the Western Athletic Conference, but it’s spreading, kind of like some huge buzzing swarm of killer bees.

Picture a killer bee that’s had too much coffee. That’s Fennis.

In the Pacific Northwest, they have the legend of Bigfoot. Here on this wind-swept Rocky Mountain plateau, they have the legend of Bigmouth.

Fennis fans, and they are legion, truly have a difficult task in choosing their favorite daffy Dembo moments.

Would it be the time he sat atop the rim and led cheers after the Clemson game? To this day, Dembo’s detractors refer to this incident as the second coming of Sitting Bull.

Of course, Wyoming fans had a different reaction. They loved it. Wyoming point guard Sean Dent, who saw it all first-hand, couldn’t believe his eyes.

“I just sat there and thought to myself, ‘Man, that guy is crazy .’ ”

It was not the first time Fennis caused his teammates to wonder about his mental condition.

Who can forget Dembo’s dive at New Mexico? Certainly not guard Reggie Fox, who considers it his Fennis favorite.

“That had to be the all-timer,” said Fox. “After that, nothing he ever does can embarrass me anymore. My friends at home back in Michigan, they tell me ‘Win or lose, we’re still going to watch you on TV ‘cause of Fennis. We know he’s going to do something crazy, something silly tonight.’ ”

This particular Fennisonian act occurred last season. The Cowboys were playing in Albuquerque against New Mexico, and a loose ball bounced out of bounds. Even though Dembo knew he had no chance of saving it, he flung himself head-first into the stands. He landed on top of some fans who probably hated him since he was a freshman.

“I just jumped on in there,” Dembo said. “I did it to see how the fans would react to it.”

So what did those people do when they found their laps full of Fennis?

Did they drop him? Make a citizens’ arrest? Hold him for ransom?

No, after they caught Fennis’ act, they helped him to his feet. Then they gave him a round of high fives.

You learn something about Dembo when he says Albuquerque is where he most likes to play.

When Fennis was a freshman, he committed a very hard foul in a game at Albuquerque, decking a Lobo player. The fans booed, and Dembo responded by pointing his finger at the crowd and yelling back at them. Dembo has been showered with boos and debris there ever since. One of the things that makes Fennis tick, it seems, is negative energy.

“I know I’m going to get negative feedback if I’m on the floor,” he said. “I just let everything happen. Just let it flow. Go on.”

Once, Fennis even gave an opposing coach a suggestion during a game, which was sure thoughtful of him. The Cowboys were leading Lamar, and the Cardinal players were trying to get the ball by fouling Wyoming’s poorest free-throw shooters.

Dembo walked over to Lamar Coach Tom Abetemarco and said: “Why don’t you foul me?”

It seems reasonable that Dembo would do a lot of talking to coaches. Some of them are even his own. Dembo’s new coach at Wyoming is Benny Dees, a folksy, white-haired 50-year-old who earned a reputation as a defensive wizard as an assistant to Wimp Sanderson at Alabama.

Last season, Dees coached New Orleans to a 26-4 record and its first NCAA tournament appearance. Dees, a Cowboy player in the 1950s, inherits the top nine players back from a 24-10 team that made the NCAA’s round of 16. So far, Dees is on a honeymoon with the demanding Wyoming fans, who grew accustomed to success with Brandenburg.

“Coming in and taking somebody else’s basketball team, I think the expectations from the fans at Wyoming are a lot higher,” Dees said. “But they are fair folks. All the fans expect is a WAC title, the Final Four championship, the NBA title and a win over the Russians.”

When he succeeded Brandenburg, the first thing Dees did was hold a press conference. The second thing he did was fly to Dembo’s home in San Antonio, Tex., to talk him out of turning professional.

“Fennis and I hit it off pretty good, pretty quick,” Dees said. “I like people. I’m a people person. I’m completely different than Jim, who was a very reserved guy.”

Brandenburg coached at Wyoming for nine very cold winters, so when the San Diego State opening came along, he was interested. Dees thinks there was another reason for the move, though.

“Jim was kind of a builder, kind of a guy that liked to take some basketball players like (Eric) Leckner and Dembo, who were not national household names, and I think that after they got to be pretty good, a team with a lot of personalities, a bunch of free spirits, I think that bothered Jim some,” Dees said. “He kind of bailed out at the last minute.”

Brandenburg won’t say anything critical about Wyoming or its harsh weather, and denies that the emerging personalities of his players caused him to move on. And no one, Brandenburg said, had a bigger personality than Dembo.

“Unless he did something that was really a distraction or something that just bothered me, I liberalized myself quite a bit with Fennis,” Brandenburg said. “I found common ground.

“He did some things I was not particularly pleased with, but he was just being Fennis. And Fennis is that kind of guy. He is really a charismatic guy.”

And who is responsible for that?

Clariss Dembo, mother of Fennis and 10 other children, thinks she knows.

“I have a pleasing personality myself,” she said. “So I think Fennis gets it from his mother. I really do like his sweet personality. Fennis is not really the type of person to show off. Fennis is just what he is. And he loves what he is doing.”

Fennis loves what he is doing in one place in particular. The official name of the University of Wyoming’s domed facility in which Dembo plays basketball is the Arena-Auditorium. Could that be any more boring? Gymnasium-Auditorium must have been taken already.

But it’s getting a name lift now that Dees is here. There are posters all over town that refer to the place differently: Benny Dees and the Dome of Doom

Things are going pretty well for the Cowboys, at least in practice. Certainly, there is nothing wrong with Dembo’s game. Dees uses Dembo on the wing, but he could also play off-guard, his probable position in the NBA, as well as power forward.

“He’s kind of like a king in a checker game,” Dees said. “Boy, you can move him in any direction. You can play him inside, outside, wherever. He’s always had a good body, but he’s got a great body now. He’s wound pretty tight. He’s an excellent shooter when he’s squared up (facing the basket). He’s just about as good as there is.”

Instead of playing deliberately as Brandenburg coached, Dees is taking the same players and installing a passing game on offense. Instead of a zone defense, Dees favors a tight man-to-man. The Cowboys still have a long way to go to be a good defensive team, Dees said.

“Right now, we couldn’t guard a dead dog,” he said.

Soon, though, they probably will be able to do that.

What kind of name is Fennis? Clariss Dembo had already had nine kids, including a set of twins, when she became pregnant with another set of twins. Her daughter, Zona Dembo, thought that was just about enough. Dembo children No. 10 and 11 became Fennis and twin sister Fenice, both take-offs on the French word finis , or the end.

So Fennis, let’s name your brothers and sisters.

“Cool,” he said.

Fennis got stuck after eight. He started writing down the names. He got 10, but he still had one to go.

“Dang, who am I missing?” Dembo asked. “Fennis, Fenice, Donnie, Ronnie, Zona, Doreta, Janice, Jeannette, Jimmy, Robert. Oh, Tina . . . Pamela Fatima. My fault. Dang. Serious.”

Talking with Dembo is like having an audience with Run-DMC. He moves his hands in conversation, all the while headphones the size of small saucers cover his ears. Success hasn’t spoiled Fennis yet, he said, possibly because his mother saw to it he was already spoiled.

“It just happened overnight, man,” Dembo said of his status as college hoop’s poster boy. “It was just like boom! Go to the NCAAs, win a couple games and then play Vegas pretty tough, then boom! Then it’s Wyoming this and that. Cool.”

Cool. Boom. Indeed. But at Fox Tech High School in San Antonio, Fennis was pretty much the same way. Jose Gutierrez is the principal at Fox Tech, which has an enrollment of about 2,100, 97% of whom are minorities. Gutierrez remembers Dembo as a “jolly fellow” who helped school secretary Elida Zarauza in the office during study hall.

“You know, he always seemed to be so excited about things,” Zarauza said.

As a senior, Dembo averaged 19.8 points and 7.8 rebounds and Fox Tech finished as a Texas high school Class 5A semifinalist with a 35-6 record. Dembo also left school with a reputation of a being something of a showboat, which Dees thinks might have hurt him with the colleges.

“You know that fist that he waves over his head, the closed fist you know? Well, he did that in high school,” said Fox Tech Coach Roland Lopez. “I never did discourage him because it never got out of hand. I kind of felt he was just pumping us up. He did some talking to the other players. He’d say the usual, ‘In your face,’ or ‘In your eye.’ Or he’d just point that index finger. He did that the most.

“But the biggest thing about Fennis is that he was then and is now, just a showman. He’s gained himself a personality. He built himself one. I’m often asked what he was like in high school. Well, it’s nothing compared to what I see now.”

Dembo took a recruiting trip to Wyoming that could have been a complete fiasco were it not for Fennis’ unique way of looking at things. The day he arrived from Texas, a freak spring snowstorm hit. Fennis went out bowling that night. The next day he went on a snowmobiling trip in Medicine Bow National Forest. He liked the snow so much, he jumped off the snowmobile and dived into the snow.

The storm wiped out Dembo’s flight from Laramie, so assistant coach Kevin McLeod decided to drive Dembo to Denver, about 2 1/2 hours away. Passing through Fort Collins in dense fog, McLeod crossed a railroad track just ahead of an oncoming train.

Dembo’s reaction? “It was close, man. Train coming, man.”

Brandenburg analyzed how the recruiting weekend went with Dembo:

“Well, we have one of our top recruits in, he’s a city kid from a warm climate and we’re in the middle of a snowstorm. His flight out of Laramie is canceled and then McLeod nearly gets him killed by a train in Fort Collins. Then his flight out of Denver is delayed. I guess you could say everything went all right.”

Right. Everything should just roll along for the Cowboys with Dembo leading the way, but he is not the only personality with whom Dees must deal.

Dent, the talented point guard, is already angry because Dees won’t let him play with a toothpick sticking from his mouth. Turk Boyd, another guard, wants to sing with Motown. Leckner, the 6-11, 265-pound center from Manhattan Beach, wanted to be a surfer until he got too big. Fox is still a little miffed because Brandenburg wouldn’t let him play while wearing wristbands last season.

“Sometimes,” Dees said of his players, “they can get a little squirrelly on you.”

But always and ever, there is no question among Dembo’s peers that he is the leader of the pack. He is the hotdog, prime cut, of course, and no apologies are necessary.

“Fennis is a showboat,” Boyd said. “Everybody knows that. But I’ll tell you, it’s no act. The fans love Fennis thoroughly for what he does. And Fennis, he just eats it up.”

Dembo remembers when his personality began to surface. It was on the playgrounds in San Antonio when he was 10, playing with the twin Dembo brothers Donnie and Ronnie.

“We all went to the park and the dude like took my brother, man, and my brother just like took him three times,” Dembo said. “Bloom! Bloom! Bloom! And I was going, ‘Yeah! Yeah!’ And boy, he got mad at me. And my brother got on him, telling him ‘Don’t you get on my little brother.’ And you know, he wasn’t going to fight all three.

“Then when I got to high school, you got to be real cocky on the floor because, see, it just don’t go for on the floor. It goes for off the floor, too, because these people you’re living with in the same city. You had to go out there and be real confident because if you weren’t, you were gonna hear about it when you get home.”

Chances are, you’re going to be hearing a lot more from Fennis Dembo this season. You could probably hook a wire to his leg and light up a small city.

Clariss Dembo said that even when Fennis was very young, she always felt that he had put away something in the back of his mind. One day, she said, Fennis shared it with her.

“He told me, ‘Mom, I’m gonna make you proud of me,’ ” she said.

Maybe this will turn out to be Dembo’s big dream, his All-American year. He could even wind up playing in the pros, alongside Akeem Olajuwon and Ralph Sampson, which is another one of his dreams. Then again, maybe he’ll dream of sitting on the scoreboard and leading cheers this time.

But whatever Fennis does, you just know it’s going to be one heck of a show. He has it all planned out for you.

“You know, they are going to throw some names at you,” he said. “Hotdog, whatever. I don’t care. If people want to see how Fennis is portrayed, whether it’s true or not, come see the game.

“Another thing, people keep questioning about the way I do things. I look at television and I see Magic, I see Jordan, I see Barkley. They’re all doing the same things, man, and I say, ‘Yeah! Yeah!’

“Wyoming, you know, basketball is big here. These people drive five or six hours just to see the game, man. Cool. You have to give them something to be excited about.

“I just think of it this way--it’s all a big old show and the curtain is going to close some day. You just got to have fun while the audience is watching.”