Fowler Finds Himself Following an Eerie Path : College basketball: Sophomore injured after friend Harbour, creating another coincidence in their lives.

Eerie are the parallels in the lives of basketball players Dennis Fowler and David Harbour.

On-court rivals as high school seniors two years ago, they embarked on college careers at neighboring Bay Area schools--Harbour to Stanford and Fowler to the College of Notre Dame--where they clashed again in a scrimmage. They formed a casual friendship.

Now Fowler and Harbour are linked once more, two sophomores trying to come back from catastrophic injuries that imperiled their careers.

Harbour’s right thumb, lost last summer in a water-skiing accident, has been surgically re-created, and he is fighting to play again for the Cardinal.

But the Stanford guard, an All-Southern Section selection at Camarillo, was shaken Wednesday upon hearing Fowler’s left leg had been rebuilt after it was smashed in a November freeway accident.

“I can’t believe it,” Harbour said. “It just seems like such a coincidence.”

Fowler, a 6-foot-2, 160-pound guard from Agoura High who is a reserve at Notre Dame, is fortunate not to have died on a stretch of Interstate 280 in Palo Alto just south of an exit marked “Stanford University.”

Traveling on three hours’ sleep, Fowler and Jeff Gilmore, his roommate and best friend, were en route from a Thanksgiving stay in Agoura on Nov. 28 to Fowler’s 11 a.m. practice. With Fowler slumbering in the back seat, Gilmore fell asleep at the wheel. The car veered into a 10-foot embankment, flipped in the air while doing a 180-degree twist and landed upright in the fast lane--facing oncoming Saturday traffic.

“The first thing I saw when I woke up was grass on the windshield and my roommate lying on top of me,” Fowler said.

Both survived despite not wearing seat belts. The car was destroyed. Gilmore had no substantial injuries, but Fowler was rushed to Stanford Medical Center and immediately underwent surgery.

The tibia and fibula were broken, and the shin was in splinters. A steel rod was inserted from knee to ankle and a metal plate was attached to the outer shin, eight bolts holding it all together.

Fowler checked out of Stanford Medical Center on Dec. 8, heading home to spend three weeks in bed. On Dec. 18, Harbour checked into the same hospital for a third surgery on his grafted thumb.

“It almost sounds like his situation was worse than mine,” Harbour said of his old Marmonte League foe. “Mine was one small appendage on my hand. I feel lucky.”

Fowler has made a strong recovery, however, and his doctor and therapists say he could return to basketball by mid-May.

“When I was in the trauma room, there was no mention of basketball. I asked if I’d ever be able to walk again. I figured if I could walk . . . I could play basketball.”