Keane Won’t Sit and Watch While Eagles Play for Title

Today’s Southern Section Division II-AA boys’ basketball championship game will be special for Santa Margarita guard Dennis Keane for several reasons.

For openers, there’s the pact he made with his eight senior teammates who swore as freshmen they would be playing in the Pond for the title when they were seniors.

Most important to Keane, however, is that he won’t be watching the game from the bench. Keane, the Eagles’ second-leading scorer at 16.4 points per game, has fully recovered from his knee surgery in December.

“It’s made all the hard work and rehabilitation worth it,” said Keane, who had 21 points in Santa Margarita’s 64-53 semifinal victory over top-seeded Moreno Valley.

“At first it got frustrating,” Keane said of his injury. “I’m not used to sitting out. I had never been hurt before during a season.”

That might be hard to imagine for those who have seen the 6-foot-4 Keane play. Though he has decent accuracy from the outside--47% from the field, 37% from three-point range--he loves to run and drive hard to the basket, constantly getting bumped and knocked down. “I never feared an injury,” he said.

Nevertheless, he hurt his knee Dec. 1 in Santa Margarita’s second game of the season, in the semifinals of the San Luis Obispo tournament.

Near game’s end against Santa Maria Righetti, Keane drove the lane and went up for a shot. When he came down he felt “something pop” in his left knee. “I didn’t think much of it at first,” said Keane, who played another minute before coming out.

The next morning, his knee not only hurt, Keane said, but it had swollen to the size of a grapefruit. An examination revealed a dislocated knee cap and a fracture near the femur, according to Lance Wrobel, the team physician.

“It’s a pretty significant injury for a basketball player because it affects running and jumping,” Dr. Wrobel said. “Recovery depends on how fast the bone heals, the muscles come back and [excess] fluid leaves the joints.”

Wrobel performed arthroscopic surgery on Keane and told him, initially, he would miss up to two months of play.

“That would have been the season,” Keane said. “So I went to [school trainer] Ray Gonzales and told him I wanted to come back in a month.”

Keane said Gonzales became a combination drill sergeant and den mother, pushing him relentlessly on the exercise bike and making sure he followed the rehabilitation program set up by Wrobel.

“I hated it,” Keane said. “During rehab, the knee would hurt so bad I wondered if I’d ever play again like I could. And for the first couple of weeks I didn’t think I would, but I hated the thought of not playing more.”

Santa Margarita Coach Jerry DeBusk wasn’t sure what to think when Keane said he could return in January.

“I didn’t have a good feel for [the recovery],” DeBusk said. “My exposure to knee surgeries is limited. I do know it takes longer to come back from his kind of injury as opposed to fixing other things. His doctor said it would take longer, and it might cause him not to play as he used to.”

But Keane returned in time to play against Huntington Beach on Jan. 3. DeBusk said Keane’s trademark enthusiasm was evident from his first day back.

“When he came back I didn’t notice any favoring [of his knee],” DeBusk said. “He didn’t miss a beat. He has a real love for the game, whether you see him in a game or at practice.”

Keane had missed a total of nine games.

“It killed him to watch,” DeBusk said, “but he’s not a whiner or an excuse-maker . . . You never heard him say, ‘Woe is me.’ ”

While Keane’s recovery time was not extraordinary, his doctor said it was better than average. “He’s just a real tough kid,” Wrobel said.

Keane will need that toughness today if Santa Margarita hopes to win its second section title in the last three years. The Eagles defeated Servite for the title in 1994. Today, they face a talented and rugged Riverside J.W. North team (22-6) making its sixth consecutive appearance in the final. The Huskies last won the title in 1993.

“They’re a real good team,” Keane said. “They have what Moreno Valley didn’t have--height, besides the speed and quickness. They like to run, and are well balanced.”

The same could be said about Keane, now that he’s back on two legs. In addition to his scoring, he’s averaging four rebounds, three assists and three steals.

“He’s one of those kids with great versatility,” Irvine Coach Steve Keith said. “You wouldn’t say he’s the best, but it seems like he does a little of everything, and he does it at important times of the game.”