Life After Death

His mother lay down to take a rest. He kept bugging her, asking for something or other, and she told him that she would get up in a minute. She died as he stood there.

The boy, only 6 years old, went to live with his grandparents. Within a year, they were dead too. Both of them. Then he moved in with an uncle, who did not last much longer.

Three years, four people gone from a child’s life. What are the odds? Taquan Dean tells the story and shrugs.

The 21-year-old guard would rather talk about his Louisville team’s reaching the Final Four in St. Louis. He is a big reason for the Cardinals’ success, and if top-ranked Illinois, their opponent on Saturday, plans to get after him, well, good luck. This is not a young man who rattles easily.

Watch him in tense moments, in close games, the way he stays loose, never hesitates to shoot. It is not unusual to see a glimpse of a smile sneak across his elfin-looking face.

“Life is hard,” he says. “Basketball is fun.”

Especially these days. The 6-foot-3 junior ranks among the top three-point shooters in the nation and is Louisville superstar Francisco Garcia’s sidekick. Coach Rick Pitino calls them Batman and Robin, adding, “I don’t mean Batman is better.”

On top of everything else Dean has endured, this season he has come back from a major injury and mysterious illness -- diagnosed only a month ago -- to put together a torrid stretch in March.

This month, he was named most valuable player in the Conference USA tournament. Then came two clutch performances in the Albuquerque Regional of the NCAA men’s tournament.

First, he carried the Cardinals through a sluggish first half against top-seeded Washington, giving Garcia time to heat up. Next, against upstart West Virginia, his team down by 20 points and his buddy in foul trouble, he calmly made a string of three-point shots in the second half that paved the way for an overtime victory.

“He hit some tough shots,” West Virginia guard Patrick Beilein said. “He just took it upon himself to make things happen.”

Nothing Dean does surprises Garcia, who is also his roommate. “I mean, he’s going to play through everything,” Garcia says. “He’s one of the toughest kids that I have been around.”

This attribute clearly dates to his early years. Dean ended up living with his aunt, Louise Carter, in Red Bank, N.J. Saddled with so much death, so much loss, he turned to basketball for solace.

“Starting in seventh grade, I would do this every day -- I would get up at 4 in the morning and run a couple miles, then go to the YMCA and shoot a thousand shots and go to school,” he says. “Then, in the middle of school, I’d shoot some more. Then I’d do homework and go to the gym. I was at the gym all the time, lifting weights.”

Growing up in a poor neighborhood, there wasn’t always a court available.

“I’d shoot into garbage cans, you name it,” he says.

His life took a turn for the better when Kevin and Jackie Owens took him in and moved him to a better area. He became an all-state player, leading Neptune High to the 2002 state championship game in his senior season.

Louisville caught his eye if only because a couple of Jersey legends -- Milt Wagner and Billy Thompson -- had played there. Also, as a fan of the game, he knew about the newly hired Pitino.

“It just felt like the right place to go,” he says.

Only one problem: The Cardinals weren’t knocking down his door.

Somewhere along the line, the team had sent him a form letter, the kind of thing that goes to lots of prospects. He fished it out, found a telephone number and called. Pitino -- initially startled at being recruited by a recruit -- checked around and discovered the kid was for real. Dean signed a letter of intent without so much as meeting his new coach in person or visiting campus.

From the start, Louisville felt like home, his teammates like family. Especially Garcia. Not only did they share dreams of leading the slumping Cardinals back to prominence, but, off the court, they understood each other, even if it took a while for Dean to finally discuss his childhood.

“I was like, wow, how could you go through so much and be here playing basketball?” Garcia says. “The life he was living ... it was tough.”

So, when his brother was killed in a South Bronx housing project in 2003, Garcia knew where to turn. Dean “was a big friend and a big brother to me,” he recalls. “He knew what to do.”

By then, the pair had become frontmen for Pitino’s rebuilding program, breaking into the starting lineup as freshmen, named co-captains the next season.

While Garcia drew most of the attention -- he was taller, more naturally talented, quicker to the basket -- Dean established himself as a perimeter shooter and had the ballhandling skills to switch to point guard as a sophomore. And Louisville started winning again.

“If it wasn’t for Francisco and Taquan coming, and just because they knew me from the past ... we would really be up the creek,” Pitino says, looking back. “They helped us.”

But if it seemed that things might finally be getting easy for Dean, more challenges were in the offing.

In January 2004, he suffered two partial tears in his abdominal wall, an injury that kept him in pain the rest of the season and required surgery over the summer. This winter, he struggled getting back into shape.

“Every muscle in my body ached,” he says. “I didn’t want to wake up, didn’t want to go to practice. I was telling the coach and the trainers, but they said I was out of shape. I knew something was going on.”

Instead of growing stronger, he felt worse and worse, his numbers erratic. Finally, in February, doctors discovered that he had a recurring form of mononucleosis that had afflicted him as a child, then remained dormant for many years.

Dean had a choice: Sit out or play through it. For him, that wasn’t really a choice at all.

Slowly, the illness has subsided and his statistics are proof, his scoring average up to 15.8 over the last 10 games.

The tournament is “my dream,” he says. “I can remember watching this on television, seeing all the cameras flash, all the people going crazy. Now that I have a chance to be a part of it, I’m not going to let this stop me.”

Still, in Albuquerque, he quietly admitted to feeling the effects of playing at high altitude. Against West Virginia, he was in and out of the game with cramps, missing a shot at the end of regulation when his leg locked up, dragging himself back onto the floor to sink a three-pointer early in overtime. Ellis Myles, a forward on the team, says: “That’s just Taquan.”

It won’t get any easier in the national semifinals against Illinois’ talented backcourt. Which leads to the question: Are there times when Dean wonders, “Why me?”

“You really want to know?” Garcia asks. “He’s crazy. Always joking. Always laughing.”

With every reason to be sad, or at least carry a grudge against the world, Dean has chosen otherwise.

“I don’t want to spend my days upset about anything,” he says.

It is a trick he learned a long time ago. No matter what -- grief, injury, illness -- just keep playing.

Life is hard. Basketball is fun.

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

AT A GLANCE

* How they got there: After winning the regular-season and conference tournament titles in Conference USA, the Cardinals were seeded fourth in the Albuquerque regional. In the first round, Louisville 68, 13th-seeded Louisiana Lafayette 62; second round, Louisville 76, No. 5 Georgia Tech 54; third round, Louisville 93, No. 1 Washington 79; fourth round, Louisville 93, No. 7 West Virginia 85.

* Leading tournament scorers: Forward Francisco Garcia, 21 ppg.; guard Larry O’Bannon, 17.7; guard Taquan Dean, 17; forward Juan Palacios, 11.5.

* Leading tournament rebounders: Forward Ellis Myles, 9.2; forward Juan Palacios, 6.2; guard Taquan Dean, 6.

* Key to the season: A home loss to Memphis in February, 85-68, seemed to rejuvenate the Cardinals, who have won 13 consecutive games since. Over the last 11 games, Myles has averaged 10 points, 10 rebounds and five assists and has been the leading rebounder and assist man over that period.

* Key fact: Coach Rick Pitino has a freshman class of seven coming next season -- including 6-10 forward Amir Johnson of Westchester, 6-5 forward Bryan Harvey of Compton Dominguez and 5-10 guard Andre McGee of Moreno Valley Canyon Springs -- when the Cardinals move from Conference USA into the Big East.