Hendrix Hangs On Turned Away At The Exit, Forward Settles In At Gu

When the going got tough at Vallejo (Calif.) High School, Bakari Hendrix got going.

He transferred.

Hendrix tried the same evasive maneuver earlier this winter when the going got tough at Gonzaga University, but Bulldogs basketball coach Dan Fitzgerald deep-sixed his departure plans by flatly telling his disgruntled junior forward that “you can’t just take your ball and go home.”

Now it seems as if Hendrix’s ultimate decision to stay put has landed him where he really wanted to be all along - in the starting lineup of a Division I college basketball team.

“I’m the kind of guy, I want to play,” Hendrix explained. “It’s really hard for me to sit down and watch other people play - especially when I know what I’m capable of.”

Few could have fathomed the on-court capabilities of the 6-foot-8, 225-pound man-child earlier this season, as he labored up and down the floor in an obvious funk, putting in his 12 or so minutes each game.

Through GU’s first four games, Hendrix averaged just over three points and one rebound a game. But that was back when he was still doubting his decision to stay at GU.

Then senior center Paul Rogers went down with a fractured foot and Hendrix, who graduated from high school a year early and is still only 19, was presented the opportunity to become the go-to guy inside.

His first couple of games in that role were unproductive - in part, he said, “because the coaches still had a short leash.” But in the 15 games since, he has averaged nearly 31 minutes, 15 points and seven boards in helping GU position itself atop the West Coast Conference standings.

And all of that after he had walked into Fitzgerald’s office in early November with what was basically a letter of resignation.

“I felt like I didn’t fit in,” Hendrix said of his emotional state at the time. “It’s tough to break in here. You have to change the minds of a lot of people as far as what you can do on the court, and I didn’t feel I was getting the opportunity to change minds.”

Fitzgerald still has the letter Hendrix submitted, a thoughtful, well-written notice that he had quit the team after deciding his dignity meant more to him than basketball.

“He did it right,” Fitzgerald remembered. “But I told him I wasn’t going to accept it. I said, ‘You’re doing something really stupid here. You need to stay.”’

Fitzgerald then asked Hendrix’s parents, Kenneth and Jocelyn, to fly up from their home in Vallejo, Calif., and discuss the matter. All parties involved agreed that Hendrix would stay at GU at least until January to see if his situation improved.

“We sat down and worked out a deal where they’d give me a fair shake and we’d see what happened,” Hendrix explained. “Ever since then, I’ve been working real hard.”

Hendrix’s decision to stay was in direct contrast to the tack he took after his sophomore year in high school, when he ran away from some personal problems at Vallejo High and transferred to St. Patrick/St. Albert, a nearby private school.

Hendrix remembered feeling many of the same frustrations at Vallejo High that he did early in his career at GU. But back then, he lashed out with much more aggression.

“I was going nowhere fast at that point,” he admitted. “I was kind of just getting through school and my athletic career hadn’t taken off at all.

“I ended up getting into a lot of fights and altercations, and I didn’t get along with some of the teachers. I’ve never been an unruly kid, but I’ve never been one to just accept what’s going on around me if I didn’t like it.”

His attitude changed dramatically once he enrolled in a private school.

“It was kind of like a wake-up call,” Hendrix said. “I only had two years of high school left and I still didn’t know what I was going to do or where I was going to go when I got out.

“There’s a certain point in your life when you wake up and realize you’ve got to make some life choices, and I kind of took everything - my schooling, basketball and athletics - a little more seriously once I got to private school.”

Hendrix, 6-4 and 190 pounds at the time, blossomed into the Superior California Athletic League’s player of the year. But because he was still a bit undersized for a post player, not one Division I school inquired about his basketball plans.

So Hendrix enrolled at Solano Junior College in Suisun, Calif., where he was named to the All-Bay Conference team as a freshman.

That winter, GU assistant Dan Monson saw him play during a tournament in Las Vegas and figured he might be able to help the Bulldogs in a couple of years.

The courtship got off to a rocky start when Monson mistook Hendrix as a Prop 48 academic casualty who would not be eligible to transfer to a Division I school until the following year, when he was scheduled to receive his AA degree.

“That upset me and we kind of went at it in that regard, because I was a predictor (academic qualifier) out of high school,” said Hendrix, who is majoring in business finance at GU. “All my SAT scores and academic classes were taken care of, but Monson assumed there was a problem somewhere.

“I was offended by that, because I felt like he didn’t do his homework.”

Monson was able to patch up the relationship and lure Hendrix to GU, where his playing career started even more dubiously than his recruitment process.

As a sophomore, Hendrix played only 34 minutes in nine games before breaking his ankle and losing almost an entire season of eligibility.

It took nearly six months for the fracture to heal and Hendrix was not in basketball condition when workouts started this past fall.

That fact didn’t help his chances of impressing Fitzgerald, who had been skeptical of Hendrix’s willingness to buy into the system since he first arrived on campus.

“He came in here and really wasn’t ready (to play),” Fitzgerald recalled. “And also, his concept of team was ‘I,’ which is not a letter of the alphabet in this program.

“We were down on him - really down on him, because he wasn’t working hard. He wasn’t doing anything, really, but I’m a big enough boy to admit, too, that through it all, I wasn’t getting through to him.”

And that was before the ankle injury, six months of tedious rehabilitation, a slow start to the 1996-97 season, the aborted decision to quit and the injury to Rogers - which was probably as important as any single factor in Hendrix’s emergence.

“Paul goes down and the kid gets a shot,” Fitzgerald said. “Some kids can’t fight through it, but he gets a break and seizes the moment.”

The injury to Rogers freed some additional minutes, rebounds and shot attempts for Hendrix. But it took more than a few extra minutes of playing time to effect his remarkable turnaround.

“When Paul got hurt, we needed an inside guy to step up, and I felt I was the best guy to do that,” Hendrix explained. “But I have to give a lot of credit to my teammates, because they believed I could do well here and they looked to me and gave me the opportunity.”

Fitzgerald now considers Hendrix “a wonderful kind of story” that he will miss when he steps away from coaching at season’s end.

“I have a lot respect for the kid now,” Fitzgerald said. “Here’s a guy that could have gone his own way - was kind of salty, actually, but then somehow hung in there and fought through it.

“Maybe it was the injury (to Rogers), or maybe it was me just taking a little different approach. I’m so geared to the team concept that I sometimes lose sight of the needs of an individual to get a few strokes now and then.

“I’m not sure what exactly made the light go on, but it did. And life is good for Bakari right now. He’s come a long way.”

Just by staying put.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 3 Photos (2 color)

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: THE BAKARI HENDRIX FILE Position: Forward Ht: 6-8 Wt: 225 Year: Junior Hometown: Vallejo, Ca.

1996-1997 Statistics Games FGM-FGA FG% FTM-FTA FT% Pts./Avg. Reb./Avg. 21 95-171 .556 48-71 .676 238/11.3 124/5.9