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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

John Blanchette: Adams left lasting memory


De'Andre Adams left his mark on the Winthrop program.Associated Press
 (File Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)
John Blanchette The Spokesman-Review

DENVER – One morning last March, the face of De’Andre Adams was all over Spokane. He owned the town.

You picked up your newspaper and there he was on the front page, airborne in celebration with his Winthrop University basketball teammates, legs tucked as if doing a double-under with a jump rope. He looked like a kid of 12 and not 20, happy beyond belief – the Eagles on the verge of polishing off Notre Dame in the biggest upset of the NCAA tournament’s opening round – and the Spokane Arena had a new sweetheart.

And then if you turned to the sports section, there was Adams again. This time that adolescent face had turned fierce and his fists were cocked like a prizefighter’s, the very essence of Winthrop’s will.

“I would never,” Winthrop head coach Randy Peele said on Wednesday, “bet against him in a fight.”

Peele had been speaking about Adams for about a minute when he said those words, but after that he could speak no more. Because suddenly the images of Adams’ joy and desire were being overwhelmed in his head by the memory of the fight De’Andre Adams did lose.

Two months to the day that Winthrop toppled the Irish in Spokane, Adams was dead from injuries suffered in a car accident near his Georgia home.

Now the Eagles are back in the NCAA tournament, this time an even bigger underdog tonight to Washington State. Minus the head coach and three starters off last year’s team, not much is expected of the Eagles against a No. 4 seed with the steady-Eddie demeanor of WSU, except they expect miracles from themselves.

As De’Andre Adams would.

He would have been a junior on this team, still just 5-foot-8 but an energizer and instigator off the bench. But last May he was buried in his jersey – No. 24 – and it is clear that while the Eagles have taken considerable inspiration from his memory this season, they are still a little haunted by it all.

None of them more so than his best friend, Mantoris Robinson.

On May 12, the two were playing wee-hours pickup basketball at the Atlanta Run and Shoot, a gym not far from Adams’ home in Austell. Robinson was visiting from Charlotte and after the games got dropped off at the home of Adams’ father, John, a serviceman stationed in Iraq.

“I just told him, ‘See you in the morning,’ ” Robinson remembered. “We were going to work on his car.”

Adams motored down the road to visit his girlfriend, Franchesca Davenport – a player on the Winthrop women’s team who also grew up in Atlanta. Sometime later, he got back in his car to head home.

But on Clay Road, Adams swerved to avoid a fallen tree and flipped his car several times before it rammed into a tree. It took medical personnel 45 minutes to free him, cutting the top off the car.

The head injuries he suffered were too much to overcome. He died on May 16.

“I couldn’t believe it – I was in a state of shock,” Robinson said. “I was always seeing him when he had a lot of energy, fun to be around, joking, kidding. I was always seeing him with a smile on his face.”

No one who knew him talks about De’Andre Adams without referencing the smile.

He flashed it at Peele, then an assistant coach, when he first started recruiting Adams, almost by accident. He won over a reluctant Davenport with it. He used it to goad Robinson and Taj McCullough into the three of them getting special haircuts, much to the dismay of then-coach Gregg Marshall.

The absence of the smile intensified the pain of losing the friend.

“There is no words that can adequately express what it did to our heart,” said Peele. “This is a young man who had a smile like you’ve never seen. He was engaging. It didn’t matter your age, he would bring you in. You would want to be a part of his life.”

So the Eagles have been adamant about Adams remaining a part of theirs. They dedicated the season to his memory “because we know he loved the game,” said teammate Michael Jenkins, “and we have the opportunity to continue to play and he doesn’t.”

They’ve done more. Adams’ father had an American flag flown in from Iraq that was also hoisted in a ceremony. There was a special memorial service on campus. A scholarship endowment was started, and bracelets sold to help fund it. His No. 24 was retired – except that Davenport wore it this season for the women’s team.

And they hung a banner in Winthrop Coliseum bearing that front-page picture of him in Spokane.

“It’s hard to break a kid like that,” said Robinson.

One day last March, De’Andre Adams owned a town. Now he owns a team.