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| Published January 19, 2004 :: Home |
David's World
Brewster's Pendergraft lives for
basketball,
By KEVIN ANTHONY There is No. 25 in Brewster red and white, going up faster and higher, flicking the basketball to a teammate. One more fluid pass, and the Bears have the first of what will be many layups. Just three seconds into the game, and Brewster already has a 2-0 lead. It accelerates from there. The opposing team's first shot is off-target, and a curly tangle of red hair goes up high again, owning the rebound. Brewster comes back down, dumping the ball into its star post. He head fakes once to get a defender into the air, then goes up and over the remaining double team. The shot is off the mark, but even as the defenders are gathering themselves for another jump, No. 25 already is back in the air. David Pendergraft, so active and energetic, seems to be able to light up the gym with his megawatt energy. "He's a bundle of energy," Brewster coach Tim Taylor said. "You could pretty much tell from day one he was a special player. He had so much drive." As a freshman, he was inclined to challenge those double and triple teams. Now, he's more likely to kick it out to four or five different teammates who can knock down the outside shot. The 6-foot-6 Pendergraft himself will spot up at the 3-point line, displaying a range and touch that will be the key to his success at Gonzaga University. Every year brings some new improvement: passing out of double teams, hitting the 3, bulking up 30 pounds to 222. "Those were weaknesses in my game," he said, sitting in the stands before a recent game. "You see you have weaknesses, and you work harder on that than anything else." "He loves the game. He lives
for the game," said longtime teammate Ryne Phillips. "He's all about
basketball." Brewster's opening draw was second-ranked Zillah, sporting a 21-game winning streak and a 6-8 shot-blocking machine by the name of Ryan Cheek. Pendergraft, then about 6-4, took Cheek to school with an array of low-post moves. He put up 26 points and 17 rebounds against Cheek, and set tongues a-waggin' at the Yakima SunDome. They were wagging again that fall when Pendergraft made a verbal commitment to Gonzaga University before the start of his sophomore season. It's almost unheard of for a player that young to commit, and just as rare for a school to guarantee a scholarship. "He decided no matter what, that's where he wanted to go," his dad, Mike Pendergraft, said. "He committed when they said he'd have a scholarship, no matter what." At the time, more than 100 schools were addressing information to Mike and Coach Taylor -- schools aren't allowed direct contact with an athlete until his junior year. Big-time programs like Oregon, Oklahoma, Kansas, Louisville and North Carolina State were showing an interest. "He was just about to take off," Taylor said of Pendergraft's recruiting. "He did it so quick, and a lot of them just quit. They knew it was a done deal." Some schools -- Louisville, Texas Christian and Utah -- were persistent right up until Pendergraft signed with Gonzaga last November. "It would have been crazy if he had not made up his mind until now," said Taylor, who is going through the process all over again as his sophomore son, Michael, gains more attention. Pendergraft said he doesn't regret any part of his early commitment to Gonzaga, even though it eliminated his chance to make official visits to campuses all around the country. "It would have been fun, I'll admit. But I wouldn't want to base my decision on that," Pendergraft said. "My family said, 'Is this really what you want to do?' But it was the perfect situation, and I wasn't going to pass it up." He calls the Gonzaga program his family, and has played with and against most of the players, including stars Blake Stepp, Ronny Turiaf and Cory Violette. "Cory put me on my back one time," he said. "That was a wake-up call. But it's fun when you can hold your own with Blake and (Tony) Skinner." And he enjoys watching Gonzaga hold its own and more with the national powers and thinking that could be him instead of Adam Morrison shooting free throws late against Missouri.
"I'd better be ready for it," he said. "They lose five
guys. Coach (Mark) Few told me be ready for a starting position or a lot of
playing time. So I have to be ready." He played alongside Bremerton's Marvin Williams, considered the state's top player and ranked by some as No. 4 in the nation. Pendergraft not only held his own, he flourished. He averaged 14.4 points and 6.8 rebounds in five games, shot better than 50 percent from the floor and 35 percent on 3-pointers. But perhaps the most telling stat was this: only four turnovers in five games. There's no mystery where Pendergraft's athletic talents come from. His mom, Lori, is the daughter of Ross McCormack, a legend in Omak. Uncle Don McCormack played professional baseball for the Philadelphia Phillies. His father, Mike, played three sports in high school and competed on the U.S. European track team for two years. Mike's half-brother, Hogan Wrixon, holds the Eastern Washington University record in the 400 meters. Mike keeps the scorebook for Brewster and has been to nearly every game -- including summer-tournament trips around the country. Grandma Shirley McCormack also travels for games, once going to Tennessee to watch David play and then flying to Arizona for another of her grandkids' sporting events. "And when you don't play good, she tells you," David says with a telling smile. The connection to Omak and Okanogan has caused Pendergraft some grief over the years. His family moved from Omak to Brewster before his freshman year, and David went from being a promising freshman in the Okanogan system to the star of the rival Bears. Every trip back to the Okanogan gym has been contentious with the fans. "They hold up T-shirts, dollar bills," he said. "But the real people who are my friends, they know about the decision. "We weren't paid a bunch of money, we don't have a three-story mansion, there are no new cars or trucks." Pendergraft said the decision to move was based partly on basketball -- he had been playing on club teams with Brewster players for a couple of years already -- and also on the future of his brother, Robert, who's a sophomore on the Brewster JV team. "It
was the best opportunity for me and my brother," he said. Pendergraft has career averages of 22 points and 10 rebounds, and last season shot 67 percent from the floor on his way to his second 1A player of the year award. He needs to average 24 points a game to catch Dale Smith for the school scoring record of 2,283 points. Brewster, meanwhile, has gone from being the dominant 1A team that won a state championship last year to being one of the top teams in the state, period. The Bears' first two wins came against a pair of quality 4A schools, and it has been whispered around the state that their last chance for a loss could come today at the Yakima Valley SunDome, when they face 3A power West Valley in the Tourneytown.com Shootout. "I thought we'd be really good to be 2-1," Pendergraft said of the Bears' challenging early schedule. "Now, going undefeated is our goal, and it's very accomplishable." But there is only one measuring stick for Brewster boys' basketball: The Bears' 1975-77 run of three straight championships and a state-record 82 straight victories. "That's talked about," Phillips said. "It's hard to live up to that 82-game streak." In 2001-02, though, Brewster went 20-0 in the regular season, and then lost Pendergraft to a broken wrist before the start of the district tournament and lost two of four games at the state tournament. Had Pendergraft been in the lineup, would Brewster be working on a third consecutive championship this year? If so, they would be carrying a 65-game winning streak with a shot at 82. "They'd beat us by 30," says Smith, a star on those '70s teams. "They're so much more athletic." Comparisons between eras are hardly fair with the advantage today's players have in training and year-round schedules. But Smith sees this group of Brewster players approaching the kind of dominance his teams had. "I think they're getting better all the time, I really do," he said. "It's hard because they have so much more talent than a lot of the teams they play. ... They get ahead by 20 and naturally let up." As for Pendergraft? "He would have been way over
our heads," Smith said with a laugh. "He's a lot more talented than anybody
we ever played."
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