Andrew Middleman '09, Student Assistant
BEREA, OHIO -- It was four short years ago when former Midpark High School standout guard Dennis Santiago was leading the Meteors in a classic District Championship game against current Ohio State Buckeye standout Dallas Lauderdale and the Solon Comets in the Rudolph Ursprung Gymnasium in the Lou Higgins Recreation Center at Baldwin Wallace University in Berea.
It was a great opportunity for the BW coaching staff to scout its top recruit that winter. What impressed then Yellow Jacket Assistant Men's Coach Willis Brown, the current assistant to Women's Basketball Coach Semeka Randall at Ohio University, was Santiago's leadership.
"He just wanted to put his team on his shoulders and carry them to victory," said Brown, one of the top all-time rebounders in BW history. "Dennis was a natural leader by both example and sytle of play. He is a playmaker, hard worker and would do anything asked of him within reason to help his team win. I was really impressed."
Now, a senior two-time Academic All-Ohio Athletic Conference guard for the Yellow Jackets, Santiago has taken on an entirely different role as the same team-leader on a young and fairly inexperience team.
"Our student-athletes look up to Dennis in a number of ways," said first-year Head Coach Duane Sheldon, a 1993 graduate of the College who prepped at local Strongsville High and once coached Midpark. "Dennis is a role model in the classroom and on the basketball court."
"He has solid work habits and plays the game extremely intelligently," said Sheldon. "Dennis has the ability to help our program in a variety of ways."
Despite the fact that Santiago is somewhat quiet and reserved in social settings, he is different once he steps on the court. He is soft-spoken in the classroom, shyly absorbing the professor's lectures and notes. But, on the basketball court, he is internally aggressive and his "go-getter" attitude and personal determination have made him a winner.
"Dennis is a true competitor and has great determination to succeed," said former Yellow Jacket Head Coach Steve Bankson, who retired last winter after 28 seasons as the winningest men's basketball coach in BW school history with 420 wins and a total of 701 in his 44-year total head coaching career. "I think Dennis' approach, both academically and athletically, began at home. His parents are his driving force."
A 1,000-point plus scorer during his four years at Midpark, Santiago entered the Yellow Jacket program as Steve Bankson's top recruit. He was a hard worker during his time at Midpark and one of his goals was to become a 1,000-point scorer as a Yellow Jacket. Santiago enters his January 7 game at Otterbein College with 721 career points, 237 rebounds, 97 three-pointers, 100 assists and 51 steals.
"It was definitely a great honor at Midpark, and I was just happy that I could achieve that goal," said Santiago, who carries a 3.4 grade average in criminal justice. "Having the opportunity to play quite a bit during my first three years at BW was a blessing. This year, as a starter, continues to be a priviledge."
This season, Santiago and Sheldon's young Yellow Jackets have a 4-7 record following a 72-67 victory on Sunday against North Central (Ill.) College in the championship game of the 29th Annual Smokey Ballenger Classic at Otterbein College in Westerville. In the two-day tourney, Santiago scored 25 points, grabbed eight rebounds, passed for six assists and two steals and two three-pointers en route to earning all-tournament team accolades.
"Dennis played well at Otterbein and against both Thomas More [Ky.] and North Central," said Sheldon. "He helped manage the floor and scored both some key baskets, grabbed some key rebounds and made some solid passes that led to some easy baskets. It was just a solid all-around effort by Dennis and our team."
Knowing he has to lead, Santiago have been trying to hard. He is third on the team in scoring at 9.5 points per game, grabbing a career-high 3.5 rebounds per game and has an outstanding 25-to-13 assist-to-turnover ratio. The tough part has been his shooting where Santiago is making just 34.8 percent of his field goal attempts (32-of-92), including 11-of-33 from three-point range for 33%. He has been "clutch" at the foul line, making 30-of-39 attempts for 77%.
At Otterbein, Santiago began to come out of his shooting slump by making nine-of-14 attempts (64.3%), and that has Sheldon feeling optimistic about the rest of the season.
"Dennis may have been pressing a bit," said Sheldon, who led OAC-rival Heidelberg College to an OAC Tournament title last winter before deciding to return to his roots and succeed his mentor as coach last summer. "We have great confidence in Dennis as a shooter on offense and defender on defense. We know that once Dennis gets on track, like at Otterbein, he's tough to stop. We know he is capable of leading us offensively on any given day."
Basketball has always been at the forefront of his mind, but Santiago has even loftier goals in mind for after graduation.
Dennis comes from a family that has always stressed the importance of education and valued the fruits of labor. And, following last season, he had chance to decide whether he wanted to forego his final year of athletic eligibility and graduate early or come back and play as a senior.
"They [his parents] have always stressed hard work and that you don't get anything in life easy," said Santiago. "You have to work for everything you want and you have to set goals and do all the right things to help you achieve those goals."
"I am glad that I decided to come back and play," said Santiago, who has a career goal of working as a lawyer but would like to progress up the ladder as a police officer and possibily work in the area of investigation. "I would have really missed not taking the opportunity to utilize the opportunity. I just hope to do my best and help my team however possible."
Santiago also had that same type of decision four years ago before making the final decision to enroll at BW.
He was considering a number of other OAC schools, including Capital University, Ohio Northern University and Heidelberg College as well as a few Division II schools like Indiana University of Pennsylvania and NAIA foe Notre Dame College (Ohio).
Santiago chose BW because of its prominence in the prestigious OAC.
"BW has an excellent academic reputation in the programs that I was considering, and its basketball team had a solid, winning tradition. I came from a winning program at Midpark, and I really wanted to continue that tradition," said Santiago.
During his first three years in Berea, Santiago has helped BW to win 56 games and compile a 56-27 record with one OAC regular season title, an OAC Tournament crown and an appearance in the 2005-2006 NCAA Division III National Tournament.
As a freshman, Santiago played in 26 of 30 games, missing four with an ankle injury. He helped BW to win a school-record 25 games and compile a 25-5 slate en route to both OAC titles and the NCAA appearance. He scored 4.3 points per game as a key guard off the bench.
As a sophomore and en route to his first Academic All-OAC award, Santiago started 22 of 27 games and averaged a career-best 10.8 points per game with career-highs of 43 three-pointers, 42 assists and 20 steals as the Yellow Jackets compiled a 19-7 record.
Last winter, Santiago came off the bench as the "sixth man". He scored 7.9 ppg. and grabbed 3.1 rpg. and had 26 triples, 27 assists and 12 steals. He did such a good job as the "sixth man", Bankson called him the "John Havlicek of the OAC." That is in reference to the 13-time National Basketball Association All-Star and Hall of Famer from the Boston Celtics who is regarded as the best sixth man in NBA history.
"It is a great credit to Dennis and his family that he is a fine leader," said Sheldon. "He has a great support system and his parents travel to every away game and come to every home game. In that same way, Dennis has made all of our younger players part of his extended family. We are lucky to have found Dennis right here in Berea four years ago."
Yellow Jacket fans are reminded that the January 10 game versus Muskingum College in Berea will be taped and shown by SportsTime Ohio on Jan. 10 at 8:00 p.m. and again on Monday, Jan. 11 and Tuesday, Jan. 12 at 12:00 noon. For more information, please log onto the SportsTime Ohio Web site at www.sportstimeohio.com.
