Not long after playing a key reserve role for the UA's 2005 Elite Eight team, then-freshman Jawann McClellan took a memorable phone call from Lute Olson.
The Arizona Wildcats basketball coach told McClellan of a projection that had him right behind Duke's J.J. Redick among shooting guards expected to join the 2006 NBA draft.
"Obviously, everybody in Tucson, including myself and Coach O, thought I was gonna be gone my senior year," McClellan said. "It didn't work out like that."
Instead, McClellan will join four teammates — Kirk Walters, Daniel Dillon, Bret Brielmaier and Mohamed Tangara — for Sunday's Senior Day ceremonies after a final two games at McKale Center this weekend.
Two extra years. That's what happens when that expected terrific sophomore season unfolds like this:
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● Your dad — your best friend — dies.
● You become academically ineligible, re-aggravate an old football Achilles' injury, and are suspended from the team.
● You make it back by midseason, but are overweight, and break your wrist in the second game.
● After the season, you wake up and find your knee swollen, necessitating a significant surgery.
McClellan has recovered to play a major supporting role this season, but on a senior class that has all seen a share of adversity, his story probably tops them all.
And we apparently did not even know the half of it.
"People don't realize that Coach O and Coach Roz (Jim Rosborough, former associate head coach) sent me to a psychiatrist," McClellan said. "I had to go every Monday until I was well. I got suspended off the team. Wasn't anybody who thought Coach O would suspend me but that's when you knew things got bad."
They kept getting bad. Not just for McClellan, but also for his classmates.
A concussion and mononucleosis knocked Walters out of the starting lineup in fall 2006, and into a redshirt year that led to a sporadic senior season.
Dillon spent his entire career on the fringe of the rotation, and was suspended for the UA's lone 2007 NCAA tournament game after an arrest on suspicion of DUI.
Brielmaier cracked the starting lineup this year, as a non-scholarship player, only to sprain a shoulder that is critical to his screening and rebounding abilities.
Tangara never cracked the rotation, period.
Yet none of them are complaining. It's an attitude that Kevin O'Neill, having taken over for Olson on an interim basis, has consistently praised.
"They have been unequivocally dedicated to making the team better every day," O'Neill said. "They've been great. You couldn't ask them to do more in a situation that they did not invite or sign up for."
Only Brielmaier's happiness is easily understandable. He arrived with the lowest of expectations, as an invited walk-on who "had the idea in the back of my head that I may never play."
Instead, Brielmaier has played in 87 games, even as the shoulder injury has kept him in and out of the lineup since Christmas.
Along the way, he received another bonus. As an aspiring college coach, Brielmaier has learned under Olson and also the sharply different O'Neill.
"Having two different guys has been a huge eye-opening experience," Brielmaier said. "Two different styles, both with different aspects of how to handle things. You combine them and you'll have a very strong idea of what works and what doesn't."
While McClellan limped on sore knees and Brielmaier's famed "pin-down screens" now come with pain, Walters' health issues kept him out nearly all of last season.
Walters first suffered a concussion just before full-length practices began last season, came back to play two minutes in the opener against Virginia, then caught mono. He tried to return a month later at San Diego State, but huffed and puffed his way through one possession and sat out the rest of the season.
All this, too, from a guy who played a key role against Alabama-Birmingham in the second round of the 2005 NCAA tournament, then became a regular starter the next season.
This season, healthy again, Walters has only played in 17 of 27 games.
"It's definitely been strange, frustrating, all those things," Walters said. "I guess that's just how things are sometimes. There wasn't a whole lot of smooth continuity to my career, but that's the way it was. I have no regrets about it."
Walters says people ask him if he should have stayed closer to home in Michigan, at a school where he might have played more. But he says he enjoyed the challenge of being at an elite program and playing at places such as North Carolina, Madison Square Garden and Kansas.
"What I've learned is there's certain things you can control and certain things you can't," Walters said. "The thing with mono? What am I gonna do? If I had worked out 24/7, I wouldn't have gotten any better. You've got to sit back, take a rest and come back when you have a chance."
Then there are the things you learn how to control better. Dillon found that out the hard way when, toward the end of last season, he was arrested on suspicion of DUI.
The DUI charges were eventually dismissed in a plea agreement in which Dillon pled guilty only to a lesser charge of driving after drinking as a minor. But the damage was done: Dillon's arrest was splashed in the news, not only locally, but nationally, and even in his hometown newspaper in Melbourne, Australia.
"I didn't realize the effect that things can have outside the basketball program, that it was going to be on ESPN and stuff like that," Dillon said. "It was just one of those points in my life where you learn from that.
"I was young and stupid."
On the court, Dillon had the added frustration of returning home to realize he could be paid decent money — immediately — if he had chosen to play professional ball.
"I've always thought about that every year, but if I had left, I wouldn't be having the experience we're having right now," Dillon said. "I just try to stay strong. As Coach Olson told me, fight it out and you'll reap the rewards when you finish."
Even if that finish line, for McClellan, was a little bit farther away than he expected.
"All of this turned me into a better man," McClellan said. "I've talked to Coach O and my mom about it: Even if I left school after my sophomore year, I'd be 19 and wouldn't know what to do with all that money.
"Now, if I get the opportunity for the NBA or to play overseas, I'll be better prepared mentally. My attitude has just changed about life in general."
THE SENIORS
Bret Brielmaier
Forward, 6-7, 237
• Known for: Ability to contribute heavily in areas not shown in the box score; sharp-witted jokes.
• Major: Interdisciplinary studies (to graduate in May).
• Key stat: 11 games started, despite being a walk-on for much of his career.
Daniel Dillon
Guard, 6-3, 197
• Known for: Easygoing Aussie personality and sneaky sense of humor
• Major: Psychology, with minor in business (to graduate in May).
• Key stat: 107 games played, many in different roles.
Jawann McClellan
Guard, 6-4, 204
• Known for: Leadership, outspokenness and philosophical outlook on basketball and life.
• Major: Religious studies (expects to graduate in 2009).
• Key stat: 37.7 minutes averaged in Pac-10 games this season after two injury-plagued years.
Kirk Walters
Center, 6-11, 247
• Known for: Health issues that sidetracked his basketball career; love for outdoor sports
• Major: Community and public health (to graduate in May).
• Key stat: 82 blocked shots — and countless more altered ones.
