It was a windy, snowy January day in Indianapolis when Jermaine Dearman’s

life almost came to an abrupt end.

Just an eight-grader, Dearman was outside trying to catch up to

his friends when he attempted to cross the street to go to the corner candy store where he thought they were.

Dearman was standing on the curb of a four-way stop while wearing a hood over his head to fight off the wind when he looked left to check out the traffic.

He saw a red light and no oncoming traffic from the opposite direction, so he took off running into the street to get to the store.

That is when it happened.

Dearman never saw the car, but he heard the tires squeal and next thing he

knew he was thrown up in the air.

“I just saw all the ambulance people and my friends were looking at me and

shaking their heads and crying and stuff,” Dearman, now a star senior forward on

the SIU men’s basketball team, said. “I was thinking in my head, ‘Am I dying

or something?’ And I looked down at my leg and I try to get up and my leg was

just hanging. It broke all the way through.”

When Dearman, who played basketball, baseball and football as a youth, was taken to the hospital, the first thing he asked the doctor was not whether or not he would lose his leg or if he had any other serious injuries as a result of being hit by the car.

He wanted to know when he would be able to get back on the hardwood and back to playing basketball.

“It was the scariest moment because I didn’t know if I was going to be able

to play basketball or anything else,” Dearman said. “The first thing I asked the doctor was, ‘Doc, am I still going to be able to play?'”

Dearman was able to play again, and play well as he has become one of the top frontcourt players in the Missouri Valley Conference. But being hit by the car was not the only obstacle he has had to overcome in his life.

Dearman grew up without a father and his mother, Brenda Chambers, often worked two jobs to be able to support him and his brother.

He also had to deal with losing several people who were very close to him including his grandmother, two aunts and a former Amateur Athletic Union teammate who tragically died during a high school basketball game.

While that may have been too much for a weaker person to overcome, Dearman said it is what helped make him the man he is today.

“I just didn’t want to dwell on [all the tragedies], so I just decided to surround myself with people who are going to make me laugh and people I can talk with so I don’t have to think about things like that,” Dearman said.

Although he doesn’t dwell on the tragedies, that doesn’t mean he has forgotten about them, especially his grandmother.

Dearman writes “R.I.P. Thelma” on his sneakers as a way of honoring his late grandmother and said he feels like it has brought him good luck since he started doing it last season.

“She was a big part of everybody’s life in my family and when she died it kind of hurt me, and I just wanted to try to let her know that she’s gone, but not forgotten,” Dearman said.

He also has the message tattooed on his left arm so that his grandmother is always with him.

It is from all these events that Dearman developed his outgoing personality.

Dearman said if he can just make one person happy each day, he feels it was a successful day.

He also likes being a positive symbol for the Salukis.

“I just try to talk to people, be that cool person who everybody can come up to and talk to,” Dearman said. “People might just see us playing basketball or see us on TV and they just want to be able to meet somebody on our team, and if I’m the guy whom they want to meet I want to send a good impression for the rest of the team. That’s why I just try to be cool with everybody.”

That personality has made Dearman a hit amongst his teammates and the Carbondale community as a whole.

Senior guard Kent Williams, who has been a teammate of Dearman’s for the past four years, said Dearman has a knack for making the team more interesting than they really are, yet at the same time being able to get serious when the situation calls for it.

“If you know Jermaine, you know he’s kind of a goofy guy and he’s silly,” Williams said. “But at the same time, throughout the years he’s developed a little more leadership and become a guy whom we can trust a little more.”

That leadership is something that SIU head coach Bruce Weber wasn’t sure if he was going to get when he recruited Dearman out of Warren Central High School in Indianapolis.

While Dearman, along with Williams, was part of Weber’s first real recruiting class and was considered a fine catch, there was a certain level of risk involved for the Saluki coach.

“For us it was a pretty good recruit,” Weber said. “It was a kid who had some size, athletic ability, he could run the court pretty well and had some offensive skills. It was more a matter of a little bit of immaturity, his inconsistency and his grades were a question mark for a lot of teams that were recruiting him. If he’s consistent and he has good grades going into his senior year we probably don’t have a shot at him.”

In the end, Weber and his staff decided it was worth the gamble and beat out other schools such as Indiana State, Ball State, Bowling Green and Murray State for Dearman’s services.

During the past four years Dearman has been able to answer the questions about his immaturity and grades and even though inconsistency still haunts him every now and again, Weber said he feels Dearman is getting over that problem as well.

“I think he’s focused, I think he realizes that this is it for him and he better take care of business because it’s going to be over very quickly,” Weber said.

Although Dearman has been successful playing basketball away from his home state of Indiana, it does not mean he has forgotten what he felt was disrespect by the state’s big schools for not recruiting him.

Dearman traditionally plays some of his best against Indiana schools such as Indiana State, Evansville and the big-name Hoosiers of Indiana University.

He said part of the reason he plays good against those teams is because the games come at key points in the season. But he admitted he also feels he has a little personal vendetta to take care of.

“When you consider yourself one of the top basketball players and then if you don’t get recruited by Purdue or Notre Dame or IU or those big schools in your state, then you kind of feel like you were either overlooked or you feel like you’re not as good as you should be,” Dearman said.

Besides when he plays against Indiana schools, another time Dearman traditionally plays exceptionally well is when the game is televised, either locally or nationally.

Is it because of his big play in televised games, specifically during last season’s NCAA Tournament where he averaged 21 points and nine and a half rebounds in SIU’s two victories, that he has earned the nickname “Big Game Jermaine.”

One of those victories, a 76-68 win over Texas Tech and longtime Indiana head coach Bob Knight held a little extra meaning to Dearman because of the ties to the Hoosier state.

Dearman said he was hoping to talk to Knight after the game, but it never happened.

“I kind of was waiting for him to say something to me, but he never did say anything,” Dearman said. “You know how Bob Knight is. He walked off the court and he was in the locker room probably before the players got to the locker room. I kind of was, not disappointed, but I was kind of looking forward to shaking his hand or just looking at him in the eye to give him that look like ‘yeah.’ But it didn’t happen like that.”

Dearman, similar to his teammates, hopes to be able to return to the NCAA Tournament in March, but if they do not make it back he will just take solace in knowing he was a key part in rebuilding the winning tradition at Southern Illinois.

As far as what the future holds for Dearman after SIU, he said he just hopes to be able to play basketball long enough to provide for his children and one day ultimately buy his mother a house as a way of saying thanks for all she has done for him.

“Like Martin Lawrence said, ‘I’m just going to try to ride my life until the wheels fall off,'” Dearman said. “Then hopefully when that day comes a long, long time down the line maybe when I’m like 50 years old, then I’ll fall back on my degree and get a job and just try to provide for my family and live my life.”

He also will be very cautious to make sure he doesn’t get blindsided again as he tries to cross the street and get to the candy store that is his future.

Reporter Jens Deju can be reached at [email protected]