Dade Makes the Best of Breaks He Gets : Basketball: Cal State Fullerton redshirt freshman has had a lot of support from his mother, stepfather.

Basketball is full of good breaks and bad ones. So is life. Chris Dade can tell you about that.

Dade, a redshirt freshman who is starting this season for the Cal State Fullerton basketball team, remembers when he was growing up in Tulsa, living with his grandparents.

“It was a bad part of Tulsa, the projects,” Dade said. “I remember that I’d carry one of those pistol BB guns around with me . . . and I was only about 5. It wasn’t a good place to grow up, and I was a mean little kid then.”

His mother, Julia, was away in Stillwater, in college at Oklahoma State, a single parent struggling to find her way after her husband walked out when Chris was a baby.

Dade’s life changed dramatically when his mother met Herman Dade, also a student at Oklahoma State. At the end of their senior years, they were married.

“He turned out to be the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” Dade said.

One of the first things Herman Dade did was legally adopt Chris and bring him to live with them in Oklahoma City. “We didn’t even have a honeymoon,” Herman Wade said.

His stepfather set out to help turn around Chris’ life, but at first it left some bruises on their relationship.

“We had a lot of conflicts at the start, and he really didn’t want to be around me,” Herman Dade said. “But I guess after awhile he figured he wasn’t in that bad of a situation, and it started gradually improving.”

Dade said he doubts he would be playing major college basketball today if it weren’t for the things his stepfather did to get him on track and keep him there, especially academically.

Before his freshman year in high school, the family moved to the San Diego area when Herman Dade was hired by Hughes Aircraft as a technician. Dade had an immediate impact as a basketball player at Vista High.

He starred on the freshman team and was set to play a prominent role on the varsity his sophomore season. But suddenly, there was no season for him.

“I told Chris that he had to have at least a 2.5 grade-point average to keep on playing basketball,” Herman Dade said. “I really had struggled with him in his ninth-grade year. I had spent hours with him going over his school work, and I told him he had to do better if he wanted to play. We got his grades for the first semester and they were 2.2. I stood by what I said and pulled him off the team for that season.”

After his sophomore year, he transferred to San Diego El Camino High and there were no more serious academic problems, although his stepfather asked his coach, Ray Johnson, to bench him for a game after he failed to complete an important classroom assignment on time. Johnson went along with the request. “That was one of the reasons I liked him as coach,” Herman Dade said. “He agreed with me that it was school first, basketball second.”

But Herman Dade also took special pride in Chris’ basketball accomplishments.

Dade was El Camino’s most valuable player as a junior. As a senior, he averaged 16.5 points, shot 58% from the field and led his team to the San Diego Section Division II championship and a 25-5 record. He was chosen player of the year in the division.

Several colleges recruited Dade, including Washington and Oregon. “I had my mind set on one of the Pac 10 schools, but my father encouraged me to go to Fullerton,” Dade said. “He felt it would be better for me to be closer to home and family.”

Dade was disappointed that he had to sit out his freshman year last season because of a recurring wrist problem that required surgery and left his arm in a cast for almost six months.

Despite the year off, he has bounced back well this season. He’s the team’s second-leading scorer behind senior center Winston Peterson with an 11-point average. He ranks as one of Big West’s top free-throw shooters (77.8%), and has to guard some of the opposing teams’ top players, even though, at 6-2, he gives up a height advantage to several of them. In Fullerton’s normal three-guard lineup, he has found himself opposite 6-10 Eric Lee of Nevada Las Vegas, 6-7 Silas Mills of Utah State and 6-8 Jimmy Moore of Nevada, among others.

His all-around ability has made him one of the top freshmen in the Big West this season.

“There’s a lot about Chris that you can’t measure statistically,” Fullerton Coach Bob Hawking said. “He has a tremendous heart and he’s a great competitor. He works hard all the time. He’s everything we look for when we go out recruiting kids.”

Dade gives Hawking considerable credit for his development defensively, but he also passes some along to UNLV Coach Tim Grgurich for getting him going in that direction.

“When I was at El Camino I went to the UNLV basketball camp. One of the things he told me I needed to do was be really aggressive on defense, and I’ve tried to do that,” Dade said.

Hawking said he has no concern about putting Dade opposite the other team’s top wing player. “He’s in a role defensively as a redshirt freshman that most kids don’t have until late in their career,” Hawking said.

Dade certainly doesn’t overlook his stepfather’s contribution to his basketball development. Herman Dade always has loved the game and has played it in an adult recreation league, coached part time and also worked as a referee.

“He’s always tried to help me,” Dade said. “Even when I was just a kid back in Oklahoma the two of us would stand outside and shoot free throws with snow on the ground.”

Being a big part of his stepson’s life has been a joy to Herman Dade.

“My own father died when I was 10, so it was just my mother after that,” he said. “But I guess one thing I learned from her is that what you do with people means the most, especially when they’re your kids.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Take it Outside

The fortunes of Cal State Fullerton’s Chris Dade have risen as he spends more time outside the three-point arc. Here is a look at his freshman season:

2-pt 3-pt Opponent FG FG TP CS Northridge 2-5 2-5 11 Santa Clara 1-5 1-4 8 Texas Arlington 1-4 0-2 8 UCLA 1-6 0-1 8

Percentage of field-goal attempts from beyond the three-point line through first four games: 24.3%

Scoring average through first four games: 8.8

2-pt 3-pt Opponent FG FG TP Nevada Las Vegas 2-7 2-3 16 San Diego State 1-3 1-3 13 San Francisco 2-4 3-9 15 Utah 2-3 2-4 11 Loyola 2-3 2-5 10 UC Irvine 0-1 4-6 18 New Mexico State 0-3 1-5 3 Utah State 3-3 2-4 12 Nevada 1-1 3-9 13 San Jose State 0-1 1-4 5

Percentage of field-goal attempts from beyond the three-point line through last 10 games: 64.2%

Scoring average through last 10 games: 11.6