After a final college season in which he seemed to lose – then regain – his passion for basketball, Donovan Dent appears to have reached the end of his career.
“I’m done with basketball,” the former UCLA point guard told the Albuquerque Journal while also revealing that he intends to coach children’s basketball in his adopted home in New Mexico.
Of course, there’s always a chance he could change his mind as he also said he intends to play with many of New Mexico’s former players in the Basketball Tournament, which will award $2 million to the winners of the 16-team field this summer.
Dent’s retirement caps a remarkable streak for the former Lobos star who became an honorable mention All-American before transferring to UCLA for his senior season. At the time of the departure, Dent was widely viewed as an NBA prospect who could lead the Bruins to a deep run in the NCAA Tournament.
That never happened.
Struggling with the high expectations that come with a big stage and a big NIL salary while playing for a defense-oriented coach, Dent was rarely the same Bruin player that Lobo was.
An early season foot injury and torn hamstring combined with better defenders at the highest level of the college game compounded his problems.
“I was down, really, at the beginning of the season,” Dent told the Big Ten Network a few months ago.
His shooting percentages dropped and he struggled to finish at the rim. Josh Giles, who continued to be private after coaching Dent at Centennial High in Corona, told the California Post in March that the guard no longer felt as universally loved as he had been in New Mexico.
“Now all of a sudden you’re getting messages and DMs where people are saying, ‘I hope you kill yourself, I hope you tear your ACL tomorrow, I hope you pop your Achilles,'” Giles said, “and you read those things, I think they hurt people sometimes and I don’t know if Donnie would admit it — he might have realized it was harder than he saw it.”
Dent finally started to snap out of his funk after a midseason interview with UCLA coach Mick Cronin following the loss to Ohio State.
Cronin told his guard to “go down swinging” in an effort to finish his college career without regrets. That was also the time when Dent began to feel fully recovered from his injury.
Coming off a 23-point, 13-assist, 2-game winning streak against Purdue, Dent continued to be one of the most productive players in the nation over the last few months of the season.
“I was just in a different frame of mind from that point on,” a smiling Dent told the Post during the Big Ten Tournament.
But Dent’s shooting struggles surfaced again during the NCAA tournament, where he made just 6 of 26 shots (23.1%) before UConn eliminated the Bruins in the second round.
Despite the change of heart, Dent accepted the perfect end to his basketball career.
Returning to Albuquerque allowed him to live with girlfriend Katelyn Estrada, a native of the New Mexico city and a medical school student there. It may also help him rekindle a new love for his old sport in the children he teaches through his clinic.
“I wanted to start it here because Albuquerque has given me so much,” Dent told the Journal. “I feel that this is the right place for me to start training young people and give back to them.”
