Wrenn feathers a nest in Seattle

Friday, Nov. 29, 2002 | 10:52 a.m.

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What: Washington at UNLV

When: Saturday, 7:30 p.m.

Where: Thomas & Mack

TV: None

Radio: KBAD 920-AM

Washington junior forward Doug Wrenn will have a tough time Saturday night when he walks into the Thomas & Mack Center for the first time.

"I'm going to be in awe, at first," he said. "I'll just have to get back to reality, you know? If Larry Johnson were there, or Stacey Augmon or Anderson Hunt, I'd be, like, 'Oh yeahhhh.' Let me explain it like this -- UNLV brought me into basketball."

Wrenn grew up in Seattle playing football and basketball, but he committed to hoops when he watched the Rebels win the national championship with a 103-73 victory over Duke in 1990. A year later, UNLV lost, 79-77, to Duke in a national semifinal.

To this day, the latter game stings Wrenn.

"I mean, they went undefeated, almost," Wrenn said of the Rebels, who were 34-0 before losing to the Blue Devils in 1991. "They should have won that game. I don't know what happened. I'm not going to say anything, but I have my questions about that game.

"You don't beat a team by 50 points one day, then turn around and get beat. I still can't watch that game. To this day, when it comes on ESPN Classic, I cannot watch that game. I get so upset. Seriously, I get so upset."

At the tip, though, expect Wrenn to quickly put his sentiments aside, forget about who once ran on The Mack track and who used to chomp on those towels on the bench, and morph into someone else.

An engaging and thoughtful person off the court in down time -- "a chill type of guy," he said -- Wrenn, 22, admitted that his whole world changes when a game begins. He slips into attack mode and can't fly around the court enough.

"When I'm on the court, like I tell everybody, I'm an (expletive). In the simplest of words, I'm an (expletive)," he said. "I have to be. That's my edge, man. I don't play dirty ... some people think, 'Ohhh, he's playing too rough.' But that's the game, you know? You can't let someone just punk you on the court.

"I won't be the one getting punked out on the court, and my team's not going to get punked. We'll fight you. Once people think they can run over you, they're going to keep on doing it. So that's not going to happen."

Opponents aren't nearly the source of Wrenn's survival mentality as much as it might seem. Wrenn's father, Rick, left the family when Doug was very young, sending him, his mother, his three sisters and a brother into a spiral in which they were homeless for a spell.

Until about the time of that second UNLV-Duke game, Wrenn and his family obtained their one daily meal at a nearby park. Each boxed lunch contained a small container of milk, a sandwich and a cookie.

"Usually bologna, but you never know what's in bologna so I don't mess with that no more," Wrenn said. "I don't mess with pork no more, either."

He doesn't mess with Rick, or whatever alias he is currently using in or around Seattle, either. Doug first met his father when he was four, but he has shunned the old man since Rick tried to ease back into Doug's life when he started to excel on the court.

Although off-campus rent and other incidentals come out of it, Doug Wrenn gets a monthly stipend of $800.

"I feel like I'm rich," he said.

Wrenn signed with Washington out of O'Dea High School in Seattle, but he slipped away to Connecticut via two prep schools. His tenure in Storrs, Conn., was short-lived, due to a suspension from shoe-store discounts and other disciplinary violations.

Booted from the team, he was finishing the 1999-2000 academic year on the UConn campus when his struggles consumed him. The breaking point arrived when he heard his mother, Dora, cry during a telephone conversation.

"I wasn't even sure I'd play basketball again," Wrenn said. "My mom was hearing all these things about what I was doing (at UConn). People were saying I'm a bad kid and that I got a bad head, stuff like that. People were telling my mom I wouldn't amount to nothing.

"I was like, it's not even worth playing basketball anymore."

Playing for a hometown crowd, though, proved exciting, and he averaged 19.5 points for Washington in 2001-02 after sitting out a season for transferring. A year ago, he scored 21 points in a 77-64 victory over UNLV in Seattle.

An 11-18 season finished Bob Bender's nine-year run as Washington's coach, and Wrenn found a measure of stability when Huskies athletic director Barbara Hedges hired UW alum Lorenzo Romar away from Saint Louis.

Wrenn had been leaning toward making himself eligible for the NBA draft, but talks with Romar and a day of reflection pursuaded him to remain a Husky. If you're going to do something, he concurred with Romar, you have to put 10 toes down.

"I think maybe his mind was eased a bit," Romar said.

Wrenn did not attend any pre-draft camps or work out individually for any team.

"He's the man," Wrenn said of Romar. "I mean, I've been bouncing around for so many years, I finally bounced into a stable environment. I've lacked stability in my life. Look, I made my mistakes, but I'm a better person. I felt an obligation to come back and help this team.

"You can't just bounce in and bounce out. I'm not Rick Wrenn. I don't like bouncing into people's lives and bouncing out. That's not what I do."

Wrenn wants to prove to himself, his teammates and locals that he is one of the best players to ever come out of Seattle.

"By me and my team getting together and making some things happen, people will go ahead and give me that distinction. That would be great," said Wrenn. "And, hopefully, the Sonics will draft me with the No. 2 pick in the draft and I'll have to do it there."