As a 6-foot-6 center, Rashod Kent has grown used to having an occasional shot blocked by an opponent, but there was one rejection Kent never fully recovered from – at least not until last Sunday.Kent, who leads the Big East in rebounding, grew up in Fairmont, W.Va., just 10 minutes from the Morgantown campus of West Virginia University. But he was never seriously recruited by Mountaineers head coach Gale Catlett.

Like most Division I coaches, Catlett didn’t see much promise in a 6-foot-6, 275-pound center. He offered Kent – a first-team All-State honoree in West Virginia – a scholarship but didn’t bother to speak to him in person. Instead, he sent his nephew, Drew, to do the recruiting. Kent’s mother, Brenda, said the head coach called them with random invitations to meet in his office whenever he was ‘passing through.’

Catlett took a medical leave of absence starting Monday and could not be reached. Still, he has declined comment about Kent to other newspapers in the past.

‘One day, ‘Shod’ just came home and told me that he didn’t feel like they wanted him,’ Brenda Kent said.

Catlett’s snub, however, didn’t hurt Kent as much as the coach’s snipping. Kent graduated without ever being in trouble with the law. Yet one morning he woke up to read that Catlett considered him a troubled child. While Kent grew up in a rough neighborhood, he insists he avoided trouble at every turn.

‘Trouble can’t find you if you’re not around it,’ Kent said. ‘I avoided it. I stayed away from it. Basketball kept me away from it.’So did Brenda. Before Kent reached elementary school, doctors realized he was abnormally bow-legged. To fix this problem, they broke both his legs and stuck Kent in leg braces.

Kent’s always felt like he owed something to the woman that rolled him over in his sleep so she could turn the braces every four hours and who paid for him to stay in a clinic for children with physical disabilities when he was young.

Kent was always trying to pay mom back, nowhere more than in his studies, where he became an honors student in seventh grade and compiled a 3.7 GPA in high school. That’s why Kent was horrified when he read another newspaper report stating that Catlett considered him an academic risk.

‘His reasons were false as to why he didn’t want me on his team,’ Kent said. ‘I don’t really know why he didn’t want me. He gave me three reasons, all different. He said I didn’t have the grades. That wasn’t the reason at all.’

During his return trips to Morgantown, the students have shown they didn’t want Kent either. The WVU Coliseum echoes with chants of ‘Fat boy’ whenever Kent touches the ball. On Sunday, Brenda Kent noted, in Kent’s last career visit to West Virginia, the Mountaineer faithful were even more vulgar than usual.

‘You don’t want to know what they were saying,’ she said. ‘You sure can’t print any of it.’

Each year those same students have had the last word. Entering his senior season, Kent’s Scarlet Knights were 0-6 against theMountaineers. The lack of success left Catlett and West Virginia room to gloat. Before this year’s meetings, the newspapers were filled with assurances that the Mountaineers would topple lowly Rutgers.

‘He never has anything nice to say,’ Brenda Kent said of Catlett. ‘He’s always saying something negative or nasty. He doesn’t even shake Rashod’s hand after the games.’

But Kent wouldn’t need a handshake to make him feel better after this season’s contests. He snatched 25 rebounds in two games against WVU and matched his career high with 19 points in each.

‘I don’t know the history, but I know when he plays that team he has an intensity that’s high above what we usually see,’ Rutgers coach Gary Waters said. ‘Even in practice he was way up there. He just wanted to beat them so bad.’

[b]Are you kidding me?[/b]Official Tim Higgins is already as popular as a Friday-morning class, but he’s got another pimple on his record with Boston College fans. The pudgy Higgins, met with chants of ‘Higg-ins, Higg-ins’ wherever he works, reportedly told Boston College sophomore Ryan Sidney to ‘shut the (expletive) up and keep running’ after Sidney complained he was fouled by a Duke player last Thursday. Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese plans to speak to Higgins, BC head coach Al Skinner and BC athletic director Gene DeFillipo to resolve the situation.

The attempt Pittsburgh’s student body made at rushing the court after a 72-57 victory over Syracuse was truly a pathetic exercise. The wild ruckus was nearly as loud as a silent auction and appeared more like orderly second-graders filing out to recess. The Orangemen crowd gets more worked up when SU secures free tacos.

[b]Stats of the week[/b] 17, 20Everyone knows John Linehan is the best defender in the Big East and probably the country, but usually there’s no way to prove it. This week, he piled up 17 steals in two games, including a Big East-record 11 against Rutgers. His opponents in those games made only three more steals than Linehan.

3-3Connecticut might be Caron Butler’s team, but maybe they’re better off when they’re not. Butler has scored 20 points and led the team in scoring six times, but UConn has lost half those contests.

[b]On the shelf[/b]Preston Shumpert, SU – Syracuse’s top scorer left the Orangemen’s game against Georgetown after reaggravating a corneal abrasion to his right eye. The injury occurred last year in the Big East Tournament semifinals against Pittsburgh. Impact – Syracuse struggled without Shumpert, but the injury shouldn’t keep the sharpshooter out for too long. His status, as of Monday night, is day to day. If the injury lingers, SU will have difficulty remaining in the top half of the division.

Harold Swanagan, ND – After originally spraining his ankle against Syracuse on Jan. 14, Swanagan aggravated that injury five days later and has missed Notre Dame’s past two games. He’s questionable for the team’s meeting with Pittsburgh tonight.Impact – The Irish have been outrebounded by Georgetown and Seton Hall in the past two games, and if Swanagan misses this one, expect the trend to continue. The Panthers rank second in the Big East – just behind the Hoyas – in rebounding.

[b]On tap[/b]Pittsburgh at Notre DameTonight, 7:30Panthers coach Ben Howland said an autograph-seeking crowd at Pittsburgh’s Fitzgerald Field House threw off his team the last time these two teams met. It’ll be interesting to see what a much more hostile South Bend crew has in store.

Connecticut at MiamiSaturday, 7:30 P.M.The last time these teams met Miami went into Connecticut as one of four remaining undefeateds in college basketball. The Hurricanes left staggering through the court-storming Storrs crowd, 76-75 losers courtesy of two Johnnie Selvie free throws with less than five seconds left. This time UConn travels to Florida as the only team in the Big East without a conference loss. Revenge anyone?

[b]Yup, he said it[/b]Connecticut coach Jim Calhoun, after an overtime win over Arizona, the birth of a granddaughter and giving freshman Ben Gordon an impromptu piggyback ride: ‘Ben, he jumped on me. It’s a good thing I’ve been working out a little. It would be very disappointing to have Avery see her grandfather on the floor at the end of game and be knocked down by one his own players.’

Published on January 29, 2002 at 12:00 pm