It's Wonderful Life

Nor is Dickau above hosting a regular game of penny-ante poker among friends on the new baize card table Nevenner gave him for Christmas. "I used to play with those guys," says sophomore forward Cory Violette, Dickau's road roommate, "until I figured out Dan deals from the bottom of the deck." Dickau takes the Fifth on that charge, but there's no denying that he likes to win. One of Nevenner's favorite stories is about the time two years ago when she and Dan played Monopoly until three in the morning at her parents' house. She says Dickau's reaction when he landed on her Park Place property—with a hotel—and went bankrupt was priceless. "He put his head in his hands," she says, "and he had little tears in his eyes. He was so upset, I couldn't stop laughing."

If Dickau was intense that night, try to imagine the scene last Saturday in his final home game at the Kennel in Spokane. In a kaleidoscope of emotions (and bodily fluids), Dickau cried during his senior farewell, bled from a second-half blow to his mouth and still rang up 26 points, seven assists and five rebounds to help move the Bulldogs into a first-place tie with Pepperdine in the West Coast Conference. In the locker room afterward his face was literally covered in blood, sweat and tears. For a moment, it was impossible not to think back to the passage Dickau had highlighted in his dog-eared Bible two years ago, the one he can show you within seconds of being asked to name his favorite verse. "The end of a thing is better than its beginning," reads Ecclesiastes 7:8. "And the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit."

The guy who wrote that must have known a thing or two about college basketball.

[This article contains a table. Please see hardcopy of magazine or PDF.]