KEVIN HOLMES : Former Cleveland High Star Is Hurting at dePaul as He Thinks Too Much and Plays Too Little for a Team on Dizzying Tumble

NEW YORK —  College basketball’s “King of Pain” has been experiencing a different kind of hurt these days.

Kevin Holmes of DePaul, tagged with that moniker last season by Sports Illustrated for his punishing play under the backboards, is slumping. And so is his team, which began the season ranked No. 3 nationally, but last week dropped out of the top 20.

After starting 61 consecutive games from early in his freshman season to the middle of this season, his junior year, Holmes was benched for one game, regained his starting power forward position, then lost it again two weeks ago.

All of a sudden, the game isn’t as easy for him as it was at Cleveland High in Reseda, where he led the Cavaliers to City 3-A championships in 1981 and 1982 and twice was named 3-A Player of the Year. So dominant was Holmes that he was described as “a man among boys.”

“He’s lost his confidence totally,” said DePaul associate athletic director Bob Grim.

“I’ve been in a big hole,” said Holmes, who lost his starting job as the Blue Demons started to slide. “I’ve been slumping from game one. I just haven’t got it going. I’ve had a couple good games, but I haven’t been consistent. It’s been really hard because I started off pretty bad and I never could get it rolling. . . .

“It’s kind of sad. I’m just now realizing that the season’s almost over and I’m thinking to myself, ‘If I had caught myself earlier, maybe it wouldn’t take as many games to straighten it out.’ ”

Joey Meyer, DePaul’s first-year coach, said Holmes is only part of a much bigger problem.

“People are losing confidence and pressing,” Meyer said of his team. “You can’t win unless you believe. Our whole team is struggling because we’ve lost confidence.”

Sitting on the bench makes it even more difficult.

Alumni Hall. St. John’s University, Queens, N.Y.

DePaul is about to play No. 1-ranked St. John’s on national television, and the starting lineups are being announced.

For the fourth straight game, Holmes’ name will not be called, and he is clearly uncomfortable. As Meyer gives instructions to the starters, Holmes stands off to one side, shuffling his feet.

The day before, sitting in the lobby of a hotel across the expressway from LaGuardia Airport, Holmes said he had prepared himself for his demotion since the day sophomore Dallas Comegys, a high school All-American from Philadelphia, arrived on DePaul’s Chicago campus in the fall of 1983.

“When I came in for my sophomore year, they were already shooting publicity through the papers that Dallas was going to come in and start,” Holmes said of the DePaul coaching staff.

“In the back of my mind, there was always that question, ‘When are they going to put him in the lineup?’ Even though I was playing well (last season) and helping the team, I always had that thought in my subconscious.”

Comegys has replaced Holmes, but Meyer said he never felt any pressure to make the change.

“I have my own game plan and I can’t let the press coach the team,” he said.

Meyer said Comegys has been playing well and said the decision to put Holmes on the bench wasn’t made “only because Kevin is playing so poorly right now.”

But, Meyer admitted, Holmes’ recent performances made his decision a lot easier.

Even in his worst nightmares, Holmes probably never dreamed he would have the kind of numbers he had in the five-game stretch prior to last Sunday’s game at St. John’s: 0 points and 1 rebound against Princeton, 2 and 1 against Louisville, 2 and 4 against Dayton, 3 and 4 against Pepperdine, 4 and 5 against Loyola of Chicago.

DePaul lost three of the five.

The game at St. John’s--DePaul’s fifth loss in seven games and eighth of the season--offered a microcosm of Holmes’ season.

He replaced Marty Embry five minutes into the game, and promptly had his first shot blocked into the stands by St. John’s 7-0 center, Bill Wennington. He swished his next shot from the corner, and continued to play well until blowing an uncontested layup at the end of a fast break.

After sitting down for a few minutes, he returned before the end of the half to shoot an air ball and throw a horrendous pass 10 feet over everybody’s head for a turnover. He shot another air ball in the second half, but also made a sweet pass inside to Lawrence West for a dunk.

When the game was over, Holmes’ line included 25 minutes, 3-of-8 shooting, 8 points and 3 rebounds. His play had been ragged at times, but it was his best game in almost a month.

“I don’t know if it’s confidence,” said Holmes, attempting to explain his problems. “I still believe. I might have gotten a little tentative--more or less thinking instead of reacting in certain situations. . . .

“I’ve found myself thinking about every move I make, and that makes you a step slower. While you’re thinking, someone has already beaten you to the move and you end up making a foul or making a turnover.”

Meyer said Holmes’ quiet personality is part of the problem.

“We kind of wish he’d show more emotion--get mad and fight and scream and kick more,” Meyer said. “Maybe he might be too nice a kid. That’s his problem right now--he needs to be a little tougher and a little meaner. Maybe that’s the only way he can get out of this slump he’s in. . . .

“This has been a bad period for him. He’s frustrated--as everybody else is--because we know he’s a much better player than he’s playing right now.”

Holmes’ teammate and roommate, junior guard Tony Jackson, has suggested to Holmes that he forget about his demotion and play his way out of the slump.

“When you’re not starting,” said Jackson, who was benched for seven games earlier this season, “you take a couple of shots that aren’t quite right and you figure, ‘I’m not starting anymore--they’re going to take me out soon.’ That’s an automatic feeling.

“He’s got to say, ‘It doesn’t matter.’ He’s got to realize that he’s still got to play as hard as he can because he has no control over what the coaches do. If they’re going to take you out anyway, you have no control over that.

“As soon as he understands that, I think he’ll be OK.”

Holmes didn’t have these kinds of problems at Cleveland High.

He grew up in Los Angeles near the Forum and about 10 blocks from Washington High. He was bused to Cleveland through the L.A. Unified School District’s Permit With Transfer program.

He had never played organized basketball before entering Cleveland as a sophomore, and went out for the basketball team only because he missed the first week of football practice.

“I really wanted to play football,” he said, “but I missed hell week and I would have been set behind. I just chose basketball because I wanted to play some sport.”

Although Holmes was only an average player as a sophomore, his athletic ability was obvious to Cleveland Coach Greg Herrick, who advised him to forget about football.

In his junior year, Holmes averaged about 20 points and 17 rebounds a game as he and guard Keith Morrison, now at Washington State, led Cleveland to the City 3-A championship.

The Cavaliers, again led by Holmes and Morrison, repeated as 3-A champions the following season. Holmes, who had grown to his present dimensions of 6-8 and 220 pounds, averaged 19.2 points and 14.3 rebounds as a senior. He did almost as well in the track season, posting quality marks in the high jump (6-11), long jump (23-0) and triple jump (48-0)--and finishing second in the high and triple jumps and third in the long jump at the City championships.

“He’s a very, very fine-tuned athlete,” Herrick said. “Let’s face it, we like to take credit for developing fine athletes, but sometimes it’s just natural.

“The basketball skills came from his developing in the gym and working out. The physical skills are his. He owes them to his family. He was born with them--jumping, running, timing . . . things that you don’t teach.”

Despite his obvious athletic ability, Holmes was not recruited by USC or UCLA. Pepperdine showed a lot of interest, but Holmes said his mother didn’t want him to go there. In addition to DePaul, he made official visits to Washington, New Mexico State and San Francisco.

Although he had no idea where the school was located and had only an inkling of the severity of winters in the Midwest when DePaul first started recruiting him, Holmes knew that the Blue Demons played big-time basketball and got a lot of television exposure. (He has played on network television 22 times in his three seasons.)

In the spring of 1982, he chose DePaul over Washington.

He figured to play very little behind All-American Terry Cummings as a freshman, but Cummings turned professional after his junior year and Holmes found himself starting in his 11th game with the Blue Demons.

He started the rest of the season for a DePaul team that reached the final game of the National Invitation Tournament, averaging 15 minutes, 4.1 points and 4.1 rebounds a game. After the season, Meyer said of his muscular freshman: “We think he will be one of the better power forwards in the country before he graduates.”

Last season, despite the presence of Comegys, Holmes continued to show promise, averaging 5.4 rebounds and finishing third on the team in scoring (10.1 points a game) and minutes played (26.1 a game). In a nationally televised game at Pauley Pavilion, he scored 17 points in an 84-68 rout of UCLA.

DePaul won its first 17 games, lost only three of 30 overall, beat NCAA champion Georgetown, finished fourth in the national rankings and lost in the regional semifinals of the NCAA tournament.

With eight of their top nine scorers back, the Blue Demons figured to be even better this season. Only Georgetown, the defending champion, and Illinois were ranked ahead of them in preseason polls.

But the Blue Demons have faltered. They won their first six games, including an 80-61 blowout of UCLA, but then got bombed by Georgetown, 77-57, and upset by Western Michigan, 65-64. Holmes missed all six of his shots and had only two points and two rebounds against Georgetown. Against Western Michigan, he didn’t score at all and had only two rebounds.

Going into a game against Northwestern on Dec. 22, all of his key statistics were down from his sophomore season--from 26.1 minutes a game to 18.6, from 10.1 points and 5.4 rebounds to 7.1 and 3.6, from 52% shooting to 46%.

Meyer didn’t start him against Northwestern, and Holmes scored only four points and didn’t have any rebounds in 13 minutes.

“I was just trying to shake him up a little bit,” Meyer said. “I thought maybe he’d relax coming off the bench instead of worrying about Comegys coming in for him. And he snapped out of his slump for a while.”

After a call home to his mother--”We had a little prayer. . . . It lifted me up”--Holmes responded to a return to the starting lineup in the Blue Demons’ next game by making 11 of 15 shots, taking down 9 rebounds and scoring a career-high 23 points against Creighton.

After that, though, he slumped again. “He went back to pressing a little bit,” Meyer said. In his next nine games, Holmes scored in double figures and had six rebounds or more--an average game for him last season--only twice. Meyer began playing him less and less.

Finally, Comegys replaced him in the starting lineup.

After Holmes played only 15 minutes in a 90-65 victory over Pepperdine two weeks ago, Pepperdine Coach Jim Harrick told a reporter: “It’s disappointing to me to see a guy who could have come here and played a lot for us and see him sitting on the bench somewhere else. . . .

“He’s just a support player for them. In another program, he could be a top-notch player. . . .

“Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think he’s an All-American. But a guy like Kevin Holmes would make us a big-time team because he can jump and he can rebound. And if you can rebound, you can play with anybody. . . .

“They’ve just got some superior talent playing in front of him.”

Therein lies the rub.

“Coach has told me we have too much talent,” Holmes said. “He told me, ‘Usually the only way you get out of a slump is to play your way out of it. But that’s kind of hard now because we have too much talent. It wouldn’t be fair to the other guys--it would really screw things up--if I was trying to get my game back together while the other guys were expecting playing time.’

“Which I understand. I don’t fault him or anyone else for thinking that way. But that’s the whole difference for me from being here and being at Cleveland.

“At Cleveland, I didn’t worry too much about mistakes because I knew I was really needed. I knew they’d come back to me. That’s why I’m a little shaky right now. If I make a mistake, I know I’ll be back on the bench.”

Meyer said he never told Holmes that DePaul had too much talent.

“But,” Meyer said, “obviously I can’t say, ‘Here, play 40 minutes.’ I’ve got other players. . . .

“I told him when he does play to just relax and play--make aggressive mistakes. If you’re going to make aggressive mistakes, I can live with them, as long as you’re really aggressive and positive. So that’s how I’ve been trying to get him to play. And yet I think he’s still playing tentative. . . .

“We’re just hoping he snaps out of it because if he does, I think our team will, too.”

Sports information director Ray Stallone says DePaul is “a Final Four team if Kevin produces.”

Despite his problems, Holmes is looking forward to next season and next year’s National Basketball Assn. draft.

Friends have suggested he transfer, but he said he’s happy at DePaul and plans to stay put.

“When you make a decision and things aren’t going well,” he said, “you always wonder how it is on the other side of the mountain. Sometimes I find myself wondering what it would have been like if I would have gone to Pepperdine or someplace like that, but I’m pretty happy with my choice. If I wasn’t happy here, I would have left a long time ago.”

There are signs that he is snapping out of his slump. He’s still averaging less than 19 minutes, 7 points and 5 rebounds a game, but when Comegys got into foul trouble Wednesday night in DePaul’s 77-65 victory over Indiana State, Holmes came in to score 14 points and pull down a career-high 13 rebounds in 29 minutes.

“Obviously, if he plays like that, he’s going to get more playing time,” Meyer said afterward. “I’m not interested in who starts. I’m interested in who produces.”

Herrick, who remains close to Holmes and his mother, said he has talked to NBA people and says they’ve told him Holmes has a “NBA body” and the athletic ability to play in the pros.

Holmes would prefer to put those kinds of thoughts out of his mind. He doesn’t plan to do anything special this summer to prepare for his final season at DePaul.

“I don’t want to put any added pressure on myself,” he said. “I just want to be in a better mental state.”

And put the hurt on someone else.