Kansas City Kansas Community College

With the Kansas City Kansas Community College career three-point record long tucked away, Derick Denny is in hot pursuit of even greater goals.

With 19 wins under their belt and a minimum of five games to go, the Blue Devils are in reach of becoming the winningest team in KCKCC history. No Blue Devil team has ever won more than the 22 won in Dan Pratt’s first two seasons as head coach in 1987 and 1988.

“Boy, that’s one I’d really like to get,” says Denny, who in his two-year career has notched 213 three-pointers, which is 23 more than the previous record of 190.

And there’s yet another goal he’s well on his way to reaching. A Native American, Derick Denny is a member of the Oneida Nation in Wisconsin where he grew up, a heritage of which he’s most proud.

“Growing up you hear about Larry Bird and Michael Jordan but never about any Native American playing basketball. I’d like to be successful and show that full-blooded Native Americans can play basketball.”

He’s already become a well-known figure in the Jayhawk Conference. The co-leader in three-point goals as a freshman, Denny has been the target of every conceivable defense possible, making his runaway lead in three-point goals even more impressive.

“It tires you out, especially late in the season when your body is beaten and worn out,” admits Denny, who spends almost every offensive second running in an attempt to escape an opposing team’s quickest defender. “You’re going to be tired so you get used to it because you have to be ready to score. Not only that, you want to be consistent and not miss a shot. Highland really knew how to guard me. I take my hat off to them, they really shut me down.”

Just 3 of 14 in two games against Highland, Denny is nevertheless shooting at a 46.1 per cent clip from three-point which is considered exceptional from distance at any level. He’s also the most accurate free throw shooter in the conference at 84.4 percent and his 9 of 10 from the foul line including four in the final 30 seconds were huge in KCKCC’s 69-62 upset of league-leading Coffeyville.

Denny’s ability to shoot the ball was made possible by his older sister, Maria Denny. “When I was little, I’d throw it up one way and she’d say, no, do it this way,” he says. “Now if you see her shoot, we shoot the same way. She was my competition growing up even though she was a girl. She played two years at Haskell. I think she could have gone anywhere but she had no one driving her like she drove me. She really pushed me. We had a goal right next to the house and she’d light me up. The last time we played was a couple of years ago and she still beat me.”

It was also Maria who played a major role in Denny landing at KCKCC. As a junior at Seymour High School in Green Bay, Denny started the first two games only to tear his ACL and miss the rest of the season. “The team got to the state and if I had been playing, the coach said we would have won,” he says. Healthy enough to play AAU ball during the summer, he tore it again in the last game before his senior season. Despite playing hurt, he got in the last 14 games of the season and earned first team all-conference honors.

The injuries, however, kept him off all the recruiting lists and too often out of school. “Not being able to play, I was depressed and didn’t do much. My grades were not what they should be, I had a cousin die who was real close and my son was born. So I figured the junior college route was the best way.”

He took visits to West Plains (Mo.) and Kennedy-King in Chicago and was scheduled to visit Cowley County but got sick. “My sister had moved to Haskell and she said KCKCC was right down the road on I-70 and I knew the Jayhawk was one of the best conferences so I called Coach (Jon) Oler and he invited me down to work out. He offered me a scholarship right after the workouts. Everything just fell in place. It was a big decision; I really like the environment and the community.”

Although divorced, Denny credits his parents with his success. “My dad listens to all our games on the internet. He was a strict Army parent who kept me out of trouble. H was always the hardest on me of any of my brothers and sisters.. He was a baseball player and wanted me to play baseball. I didn’t start playing basketball seriously until I was in eighth grade.

“My mom was more on the emotional side. When I thought about going to the Oneida tribal school, she said no, that I had made a promise to the coach at Seymour. They both kept me going, I needed both.”

While Denny leads the Blue Devils in scoring with a 17.7-point average that is third best in the Jayhawk, he’s made an even bigger contribution to the Blue Devil success by convincing another Green Bay product, Dennis Tinnon, to come to KCKCC where he’s averaging a double with 13 points and 10.6 rebounds per game. “He’s the first from his family to go to college and I really want him to be successful,” says Denny. “I think he’s starting to realize how good he can be but it doesn’t matter if you don’t work hard.”

Denny took care of his basketball future before the season even started, signing with Jacksonville State in Jacksonville, Ala. “That helped me a lot, I can just go and have fun without putting pressure on myself to play well in hopes of being recruited. They call me about every day about how I’m doing, which motivates me more to play the best I can.”