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DULUTH - Brian Sykora was 13 and about to enter the eighth grade. He was hanging out at a friend's house when his uncle Tom pulled up in the front.
"He was driving my mom's car, which didn't make much sense," Brian said. "My uncle told me that I had to go home. I started to argue a little and he said, 'No. You have to go home right now.'
"The way he sounded when he said that, I knew something very bad had happened."
Bad as it could get for this family of five. His father, Jim, 42, a Northwest Airlines employee, was driving to work and suffered a fatal stroke.
"He was a great guy, a strong guy," Brian said. "He got my brother and me started in athletics. He had a love for sports and passed that along."
Older brother David was an outstanding football player at Bloomington Jefferson. He was in the Gophers' 1998 recruiting class as a defensive lineman. He redshirted that fall, lettered in 1999, and then left the program.
Brian's best sport at Jefferson was basketball. He played as a freshman in the winter of 1998-99, then was a three-year starter and star for the Jaguars.
This was a time when the Lake Conference featured Spencer Tollackson at Chaska, Kyle Marxhausen at Rosemount and Jordan Nuness at Eden Prairie. And when Sykora was a senior, Jefferson lost to Kris Humphries, Dan Coleman and the rest of the West Metro All-Stars at Hopkins in the state title game.
Humphries carried himself with an edge that screamed arrogance, and there are some people who will tell you that Sykora screamed even louder in that area.
Asked if these charges of "cockiness" were accurate, Sykora said: "To me, I would call it being on the borderline between confident and cocky, but I'm sure a lot of people saw it differently. There's no doubt I played with a chip on my shoulder. I had an anger that fueled fire."
A half-dozen years later, Sykora is willing to offer the self-analysis that it was probably the hurt from his father's death that caused the anger.
When challenged by a coach, referee or opponent, when taunted by an opposing fan, Sykora's reaction often was: "You didn't like that? OK, wait until you see this."
Sykora was a solid 6-6 -- strong, mobile, excellent hands. A number of midmajors and all of the area Division II schools wanted him as a basketball player.
It would take more than five years, from his Jefferson graduation in the spring of 2002 to the fall of 2007 at Minnesota-Duluth, for Sykora to land with one of those programs.
He's a 24-year-old junior at UMD, which would hardly raise an eyebrow in college hockey but is very unusual on the basketball court.
Sykora scored 27 points and had 10 rebounds a week ago when the Bulldogs beat North Dakota 88-80. This earned him Player of the Week honors in the North Central Conference.
And when those couple of lines of small type appeared in the Star Tribune's scorecard this week, there were no doubt members of the Twin Cities basketball ground saying to themselves, "I wondered what happened to that kid."
Here's what happened:
Brian was not the dominant football player his brother had been at Jefferson. Still, he had the size, speed and hands to intrigue Glen Mason's staff. They offered a scholarship, and he signed in the fall of 2001, before his senior basketball season.
"Not only was it a D-I scholarship, it was the Big Ten," Brian said. "It was the Gophers. My brother had played for them. I was so impressed by all those things that I didn't stop to say, 'Yeah, but football's not your first love. Basketball is the sport you love.'
"I had friends saying, 'I thought basketball was your game,' but I didn't listen."
Sykora went to the U of M and carried out his football duties. He was redshirted in the fall of 2002. He went through a winter conditioning program, spring football, summer conditioning.
But now he was listening to a voice: the one in the back of his head that kept saying, 'You don't want to do this. You want to play basketball.'"
Sykora called Mason right before the start of the fall practice in 2003 and said, "Coach, thanks for the opportunity, but I can't do this.' "
There was a lot of relief in making that decision for Brian, but it was followed with a bad one: deciding to stay enrolled at the university and attend classes for fall semester.
"Every time I ran into a football player or someone else who knew me, they would say, 'Why aren't you playing? What's the matter with you?'" Sykora said. "That starts to get to you, having to justify yourself all the time."
There were many stories about Sykora -- such as too much partying?
"There was some of that, but basically I had to mature," he said. "I had to do some growing up."
Sykora moved back home. He lived there for 2 1/2 years. He took a job working in the Bloomington school system's before- and after-school daycare programs.
"I found out that I love to work with kids," he said. "I don't know if it has anything to do with losing my father like I did, but being an adult figure with some of these kids -- seeing that I could help them through some problems -- meant a lot to me."
Brian's mother, Martha, gave her son some gentle encouragement that he might want to return to college. In the fall of 2006, he enrolled at Scottsdale Community College in Arizona. The 4 1/2-year layoff from competitive basketball didn't hurt.
"I won some all-region honors -- had a real good season -- and started hearing from recruiters again," Sykora said.
John Vandreuil, two years behind Sykora at Jefferson, was supposed to be entering his senior season at Minnesota-Duluth.
He gave UMD coach Gary Holquist good reviews on Sykora as a player and a competitor, and also told Sykora good things about the coach and the school.
Then, Vaudreuil, the 6-8 center with a chance to be a D-II All-America in Holquist's view, blew out a knee in a summer game. He has missed the whole season.
The Bulldogs lost a buzzer-beater against mighty Winona State on Dec. 5, then went into a decline that reached 12 losses in 13 games before last week's victory over North Dakota.
Today, UMD hosts South Dakota at 3 p.m. Amid the losses, Holquist has found relief in a number of things, including watching Sykora go from a Minnesota mystery to a productive, personable Bulldog.
"Brian's a great guy, and the best thing is, he's going to get his picture on that wall when he leaves," Holquist said.
He pointed at an office wall filled with 8x11s of players he has coached over the past decade and then added: "The only way to get on that wall is to get your degree."
After those 2 1/2 years in limbo, Sykora is headed for one of those. "Early childhood studies," he said. "I want to be a first- or second-grade teacher."
Nuness, the Eden Prairie guard, is a senior at UMD. He leads the NCC in scoring at 18.5 points per game.
He started at Minnesota as a recruited walk-on. He redshirted as a freshman in 2003-04, then sat on the bench as a year of eligibility went past the next season.
Was his Gophers' time a waste?
"I wouldn't say it was a waste," Nuness said. "I had a chance to practice against some very good players, such as Vince Grier. That improves your game.
"I traveled with the team my second year, had a chance to be in all the arenas, experience the atmosphere of D-I basketball, but I couldn't stay any longer. Playing the game means too much to me.
"Duluth was the right place for me, because the credits transferred since this is the same university system, and there's good, competitive basketball in the North Central Conference."
Nuness will have his 8x11 photo on Holquist's wall by late spring. "I'll be getting my degree -- business -- in May," he said.
Patrick Reusse can be heard weekdays on AM-1500 KSTP at 6:45 and 7:45 a.m. and 4:40 p.m. • preusse@startribune.com
