Dexter’s back: Dennis withdraws from NBA Draft, returns to WSU for junior season
Dexter Dennis announced Tuesday that he has withdrawn his name from consideration for the 2020 NBA Draft and he will return for his junior season at Wichita State.
The 6-foot-5 wing prospect from Baker, Louisiana entered the draft process on April 2 and was able to receive feedback from NBA executives about his game the last three months while maintaining his college eligibility.
Dennis pieced together two straight good seasons at WSU, but not the breakthrough campaign to attract strong enough interest from the NBA to prompt him to leave early. He averaged 9.2 points and 5 rebounds per game as a sophomore and elevated his production during conference play, averaging 11 points and 5.6 rebounds while making 39% of his three-pointers.
He also took a brief leave of absence from the team, which lasted three games, during the middle of the season due to personal reasons. In a post announcing his decision on Instagram, Dennis made that a point of emphasis.
“Lots of questions and assumptions about what happened last year,” Dennis wrote. “If you think you know, you don’t. The best thing to do is to move forward and that’s what I’m doing today. To everyone who reached out to me in my leave of absence, your love didn’t go unnoticed. Also, to those who labeled me as a quitter thank you, sincerely. I needed that fire to fuel me.”
While the NBA will keep a watchful eye on him this coming season, Dennis returns to a situation at WSU that is seemingly set up for him to produce that breakthrough season. The Shockers lost their leading scorer (Jaime Echenique) to graduation and three more (Erik Stevenson, Jamarius Burton, Grant Sherfield) of their top six scorers to transfers this offseason.
Not only will Dennis be relied upon to be a top scorer for WSU this coming season, but with more than 1,600 minutes under his belt the last two seasons, he is also the most experienced player returning coach Gregg Marshall.
Despite losing about half of the team’s production from last season, WSU is confident — with Dennis back in the fold — that it can be just as competitive, if not more so, than last season’s team that finished 23-8 and was on the brink of an NCAA Tournament bid.
Dennis, sophomore Tyson Etienne (9.4 points, 39% three-point shooter) and senior forward Trey Wade (7.4 points, 5.4 rebounds) are the nucleus back from last season’s team. Morris Udeze and Isaiah Poor Bear-Chandler have the opportunity for breakout campaigns in their junior seasons with the void at center.
Marshall signed an instant-impact point guard in Connecticut graduate transfer Alterique Gilbert and a wealth of junior-college and high school prospects who have upgraded WSU’s overall athleticism. Josaphat Bilau is a 6-foot-10 redshirt freshman who has drawn rave reviews, as well.
But in order to chase the program’s first NCAA Tournament bid since 2018, the Shockers needed Dennis.
When he entered the draft process in April, Dennis was non-committal about whether he would return for his junior season. But as time went on, the chances of him coming back to Wichita seemed to grow.
The first batch of good news came when Udeze, who was Dennis’ roommate last year, decided to return to WSU in late April after entering the NCAA’s transfer portal.
Dennis was part of the team’s Zoom calls throughout the summer and took part in a video made by the team on June 4 against racism. When the Shockers reported to Wichita last weekend in preparation for the first practices of the summer, Dennis was there with his team.
Dennis remaining a Shocker was all but confirmed when, on July 22, the university announced it had formed a Diversity and Inclusion Council made up of administration, coaches and players for the upcoming school year. Dennis was one of only two student-athletes from the university listed.
This story was originally published July 28, 2020 at 3:54 PM.
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