KEVIN KLAUS/Arizona Daily Wildcat UA freshman forward Dennis Latimore has lived up to lofty expectations both in and out of the classroom this season. Latimore achieved sophomore standing and posted a 3.46 GPA while helping the Wildcat basketball team to a 13-4 record.

Dennis Latimore is a hard person to miss.

When the 6-foot-8 freshman is on the floor of McKale Center as a backup forward for the Wildcats, he casts a pretty big shadow. He's so tall that the coaching staff assigned him the task of guarding USC's All-Pacific 10 Conference forward Sam Clancy for much of last Thursday's game.

Latimore is equally as noticeable in the classroom, where he's actually actually a sophomore. It's not just because he's bigger than most of his fellow students - which he is - it's just that he's going to be there a lot. Like always.

Not that it should be a surprise. The main reason he came to UA is because of how easy it is to get to class.

To hear Latimore tell it, doing well in class is the norm.

"I've always gotten good grades since grade school. My mom's a teacher, so she always made sure that I was studying. And I have a good memory, so that's helped a lot," said Latimore with a smile that suggests his mom did a little more than check his homework before going out to play basketball.

In high school, where Latimore bounced between Halstead High in Kansas and Mountain View in Mesa, he graduated in the top 10 percent of his class with a 3.7 GPA and 14 transferable advanced placement college credits. He narrowed his choice based on which school would accept these transfer units and came up with a short list - Kansas, UCLA or Arizona.

KEVIN KLAUS/Arizona Daily Wildcat Latimore elevates over a Maryland defender for a rebound in UA's season-opening upset of Maryland in Madison Square Garden.

"I think Kansas was a really good school and UCLA is obviously a nationally known school," Latimore said. "UA was probably the bottom of those three (academically), but when I came on my visit I saw how the campus was really close together. In Kansas, sometimes it's snowing, and it's hard to get the motivation to walk through the snow to get to class. And UCLA was pretty spread out. It's more of big-city environment. Tucson was small, and getting around campus is great. It's a ten-minute walk no matter where I go."

So, the decision was made to head to Tucson, despite Latimore's relatively poor opinion of UA academics. Before his freshman year even technically started, he and a friend took a couple of summer classes, bringing the number of his college units to 20 before fall semester.

He entered the fall four units short of being a sophomore, and wound up posting a 3.46 GPA.

Latimore's academic achievements aren't necessarily incredible. Lots of kids get 3.7 GPAs in high school, and lots of kids get 3.46 GPAs their freshman year in college. Furthermore, lots of kids talk like Dennis Latimore - intelligently, thoughtfully, with purpose.

What makes Latimore special is the fact that while he was earning that 3.7 in high school, he was the Kansas 3A Player of the Year his junior and senior seasons. Latimore was the 27th ranked high school player in the nation, the fifth-best power forward.

While earning that 3.4 in his first full semester in school, he played a major role on a UA men's basketball team that practiced almost every day, and spent a week of November beating No. 3 Maryland and No. 5 Florida in New York.

"I've probably seen a student-athlete like him once or twice in my time here. And taking the load that he did, he has done a superb job with his studies," UA associate men's basketball coach Jim Rosborough said. "I don't think we've had too many kids with the overall resumé he has."

With the season in full swing, Latimore will miss plenty of classes. But instead of taking it easy, he decided to be a little more pragmatic.

"I've met a lot of people in my classes, and hopefully, I can get notes from them while I'm gone and keep tabs. You can get a lot of the information off the Internet," he says.

Want to get Dennis Latimore mad? It's somewhat difficult to do. He's an even-tempered guy. He's a little shy. He looks down at his feet or his hands a lot when he talks to the media. You get the impression he doesn't feel very comfortable talking about himself.

But if you want to get him angry, try telling him that all of UA's basketball players are just at the school to go to the NBA.

"What makes me mad is when people assume that all athletes are just here for the sports and they're not taking their classes seriously. I hear a lot of stuff about that around campus. There's a lot of people who think athletes at McKale just don't care about class, and that upsets me. Not that it's totally unjustified, but you can't stereotype everyone. You hear more about the athletes leaving early or not graduating, but you don't hear about a lot of the other guys - besides Eugene Edgerson, and I think what he did was great - who get their degree. They might not be as gifted athletically, but academically, they're taking care of business," Latimore says.

Latimore places some of the blame for the public's conception of student-athletes on the media. He probably has a point.

"I think there's a lot of athletes who care about (academics), but the ones that everybody profiles are the ones that are leaving early and not graduating," Latimore says. "You didn't hear as much about the (former Duke standout and current Atlanta Hawk) Shane Battiers and (Wake Forest grad and San Antonio Spur) Tim Duncans. Or even if you do hear about guys that stayed four years, some of them didn't even graduate. I think it's important to go through college and make life decisions. It's a good opportunity to stay four years and get your degree, because there's few student-athletes, and even fewer minority student-athletes, who get their degrees."

Latimore's philosophy on the subject displays a personality trait that Rosborough said impresses him most about the young man.

"My favorite thing about Dennis is that he's very mature. One time, when the team was sitting up at the Spokane airport, and most of the guys were reading sports magazines or talking to each other, and he was reading a book," Rosborough said. "He seems to be on an even keel. He knows his academic needs. Someone's obviously done a really good job of impressing on him the importance of academics."

You ask most teen-agers who want to play professional basketball for a living, and they'll tell you their role models are Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Allen Iverson or Kevin Garnett. Latimore's role models, in order, go: Mom, Grandmother, Martin Luther King Jr.

You ask most collegiate basketball players if they should be paid, and they'll probably say yes. Latimore doesn't think it's such a hot idea.

"I don't think that's a good idea at all. I'm reading 'The Last Amateurs' (by John Feinstein), which is a book on a season in the Patriot League, and it talks about how half those teams didn't even have basketball scholarships. The players had to pay for the whole thing. I don't think money's a good thing," Latimore says. "I think guys should be motivated and appreciate the fact that they're getting their education paid for. The scholarship money is enough. If you manage your money wisely, you can get all the food that you want."

You ask most players what they think about players leaving early, and the answer is usually something along the lines of, "wish I could do it myself." Ask Latimore what he would do in that situation, and his answer comes across as a little more conflicted.

"I don't know - it's hard to answer that. I would have to be in the situation, but I definitely want to get my degree one way or the other," Latimore says. "If someone's coming at you, and you were a sophomore in college, and they were offering you a $400,000 a year, or even a $1 million-a-year job, to work at a computer company, or whatever it is that you're studying in school to do, I'm sure a lot of students would leave."

Ask Dennis Latimore what he wants people to say about him, and not a mention of basketball is made. Heck, there's not even a mention of his academics.

"I would want people to say, 'Dennis Latimore, a good person,'" Latimore says. "Whether I graduate or go to the NBA, I think that a person's integrity and how they go about their life are the most important things."

Now that's a statement only a mother could love.