Comeback After Tragedy Thwarts Basketball Dreams

A SUMMER OF SCANDAL

By the spring of 2003, the men’s Baylor basketball team was poised to go farther the next season than it had in 15 years. Matt Sayman recalls the time well.

“I was a senior guard on a team loaded with experience and talent. In a pre-season poll, the media had picked us to finish fourth in the 2003-2004 “Big 12” standings. Based on the players we had coming back – including future NBA players John Lucas III and Lawrence Roberts – I considered the expectations legitimate.” And then it all changed on a dime.  

June of 2003, when everything in his life seemed to be charmed, Matt got a phone call. A Baylor professor and friend told him to turn on the TV to hear the alarming news about the basketball team. One of his teammates, Patrick Dennehy, was missing and police suspected foul play. Matt was as shocked as anyone. What followed was a highly-stressful month of rumors, daily media coverage, and police interviews.  

Then another teammate, Carlton Dotson, “Dottie,” was arrested and charged with Patrick’s murder. Dotson later confessed and went to prison. Two grieving families’ lives were forever changed, and things went from bad to worse for the team. Over the next several weeks, allegations were made that their coach, whom Matt looked up to, had violated Baylor and NCAA policies by helping pay tuition for Patrick and another player, overlooking drug test results, and lying about both. Matt felt like his life was crashing down around him.  

“Our program was facing significant NCAA sanctions. And my mentor, a man I would run through a brick wall for, was leaving. It wasn’t fair. I had done nothing wrong. I had worked hard and been a good person. And look what it brought me.”  

HOPE RENEWED

Baylor’s president levied his own penalties on the program in response to the violations, which included no post-season play. That meant no NCAA “March Madness” for this talented group, and thereby, the death of a dream. Their top players, the two future NBA-ers, left for other schools, as did others. In total, ten players did not return in the fall.  

Matt also looked into leaving, but quickly found that schools didn’t want seniors, who had a year left to play. He felt stuck. To say he was disappointed and disillusioned with life – and God – was an understatement.  

“Right or wrong, my entire life was wrapped up in basketball.  As long as basketball was good, then my relationship with God was good,” he admits. “Now that basketball was in disarray, my relationship with God was non-existent. It had become the idol of my life. Instead of asking how God could use me in this situation to reflect His glory in dark times, I was asking why God had allowed the dark times to come in the first place.”  

Matt also felt pressure from the new coaches, who asked him to be a role model for the mostly younger guys on the team. He had never been a drinker, but started soothing his anger and disappointment with alcohol that summer and into the new season. “I could have been a shining light but instead wallowed in self-pity in the dark,” he says. “That remains one of my life’s greatest regrets.” 

Matt started the season with a dismal outlook and several bad habits, such as partying, casual female encounters, poor eating, and not giving his best effort. He saw a different approach in others. The new head coach, Scott Drew, and another senior player, Terrance Thomas, both consistently displayed hope and optimism despite all the team had going against it. Even though they wouldn’t be going to the post-season championship, these men gave their all to rebuild the damaged program.  

Matt dismissed them as naïve until another younger player called him out for not being the leader he was purported to be. He knew then he needed either to quit or to start giving the team his best, as he had all his life. He chose the latter.  

As Coach Drew and his staff poured encouragement into their players and directed their focus to God, requiring regular Bible studies and church attendance, the team responded. The focus became not what they couldn’t do, but what they could. The effect was amazing. Though stretched thin, the team pulled together and started winning games no one expected them to win, and very nearly winning many others. Everyone noticed their skill and incredible determination.  

Matt started to realize what Coach Drew clearly knew: “that coaching was about more than wins and losses. Coaching could also be about overcoming crushing odds and helping young people discover what they were capable of achieving. His motivating style prevented players from quitting on themselves.”

Though his senior year was far different than the one he’d hoped for, Matt knew their 8-21 record didn’t begin to tell the story of what had really transpired that year. “That team – players and coaches – was more of a family than any group I had been a part of,” he states. “Coach Drew reminded each of us that we had established the foundation on which future teams could build. Baylor basketball had a bright future, he believed, because of us.”  

That conviction proved true in the spring of 2021, when the Baylor Bears went to “The Big Dance,” and won the NCAA Championship, under Coach Scott Drew.   

SURRENDER AT LAST

Matt went on to play pro-basketball in Iceland, but that career was short-lived. Though his team won the Icelandic Championship, his off-court habits of drinking and partying made it his first and last season.

When Matt returned, he felt lost, evidenced by having nine jobs in three years. He also married, had a son, divorced, received a DWI, and had a string of broken relationships. He had let the profound disappointments at Baylor turn him away from God years before, and never worked to restore that most important relationship.

Knowing it was the missing link in his life, he finally decided to go to church in November 2011. Matt liked the energy of the service and the pastor’s message. On a later visit, he filled out the visitor card with his name and two comments: “I’m angry,” and “I have questions.”  A woman from the church emailed him and offered a meeting with the pastor, which they scheduled for early Jan. On his 30th birthday, Matt sat alone in his apartment with a six-pack, wondering if this is all his life would be. 

A few days later, Matt met the woman from church who’d emailed him, Jana, and then had a long talk with the pastor, venting his frustration and confusion. As they discussed his life disappointments, hurts, lifestyle, and salvation itself, the pastor brought clarity in the light of Scripture.

Matt says, “He was also direct in telling me that my life was out of control because of the decisions I had made at twenty-one. I had been avoiding accountability. My decisions caused my problems, not the circumstances at Baylor." Matt continues, “Finally, after nine years of chaos from living my way, I gave up. I surrendered.”  

He says he lost his desire to party that day, and committed himself to seeking God by reading the Bible, praying, and going regularly to church. He also started communicating with Jana, herself a single mom, and they married in December of that year.  

Ten years later, Matt is the head varsity basketball coach at Grapevine Faith School and has a renewed perspective. “After committing my life to Christ, my coaching became about relationships. My focus is not on developing complete players but complete young men.”