Through adversity, Dunn embraces role as senior leader

By: Glenn Junkert for GoGriz.com

There are three chapters to Mario Dunn's career as a standout point guard for the Montana Grizzly basketball team, including the one that involved pain and struggle.

But the best prelude to Dunn's story is how his teammates and coaches recently described their friend and teammate Mario, in 15 words or less.

"Mario is a great leader. He brings it every day." -- Teammate Aaron Misipeka-Ward.

"Mario is a phenomenal leader... mostly by example." -- Montana Basketball Head Coach Travis DeCuire.

"A competitor. Mario shows up every day and gives you everything he's got." -- Montana Assoc. Head Coach Chris Cobb.

"Mario could care less (about his own statistics) as long as he helps his team get a W." -- Former Montana asst. coach, Jono Metzger-Jones.

"Mario is a guy who always gives his all. He never gives excuses." -- Former Montana head coach Wayne Tinkle.

Mario Dunn's basketball career has been defined -- perhaps as much as anything he has accomplished on the floor -- by a universal respect toward his character and "toughness" as he describes it... from a large fraternity of teammates and coaches.

The son of Mario Dunn Sr. and Carolyn-Lewis Dunn, Mario first earned that respect as a "hard-nosed" competitor on a variety of basketball courts in his hometown of Oakland, California. It continued when -- as a young, flashing meteoric point guard with the Montana Grizzlies -- he gained Big Sky All-Conference recognition as a sophomore.

That toughness also endured tribulation through the pain and disability of a nagging injury that he initially tried to ignore -- but which robbed him of significant on-floor playing time, and eventually compromised his ability to play with the Griz-tough physical intensity he crafted as a freshman and sophomore.

Today it continues to endure through Dunn's senior season as he sets aside the injury's nagging pain to fill a new role as a much-needed first-line reserve in his team's quest for a third-straight Big Sky title game appearance.

"Today" is all that matters said Mario with a slight shrug and smile. "I just try to take advantage of what each game gives me."

That attitude has its roots in what he learned on the hoop courts of Oakland.

CHAPTER ONE.

"Oakland is a great basketball town," said Dunn. "You've got some players that are great that have never really done much, then you've got the really good players who feel they've got something to prove every time you play them.

"They just always have that chip on their shoulder."

Out of that environment, Dunn became the high school floor general of a talented group of marquee players.

"I'm just hard-nosed," said Dunn. "I learned to give everything I've got, every time I play."

As a high school player, Dunn was quickly noticed.

"We recruited him (to Montana) from Salesian High School, and we watched him with the Oakland Soldiers AAU team, which is the AAU team where we recruited (former Griz point guard great) Will Cherry." said former Montana head coach Wayne Tinkle, now the head coach at Oregon State.

"We thought he'd be another point guard with high energy to come in and play for our program.

"He played his heart out and was a real tough-minded player that we knew could be a spark for us," said Tinkle.

"That is what I loved about him as a player in high school," said Jono Metzger-Jones, current UC-Davis assistant, and former Montana assistant under Tinkle and current Montana head coach Travis DeCuire.

"Mario played with future NBA players and McDonald's All-Americans on his high school squad and also on the number one-ranked AAU team in the country (Oakland Soldiers)," Metzger-Jones added.

"It can be very easy to get lost in the shuffle playing with that caliber of teammates. Yet when you really spent the time watching him and what he brought to those teams, you walked away understanding that a big part of the reason they won was because of the things that Mario brought to the table."

As a freshman in Tinkle's final coaching year at Montana, Dunn quickly worked his way into the Griz lineup. He played all 30 games that season, earning a starting role through 15 of the 16 conference games, and quickly earned a reputation as a lock-down defender while scoring an average of 6.3 points per game.

His role continued as a sophomore under current Montana Head Coach Travis DeCuire. Dunn started all 33 games, honing his skills as a durable defender-disrupter, assist-disher, rebounder, scorer, and all-star caliber floor general. That year Dunn was named Big Sky All-Conference Honorable Mention and won the UM John Eaheart Award as Outstanding Defensive Player.

It was a year to remember, in many ways.

"My favorite moment," said Dunn, "was winning the Big Sky championship my sophomore year." (The Grizzlies were co-champs with Eastern Washington)

They did it in dramatic fashion, clinching the title on the road, in Bozeman, with a 70-54 victory over the MSU Bobcats.

"We came back home that night after we won that game," said Dunn. After getting off the bus, the team walked into an empty Dahlberg Arena. "We cut down the nets," Dunn said with a smile. "It was just the team."

That title-clinching road win was the final conference game of the year.

The next week Montana hosted the Big Sky post-season tourney, winning games over Weber State and Northern Arizona before falling in the title game, 69-65 to Eastern Washington. It was a devastating loss that Dunn described as one of his two biggest downers as a Griz, the other being a second championship game loss, last year, to Weber State in the 2016 title game.

Another significant disappointment, never mentioned by Dunn, was a career-affecting hard fall that had happened nearly two months earlier in Montana's first win over the Bobcats, a 63-48 home court affair. It was a fall which would significantly affect his basketball-playing future.

CHAPTER TWO:

"We were playing Montana State the first time (Jan. 17, 2015) in Missoula... I was catching myself on a fall and I just put my hands down to try to brace myself.

"I broke my wrist, though I didn't know it was broken," said Dunn. "I just thought it was a bad sprain, so I continued the rest of the season with it broken."

It was not until well after the end of the 2015 season that word of Dunn's injury became known, due in part because the scope of his injury wasn't fully realized.

"In April we started up spring workouts again, and that's when it really got painful, so I got more MRIs and found that it was broken," said Dunn.

Diagnosis indicated surgery. "My first surgery was in May.

"My second one was in July... and my last surgery was in October," said Dunn.

Dunn revealed the details about his injury and the complications, with reluctance. He offered no excuses.

"I mean," Dunn said quietly. "Injuries happen. Setbacks happen. It just comes down to how you handle them."

"I know Mario is disappointed with his injury and what that's kept him from doing," said Tinkle. "But he just never brings it up."

And that, said coach Cobb, is what makes Mario Dunn an exceptional, and very tough, individual.

"Going from being the guy who started every game of his sophomore season, to having a very tough injury to having another tough injury between his sophomore and junior year, to where he is now... Amazing," said Cobb.

CHAPTER THREE:

Mario Dunn is always eager to move on, to gear up for his next challenge.

The injury, "still affects me," said Dunn. "I sat out a while back for a couple of games with some nagging injuries on it... it still hurts from time to time.

"Coach Trav would like me to sit out a couple more practices than I actually do... especially when it starts to get painful. But, for the most part, it's how I feel. They're really helpful with not pushing me so that it doesn't get worse."

"So now I just play my role on this team. I'm certainly fine with my role," he said. "So you've just got to play hard all the time. Play through the good and the bad. The rest will just fall into place. That's kind of what I do."

As a key Griz reserve, Dunn has responded with his classic "all-out" on-court approach. Often called on as a defensive stopper, Dunn is currently averaging just over 15 minutes per game on the floor while shooting 42 percent from the field (45 percent from beyond the arc) with an average of 3.1 points per game.

Dunn has responded by expanding his role with the team in other critical areas.

"It's huge for us to have a young man like Mario who's had his role change dramatically in two years from when he was a sophomore," said DeCuire. "That is contagious, and it gives him a voice. We wouldn't be where we're at right now without him.

"His intensity is huge, even when he's not playing and on the bench," said DeCuire. "He whispers things to the coaches and myself that he might see, so it's like he's an extension of the staff. He's been a good second voice to us coaches when we've said stuff and wanted stuff communicated to the guys... so it's been incredible having his voice on the bench."

Dunn's response: "Coach DeCuire knows me pretty well, and I know him pretty well. He sees me and understands how I play, so I think what he said is pretty fair."

"I feel like I do a pretty good job of always encouraging my teammates, especially by working hard," said Dunn. "For this team, I try to play to my goals... play hard-nosed, play hard working.

"I'm more interested in making the right play. I just try to take advantage of what each game gives me. I'm not out there trying to raise my stats. If I'm open, I'll shoot. If not, I'll pass it."

"That's just how Mario operates," said Metzger-Jones. "I'll do the dirty work, play tough defense, dive for loose balls, take a charge. You guys can have the limelight as long as in the end, we win the game."

And that is a mirror reflection back to his basketball youth in Oakland.

"You gotta be tough," said Dunn firmly. "It's my mental plan with playing basketball. Especially growing up in Oakland, you got to be tough, man, or they'll step on you."

So, heading into the final stretch of his career as a Montana Grizzly, does he have any goals?

"Nothing for me. All for the team," said Dunn promptly.

"I just want to win a championship. Like I said, we've been there twice but haven't been able to pull one out, so it would be great if we could do that during my senior year."

University of Montana Athletics

Through adversity, Dunn embraces role as senior leader

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