Griffin had just returned to school after suffering a frightening, career-ending fifth concussion last Wednesday night in what would end up an overtime loss at Oakland.
The 6-foot-4 senior — who had developed into one of the better defenders in the college game — had just blocked a 3-point shot by the Grizzlies and then had beaten everyone back down court, where he got a pass from Joe Thomasson and was going up for a layup when he was fouled by Max Hooper.
He took a couple of steps along the baseline, then veered sideways and dropped to the court.
After the game, he skipped the team bus and rode home with trainer Jason Franklin. Soon after leaving suburban Detroit, he was feeling pain and Franklin took him to a Toledo hospital for a CT scan.
Head coach Billy Donlon had the bus redirect to the hospital so he could ride home with Griffin and Franklin
The following day Julie and Clark Griffin, Kendall’s parents, drove to the campus from Avon, Ind., and had a 90-minute lunch with Donlon before taking their boy back home for a few days.
“It was just very sad,” Donlon said. “Obviously people go through more serious things — the loss of life, people off fighting for our country — but you get in your own little bubble and in our bubble this was very tough. His basketball career was over and we all knew it. And you just feel for him because you don’t find a better person than Kendall Griffin.”
On Monday, Griffin’s mom and his older sister, Katie, brought him back to WSU for the Raiders’ game with Green Bay and so he could return to the classroom, where he is a biomedical engineering student with a 3.65 grade-point average. He’ll graduate in the spring and then hopes to head to law school to become a patent attorney
Sitting courtside Monday night were WSU president David Hopkins and his wife Angelia, both big fans of Griffin.
“He epitomizes everything you hope for in a student-athlete,” said Hopkins. “He’s is a great representative of our school.”
Sitting on the end of bench, Griffin looked like he just stepped off the pages of GQ with his striped dress shirt, pale bluish-gray tie with socks that matched and stylish glasses. At halftime he and the other Dean’s List athletes at WSU were honored at center court.
In the postseason, there would have been more honors, said Donlon:
“The way he was playing now, he was going to be an all-conference player this season, He was really getting back to his old self.”
Nine days ago Griffin scored a career-high 20 to lead the Raiders over Detroit. And he was having a superb night at Oakland and WSU was up by 10 when he was injured midway through the second half.
Off the court he has been a leader, as well. He traveled to Africa with Athletes in Action a couple of summers ago and did volunteer work, and in May he heads to Jamaica on a Catholic mission trip to mentor kids through sports.
“He’s just a guy who has done everything right in the way he’s chosen to live his life every day,” Donlon said.
The coach has a special affinity for Griffin, who had been a standout high school football player who drew interest from several Big Ten schools. He was more interested in playing basketball, but Brad Brownell — the Raiders coach when Griffin was a high school junior — hadn’t seen enough to offer him a scholarship.
Then Brownell left for Clemson, Donlon got the job and the first recruiting call he made was to Griffin, to whom he offered a scholarship.
The quiet guard repaid his coach’s belief by remaining unbowed when the Raiders went 13-19 his first season here. Six other players — for a variety of reasons — transferred out after that, but Griffin said he did not believe in leaving if things got tough.
It’s a philosophy he held onto his entire career.
As a sophomore he reinvented himself as a defensive stopper to help the team.
Last season, when he suffered three concussions, he pressed on until the final one ended his year with five games to go. This season he suffered another in the season opener against Belmont and was sidelined the next 14 games.
“Oh, yes, there was a lot of debate then. Obviously we wanted safety first and we worried about long-terms effects,” said Julie, who was a college athlete, as was her husband. (And daughter Katie played volleyball at Purdue, daughter Rachel now plays volleyball at Indiana State and son Andrew is a prep athlete.)
“Concussions are so unstudied, but Wright State has been very good, making sure he took things slowly and was symptom-free before he returned,” Julie said.
“Kendall understood after you have one they are easier to get and the symptoms can last longer. But he is also very competitive and wanted to help his team any way he could. So we chose to give it one more try. But in the back of our minds, with his history, we knew it was gonna end at some point. One more concussion and that was it.”
Although he began to emerge on the court of late, Griffin said he had an eerie feeling before recent games.
“It was kind of strange,” he said quietly. “I’d been having these weird feelings … like something bad was gonna happen. And the night before we played Oakland I actually watched a documentary on research done with former NFL players. It was kind of scary.”
He would end up the second local college player whose basketball career ended because of concussions this season. Last month, Dayton guard Ryan Bass had his end the same way.
Griffin ended up playing 91 games for the Raiders, scoring 454 points and grabbing 196 rebounds.
“He understands how blessed he is for being able to play as long as he has,” Julie said. “God gave him a lot of gifts and he’s tried to use them to the best of his ability.”
Regardless, she said she sensed her son had been a little sad on the ride over from Indiana on Monday. “He was still a little groggy, a little foggy, everything still wasn’t as crisp as usual,” she said.
He wished he could help his struggling team, which was also without two other prominent players Monday night.
The Raiders played timidly at the onset, fell behind quickly and Donlon called two quick timeouts.
“On the second one I sensed the guys were feeling sorry for themselves and I wasn’t going to tolerate that,” Donlon said. “I told them, ‘There’s a guy on our bench who can’t play anymore. He might have an excuse, but none of us has a reason to feel sorry for ourselves.”
The pep talk didn’t quite work. The Raiders turned the ball over 18 times and lost, 71-58.
At the end of the bench, Kendall Griffin did the only thing he could:
“I took some Tylenol.”
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