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It was a pretty good 48 hours for Arturo Dean.
Two days after leading Putnam Science Academy’s prep basketball team to its third national championship (and a 38-0 record), Dean announced that he was accepting a scholarship offer and committing to Florida International University for the fall.
“Honestly, I’m just very blessed,” Dean said. “My experience in Putnam, winning a national championship with those guys, was incredible. And then to be able to make my commitment…really, it’s just a blessing.”
FIU seemed like the obvious choice from the beginning. After all, Dean is proud to be from Miami, which is where FIU is located. But it was never a foregone conclusion for him.
“I needed to go check it out to see if it would meet my expectations. And it definitely did,” said Dean, who was the heart and soul of the Mustangs. “Everything about the school was amazing. I loved it, my parents loved it. It was just a matter of me going on a visit to make sure. I wasn’t going to go just because it was in Miami. That’s obviously a big piece of it, but if it didn’t feel like it was the right place for me, I wouldn’t have committed there.”
Dean, a 6-foot guard who averaged 13.9 points and team-leading 4.0 assists and 3.1 steals, also took visits to St. Bonaventure and Illinois-Chicago.
“I chose FIU because when I first got there the atmosphere just felt right,” he said. “I love the coaches, we clicked right away. It felt like home. Their basketball style is definitely my style. Very similar to Putnam. They get out and run, they’re fast, and there’s a lot of guard work, which can help me get to the next level. I liked the style and so did my pops. It’ll be a good fit for sure.”
Dean was a tremendous fit at PSA. He was one of the players coach Tom Espinosa referred to when he said “some of these guys just refused to let us lose. They weren’t going to let it happen.” He established a “win-first” rather than “me-first” mentality that seeped down through the entire team. And he did it with flair. Along with being one of the best leaders PSA has ever had, he is also one of the best personalities PSA has ever had. He has confidence and swag that truthfully changed part of the PSA basketball culture this year.
“Some of the stuff I let these guys do this year – the sunglasses, the music and dancing, Club Dub (the nickname given to the locker room where all Ws were celebrated with a velvet rope at the door and loud music, strobe lights, and a fog machine once inside) – I never would let other teams do. Ever,” Espinosa said. “But these guys reminded me that basketball is supposed to be fun. And they certainly made it fun, and Arturo was a big part of that. He was a different guy than anyone we’ve had here before.”
That part of Dean’s personality was instilled into him and his three brothers by his father.
“My dad raised us like, every time you walk in a building, walk in with your chest out and your head up high,” Dean said. “Just believe in yourself. I know, my pops knows, the people behind the scenes know, how much work I put in. I am confident in myself. My dad always told us that when you’re unsure of yourself, that’s when you make more mistakes. And when you’re confident, you’ll be better off. That confidence just came from that, and as I got older, it got stronger.
“The swag? I wanted to give off positive vibes and have fun doing it. There’s not so many opportunities like Putnam. I wanted to enjoy myself. I knew we had to handle business first, and we did that. We took it very seriously. Obviously, we went 38-0 and won a national championship. But at the same time, it’s basketball, it’s supposed to be fun. And Espo let us be us, as long as we did what we needed to do.”
Stephen Nalbandian
Sports Information Director
Putnam Science Academy
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