UW Football | California dreamin' ends

Byron Davenport is at Washington hoping to break up passes and break away from his past.

"I'm playing for fun now," said the junior cornerback.

That's a vast change from his two years at UCLA, where he said he was never happy.

He was known as Byron Velega when he played in all 12 games in 2005 as a redshirt freshman, including significant action in the Bruins' 21-17 victory over the Huskies at the Rose Bowl, making 25 tackles for the season.

But while he is from Long Beach (where he played at famed high-school powerhouse Poly), he says he was never enamored with the hometown schools and wanted to attend Califorinia, where he was recruited by the Bears' secondary coach at the time, J.D. Williams.

Instead, he said, his stepfather pressured him to attend UCLA, apparently feeling that was the best path for his stepson to reap football's potential rewards.

"I was forced to go to UCLA," Davenport said. "I made some friends there and some of the coaches were all right, but I was never happy there."

So after UCLA's 2005 Sun Bowl win over Northwestern he walked away, even though he said Bruins coach Karl Dorrell told him he would likely be a starter the following season.

Leaving UCLA, he said, "was just a matter of me getting my mind right." That's also when he decided to dump the name Velega, which he said was his stepfather's, and return to the surname of his biological father, further distancing himself from his unhappy tenure in Westwood.

He spent last year at El Camino Community College attending classes to remain eligible, but didn't play football, though he said the sport was always in his mind.

Within a few days of leaving UCLA, he said Washington State coaches called him and offered him a scholarship, and for a long time he thought he was destined for Pullman.

"I didn't have any other offers at the time and I was like, 'All right, that's where I'm headed,' " he said.

But last winter, with the Huskies suddenly in need of immediate help in the secondary, Williams — now at Washington — called Davenport and offered him a scholarship with the Huskies.

"I didn't even know he had left Cal," Davenport said. "When he called me, that [going to UW] was a wrap."

The Huskies had just three scholarship cornerbacks on the roster in the spring, two of which have never played a down of Division I football, giving added importance to signing someone with a pedigree like Davenport's.

"He will play this year and help us," Williams said.

Senior Roy Lewis is expected to start at one cornerback spot, and Davenport has a shot at the other.

Seeing Davenport healthy, happy and ready to go has only added to Williams' good cheer in recent days; he also got the news over the weekend that former Kennedy High standout Nate Williams has decided he wants to play safety rather than running back.

"I welcome that with open arms," J.D. Williams said, rolling off the names of five other incoming freshmen who help the Huskies answer what was one of their biggest question marks in the spring — a lack of depth in the secondary. Washington had just six scholarship defensive backs in the spring, and at the least, all the new faces give the Huskies more options.

"It's promising," Williams said. "We've got some athletic ability there and we've got more depth than we had last year, but we have a lot of inexperience."

That's where Davenport, with two years at UCLA under his belt, has the edge. He had two pass deflections in UW's first practice Sunday, indicating that he was ready to pick up where he had left off. It was the first time he'd put on a helmet since that 2005 Sun Bowl, he said.

"He's picking things up really fast," Williams said. "He's bigger than he was [listed now at 5 feet 11, 195 pounds] and hopefully a little bit faster."

If playing with a little less weight on his shoulders means anything, that shouldn't be a problem.

"I definitely have a chance to play football with a clear mind now," he said. "I'm free to play, and I haven't felt like that since high school."

Bob Condotta: 206-515-5699 or bcondotta@seattletimes.com. Read his blogs on Washington football and basketball at www.seattletimes.com/huskies.