Walk into the Sandbar on most Thursday nights and Dave will probably be behind the bar. He makes dirty banana shots like a pro, and shark attacks were a discovery in New Orleans. He stands at 6-foot-10 behind the bar, and when he gets on top of it to dance along with the Sandbar song, he’s close to hitting his head on the ceiling.

David Johanning isn’t the normal bartender though. He’s partial owner of the Sandbar, an island-themed bar for the 21-and-up crowd. But more importantly to KU fans, he was once captain of a basketball team that played under Roy Williams. He was No. 54 on the team that almost beat Duke for the 1991 national championship and even blocked a shot by Duke legend Christian Laettner during the game. These days were recollected this summer when Dave got a package in the mail from Colorado with a piece of floorboard and a Sharpie asking for his autograph from an avid KU basketball fan. Most of the time, though, it’s all about the Sandbar.

Kansas basketball

Dave was always the big kid at school.

“My whole family is big,” he says. “I’m just bigger than them.”

After graduating from Bishop Carroll High School in Wichita, Dave redshirted at Clemson and then went to Hutchinson Community College with a brief foray to Southern Methodist University. While in Hutchinson, third-year coach Roy Williams recruited him to Kansas over his other options of Wisconsin and Creighton. He wanted to stay close to home, and Kansas fit the bill.

During his first season, the Jayhawks almost hung another championship banner in the rafters of Allen Fieldhouse. Dave played in 30 games that year, a year the Jayhawks started unranked nationally in the Associated Press poll. Returning only one starter, the team wasn’t ranked until Jan. 29 and ended the season ranked 12th, but the Jayhawks still went 15-0 in Allen Fieldhouse.

“Allen Fieldhouse, it’s unbelievable. There’s no place like it,” Dave says.

Despite the national lack of faith in the Jayhawks, the team powered through the NCAA tournament all the way to the end. They played through three teams to meet Arkansas in the Elite 8, were down 12 at half and won by 12. Then they played North Carolina and coach Dean Smith was thrown out of the game. Then came Duke and Dave’s favorite KU basketball memory — blocking Christian Laettner’s shot. The Jayhawks lost to Duke by six points, but that didn’t ruin the experience.

“Playing basketball at the University of Kansas — not many things can top that,” he says. “People dream of that.

Senior year, Coach Williams made Dave a captain, a tradition for the team. Greg Ostertag joined the team and officially became the tallest player at 7-foot-2. Dave says Williams kept his team focused on the game at hand rather than thinking ahead, especially in tournaments.

“You never heard him cuss but you knew when he got upset,” Dave says.

The team won the Big 8 tournament that year and went 26-4 in the regular season, but UTEP knocked the team out of the NCAA tournament in the second round, ending Dave’s KU basketball career.

After Allen Fieldhouse

After his stint as a KU basketball player, Dave still had a year left of school to finish his graphic design degree. He was working several places at the same time and eventually started frequenting the Sandbar, 117 E. Eighth St. Then he got a job there — the place where he’d eventually meet his wife, Debbi.

Debbi’s mom always loved watching Dave play basketball. Debbi was in high school, but her mom always talked about him playing, so Debbi knew his name well.

“She thought he was just the cutest boy ever and she said his name a lot,” Debbi says.

Then she went to the University and out to the Sandbar. She heard someone mention Dave, who wasn’t working but was hanging out at the bar. Debbi knew she had to get a picture with him, and that picture still hangs on her mother’s refrigerator.

“She likes to tell people she hand-picked my husband,” Debbi says.

The Sandbar

Three years ago, Sandbar owner Peach Madl approached longtime employee and manager Dave to buy a portion of the bar. Being an owner didn’t stop Dave from enjoying everything the Sandbar is.

“Our theme is you can come in here and be silly and no one’s going to look down on you,” he says. “It’s the reason I still bartend. I love that atmosphere and love meeting new people.”

And he takes his work seriously. Dave, Madl and her brother went to Disneyland and saw that rides were interactive, so the bar needed to be.

On Dave’s Jamaican honeymoon with Debbi, they discovered the Sandbar’s legendary dirty banana shot. There it was made in a blender with real bananas and rum cream, but Debbi says Dave has perfected it on the mainland blender-free with crème de cacao, crème de banana, coffee liqueur and half and half.

On a trip to New Orleans, Dave found inspiration for the Sandbar’s shark attack drink, a blue cocktail complete with a plastic shark filled with grenadine “blood.” Used sharks hang from the ceiling and walls of the bar.

And owners Peach, Dave and Debbi made the bar an experience. A Nashville songwriter wrote the Sandbar song, now played and danced to every night at 10 p.m. during a “hurricane.” The fish tank near the front of the bar used to be home to Sammy the shark, but he eventually started eating other fish and got too big for the tank. A puffer fish lives in the tank with other tropical fish now. Giant tiki heads adorn both the inside and outside of the bar. Sandbar shirts can be seen in pictures around the world, as far-reaching as Germany, Mexico and Sweden.

“You don’t realize how small the world is till you see how a place that holds 50 people can spread,” Dave says.

Dave’s old teammates, such as Greg Gurley, who lives in the Kansas City area, visit the bar now. Gurley says when he comes to town, he finds his way to the Sandbar.

“It’s fun to come back and see the guys,” he says. “It says a lot about the Lawrence community that guys still live there and go back there.”

Dave says he regularly sees teammates like Gurley, Mike Maddox and Terry Brown at basketball games and reunions, something Dave says the Athletics Department does a great job with.

“The younger players get to see the tradition,” he says. “I love Lawrence. The University of Kansas provides so much energy to this town.”

But Debbi says basketball is largely out of his life beyond seeing his old teammates at events and the occasional floorboard autograph.

“For a long time people would recognize him from basketball and now it’s the Sandbar,” Debbi says. “He’s famous in a different kind of way.”