The spark is gone.

James Payne — the 5-foot-9 guard from Detroit who was a spark plug for the Sacramento State men’s basketball team last season — wasn’t in uniform for the team’s home win against Weber State on Jan. 15.

It was supposed to be Payne’s second game back after returning from academic ineligibility. The Wayne County Community College transfer failed to meet the number of units required in 2004’s spring semester, forcing him to sit out the first half of the season.

Instead, he sat alone in the far corner of the stands, opposite of a team huddle he once helped lead, watching his former teammates play Weber State.

For the second straight semester, Payne had failed to earn enough units to keep his eligibility, thus ending his collegiate playing career.

This wasn’t the first time academics have held Payne back from playing the sport he loves.There was the opportunity of playing basketball at Western Michigan after graduation from Mumford High in 1996, but low SAT and ACT scores scratched that plan.”So I just decided to go to work,” Payne said.

Four years removed from high school, Payne worked at the Chrysler plant in Detroit. He also worked for a transportation company as a driver, taking patients to and from their homes to kidney dialysis.

Payne was living with his aunt, Gloria Cottrell, whom he moved in with at age 6 when his mother, Andria Murphy, was murdered by her boyfriend.

As Payne aged into his 20s, his relationship with his father, Hosea Payne, grew stronger. But he said he always felt more comfortable living with his aunt.

Outwardly, Payne’s foundation may have looked paper-thin, but he never lacked support — especially from his older brother, Robert Murphy, now an assistant men’s basketball coach at Syracuse.

“I was laid off from the plant and I was just playing ball,” Payne said. “My brother told me, ‘If you’re just going to play ball, why don’t you just go back to school?’

“I told him, ‘Nah, I’m not feeling school.'”

So Murphy cut his younger brother off of financial support until he figured out a plan.

“He felt that I wouldn’t get the most out of life without a college education,” Payne said. “That I would be stuck doing the same things; that I needed to make better decisions.”

Motivation wasn’t just coming from his brother, either. Payne’s basketball friends told him that if he was just playing basketball, he might as well do it at school.

Payne, 21 years old at the time, remembers thinking, “Man, no one is going to take some old guy like me.”

But that was before Payne had ever looked at community college as a possibility. He soon learned that it would give him the chance to play for two years and then move up to the Division I level — a level he always felt he belonged in.

Suddenly, he was catapulted back into the world of education by way of basketball.

Payne began playing at Wayne County under the guidance of assistant coach Dwayne Canada.As a sophomore at Wayne County in 2001-02, Payne was named the team’s Most Valuable Player after averaging 17.6 points and 3.5 steals. He helped lead the team to its best record in school history.

The same season, Payne would suffer another setback. His father died from lung cancer. It was his father’s words that would stick in his head to this day.

“He told me, before he passed away, to graduate,” Payne said. “He didn’t care about games; he didn’t care about anything else. He just said to do whatever I could to get in school.”Scholastic opportunity came by way of Sac State.

When Canada was hired as a Hornet assistant coach, he brought head coach Jerome Jenkins to Detroit to scout his Wayne County players — the main attraction being current Hornets center Aaron Perry.

-But when Jenkins arrived at the gym, another player stood out.

“James sat there wearing a tore- up Sac State shirt,” Jenkins recalls from his first encounter with Payne.

Payne knew ahead of time that Jenkins was coming out to visit, so he made sure not only to be there at the same time, but to make it clear how badly he wanted to come to Sacramento.”I can’t fault any kid that wants to come be a Hornet, because not a lot of kids want to,” Jenkins said.

Jenkins gave him his opportunity.

“I was playing so hard just to get out of Detroit,” Payne said. “To get out of the ghetto environment and come to a better place.”

Payne redshirted the following season at Sac State, taking classes in the fall at Wayne County before moving to Sacramento in the spring to take classes at Sacramento City College.

No scholarship would come from Sac State, so he took out a loan to pay the out-of-state tuition and became the first basketball player from Wayne County to ever play for a Division I program.

Payne became an inspiration to the Hornets in his junior season. His role as a backup point guard was larger than his average of 1.5 points in 10 minutes per game.

“Payne was like a coach on the floor,” Jenkins said. “He had respect from his peers and was a great mentor for (current point guard) DaShawn Freeman.”

Payne made grades his first semester at Sac State and became a part of a Hornet team that eclipsed the program record for wins.

But just as it seemed Payne was winning the tug-of-war between academics and basketball, the crippling news came that his low grades would result in a loss of both.

Payne became ineligible to play the first half of this season after failing to pass the number of units required by academic standards set forth by the NCAA.

Hoping to play by early January, Payne again fell short of academic requirements last fall — this time by one geography class — and was forced to forfeit his final season. Payne must raise his grades at Sac City before he can return to classes at Sac State.

“It is unfortunate because this is the hardest he has ever worked to make grades,” Jenkins said.

The feisty 26-year-old isn’t ready to give up on college basketball, though. Payne plans on returning as a coach.

Payne is upset that he can no longer play basketball, but “I am still alive,” he said. “I just can’t do something I love to do. I will be back; I am going to finish school.”

Payne has dreams of earning his degree. After completing courses at Sac City, he will be 21 units away from a communications degree. He then hopes to take another semester to earn a teaching certificate so that he can coach.

Jenkins, who speaks highly of Payne’s ability to coach his teammates, says he looks forward to helping Payne in the future.

For now, Payne plans on moving from the corner of the stands to the seats directly behind the Hornets bench.

“I am just going to try and help them as much as I can,” he said.