WACO, Texas -- Police are now investigating the disappearance of Baylor basketball player Patrick Dennehy as a homicide, Waco police chief Albert Melis said on Monday.

Melis said that while Dennehy is still classified as missing, the department recently got a call from someone saying there was a murder, and the victim was associated with a local university.

The Santa Clara native was officially reported missing by his family on June 19. After the phone call, officers immediately thought of Dennehy.

Dennehy transferred to Baylor University in hopes of making what he called a fresh start after getting kicked off his previous basketball team because of his temper.

The 6-foot-10, 230-pound center accepted a scholarship to play basketball at the Baptist school and told friends he had become a born-again Christian. He was a B student and rarely missed a class.

All of which makes his disappearance even more baffling.

Dennehy, 21, vanished nearly three weeks ago, and his sport utility vehicle, its license plates missing, was found last week in a mall parking lot in Virginia Beach, Va.

Waco police spokesman Steven Anderson said authorities suspect Dennehy might have been killed in the Waco area, and they believe "potential suspects" include fellow Baylor basketball players.

Anderson would not elaborate on the evidence. And Virginia police said they found no evidence of foul play in his Chevrolet Tahoe.

Coach Dave Bliss, a former University of New Mexico coach now at Baylor, had given Dennehy a second chance after he was kicked off the New Mexico basketball team. Dennehy was thrilled at the opportunity.

"It's a fresh start," he said when accepting a scholarship in May 2002. "I feel great. It's a new coach, a new team, a new set of personalities."

Over the weekend, Bliss called Dennehy "a gem" and said: "The team, the university and all the members of the Baylor family and myself are in tremendous disbelief. ... No part really seems real."

Dennehy's friends and family said it was uncharacteristic of Dennehy to disappear for days on end without calling someone, and they said they doubt he was mixed up in gambling, gangs or drugs.

"I just remember Pat as being always to himself. He wasn't like a person who would cause trouble for no reason," said Senque Carey, who played basketball with Dennehy at New Mexico.

Before he disappeared, Dennehy was attending summer school at Baylor, the world's largest Baptist university with more than 14,000 students.

At Baylor, he was not eligible to play basketball for a year, but he practiced with the team and sat on the bench during games.

The junior from Santa Clara, Calif., majored in speech communication and dreamed of playing in the NBA, then working in public relations for his favorite team, the Sacramento Kings, said John Cunningham, a speech communications professor at Baylor.

His roommate, Chris Turk, said he last saw Dennehy before leaving for a music festival in Tennessee on June 11. When Turk returned five days later, the apartment looked normal but Dennehy's dogs had not been fed.

Dennehy's girlfriend in Albuquerque, N.M., 20-year-old Jessica De La Rosa, said he seemed fine during their last phone conversation the night of June 11. He told her he would call the next day, but never did, she said.

When Dennehy did not call home on Father's Day, June 15, his mother, Valorie Brabazon, and his stepfather, Brian Brabazon, got worried. When De La Rosa called Dennehy's parents looking for him, and they started calling his friends.

What the stepfather found out -- he will not give details -- upset him so much that he decided to call the university.

Brabazon also said that someone had recently broken into Dennehy's SUV and stolen money from him, and that Dennehy had told Baylor coaches he was scared.

The Waco Tribune-Herald, citing a source familiar with the case, reported that police are investigating reports that Dennehy had an argument with one and possibly two teammates recently, and that one of the players may have threatened him.

Some of the players who were questioned are no longer talking to reporters upon the advice of police and school officials.

Cunningham, the professor, said Dennehy rarely talked to six teammates who were in the same speech class with him. Dennehy preferred to sit in the front row, saying it helped him concentrate, while the other players sat in the back, he said.

Dennehy played two seasons at the University of New Mexico, where he averaged 10.6 points and 7.5 rebounds his sophomore year and was named honorable mention All-Mountain West Conference in 2001-02.

He was cut from the team after losing his temper during practice, less than two weeks after he argued with a teammate during a game, kicked a chair and stormed out.

Team doctors said a medical condition may have contributed to the outburst, but would not say what it was.