Even if you're a Sportscenter loyalist and fancy yourself a devoted college basketball fan, there's a good chance you've never actually seen this Jimmer Fredette guy play. Sure, you've seen a few highlight reels of the BYU guard tossing in shots from three rows deep in the stands, but you've never actually seen an entire BYU game, have you?
Outside of a few fragments of that top-ten matchup with San Diego State a few weeks back and some of last year's NCAA tournament, I don't think I've seen that much actual game footage of Jimmer and BYU in action, either. And that's weird, because not only is their point guard dropping a nation-leading 27.9 points per game, but his team was shockingly close to nailing down a number one seed in the tournament.
That was before BYU's starting center, Brandon Davies, was kicked off the team - at least for this season - for reportedly having sex with his girlfriend. The BYU honor code requires not just athletes, but all students, to abstain from smoking, drinking (booze or coffee), engaging in premarital boots-knocking, and I'm guessing other activities like watching moving picture shows and dancing. And the school stuck to its guns, kicking Davies off the team for behavior that's not just common, but pretty much expected of college basketball players in 2011. I'm not saying this trend is in any way healthy, but damn, if every school followed BYU's honor code, I'm 97 percent sure that college basketball as a whole would go the way of the dinosaur. Still, you kinda have to hand it to BYU for holding their morals above basketball wins.
But - and this is weird - Davies' dismissal has brought attention to BYU and Jimmer that they weren't previously receiving. Yeah, the timing wasn't great, considering the Cougars were immediately crushed by New Mexico within days of Davies' suspension, but hey, at least now people know about BYU... like the jackass who sits next to you at work, who probably said something like:
"BYU? Yeah, the team that kicked off one of their best players for boning his girlfriend? And, oh yeah, they have that one white guy, too. Jimmer Fredette, right?"
BYU won't be getting a number-one seed in the tournament; they might not even get a number two seed... I don't know for sure because I'm not one of the long-bearded mystics who choose the seedings each March from atop a mountain, but I think they're probably a three seed. And whatever, most non-Mormons don't care that much about BYU, but basketball fans should care about Jimmer Fredette, and not just because his name sounds like the name of an old-timey hair tonic, or because he's white. (Oh come on, you've been thinking that the entire time you've been reading this).
The guy can downright score (he dropped 47 on the fellow white folks of the University of Utah earlier this season and also tallied 38 on Saturday), and is the stuff that the NCAA tournament highlight reels are made of. As for what he'll do next year in the NBA, who knows, but I bet you thought I was going to make an Adam Morrison comparison, didn't you?
Jeez, don't be a racist. Jerk.
