A few days before BYU and Vermont meet Wednesday night in a matchup known only as "the Jimmer game," Al Fredette got a taste of how excited the small upstate New York town of Glens Falls is to welcome his son home.
The Glens Falls Chronicle ran an eight-page special section last week celebrating the return of a local hero under the headline, "Jimmer Mania."
"Eight pages of Jimmer," Al chuckled. "Pretty amazing."
BYU isn't the first school to play a game in the hometown of one of its star players, but Jimmer Fredette's return to Glens Falls is a bigger deal than most. Whereas New York, Chicago and Los Angeles churn out a handful of elite pro prospects each season, Fredette is revered in Glens Falls and the surrounding towns because he's one of the few local products to reach such heights.
When tickets went on sale for the BYU-Vermont game in September, Al Fredette and about 20 friends each camped out the whole night to get first choice of seats and dozens of others showed up to stand on line before dawn. The 5,000-seat Glens Falls Civic Center will be sold out Wednesday night and neighbors approach Jimmer's father on a daily basis to wish his son good luck and tell him they can't wait for the game.
"Glens Falls isn't a big town and it's surrounded by four or five other small towns and Jimmer was able to be part of all those," Al Fredette said. "He played in all those different towns, he went to tournaments in all those different towns and he got to know the kids in this whole area. He's just been really well-known all the way from here to Albany and they've all given him a tremendous amount of support."
BYU coach Dave Rose had promised Jimmer when he recruited him that the Cougars would try to play in upstate New York during his senior year, but the initial plan was to meet Penn State in Albany. When the two programs couldn't find a date that worked, Glens Falls mayor Jack Diamond approached BYU and informed the school that his town would be very interested in hosting the game.
"I didn't think I would ever play in Glens Falls at all," Fredette said on a conference call this week. "I just thought they would try to get a game back East, Albany, or Siena or Syracuse or UMass or even down in New York City."
"For them to say that all of a sudden, I was kind of flabbergasted, I was just, like, yeah, that would be great if we could do it."
The 6-foot-2 Fredette rose to prominence in his hometown when he powered Glens Falls High School to a 25-2 record and a trip to the New York championship game in 2007. He emerged nationally last season, scoring 49 points in a victory over Arizona and guiding BYU to its first NCAA tournament victory since 1993.
After deciding to return to school instead of entering the NBA draft this past spring, Fredette has BYU on pace for another NCAA tournament appearance. He's averaging 22.3 points per game to keep the 21st-ranked Cougars undefeated entering the game against Vermont.
BYU has one of the loudest home courts in college basketball, but it's doubtful the Cougars will ever receive more support on the East Coast than they get on Wednesday night.
"There's a lot of hype and people are really excited," Al Fredette said. "It's a small place, so when you get that many people yelling inside it, it should be a lot like the Marriott Center."
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