Saturday’s jersey retirement at BYU for Jimmer Fredette will be rich in irony.
A kid who once flew under the radar will stand as a grown man, surrounded by his wife and children, and watch his No. 32 rise into the rafters of the Marriott Center. Fredette is more than a BYU story: His adventure calls to every young athlete who is determined enough to pursue a dream.
“I think it would be inspiring to them,” Deseret News sports columnist Dick Harmon told the “Y’s Guys” livestream show. “He didn’t come from a place where he was the biggest guy, the fastest guy or the tallest guy.”
Fredette graduated from Glens Falls High in upstate New York with just two scholarship offers, including one from BYU where his sister, Lindsay, was attending. The 6-foot-2 guard chose to play for Dave Rose and the Cougars. He trekked west to Provo and became a pioneer.
In four eventful years, Fredette developed into college basketball’s greatest story. His senior year crescendo culminated with national player of the year honors that preceded an NBA lottery pick and an eventual decoration as an Olympian for the United States.
Harmon documented Fredette’s basketball journey every step of the way for the Deseret News. He notes that the BYU Hall of Famer’s gifts are uniquely his, but the work ethic and drive to chase down a dream is available to everyone. Fredette just showed a way to do it.
“There is no doubt in my mind that Jimmer spent so much time with the ball in his hand perfecting all the little things he needed to do, fine-tuning those fast-twitch muscles so that he had the muscle memory to do some incredible things within the realm that his body would allow,” Harmon said. “He showed that if he could do that, anybody could do that.”
First impression
Playing deep in ACC country at Wake Forest on Jan. 8, 2008, Rose put Fredette into the game. The arena was hot and hostile and the Cougars were in need of a lift.
“He was the only BYU player that, in my estimation, wasn’t intimidated playing there,” Harmon remembered. “He had a swagger to him.”
Fredette fearlessly fired nine 3-point shots and hit three of them. The Cougars lost 79-62, but the writer saw the makings of a special story.
“(Fredette) scored 15 points in 22 minutes and he wasn’t afraid of any Wake Forest player on the floor,” Harmon said. “He was instant offense and I wrote at the time, ‘This guy is going to be fun to watch.’”
A league of his own
Fredette scored 2,599 points in 139 games at BYU — that’s 18.7 points per game. He bumped it up to a nation-leading 28.9 his senior year as the Cougars won a program-record 34 games.
“He’s probably the best pure shooter that I’ve covered in 48 years. I’ve seen a lot of great scorers, but for a volume scorer, for the range that he had and to be able to put it on the floor and finish at the rim, whether it’s a long-arching, beyond-the-arc shot or a midrange jumper, he had it all,” Harmon said. “He wasn’t the most athletic. He wasn’t extremely quick, but every motion he had was not wasted — one of the greatest shooters I’ve ever seen.”
For his career, Fredette shot .455 from the field, .394 from the 3-point line and .882 from the foul line. He also ranks No. 5 in program history with 167 steals and No. 6 with 515 assists.
“Off the court, I don’t think I’ve met a nicer person,” Harmon said. “He’s kind. He’s generous. He’s accessible. You can always talk to him. He remembers your name. He respects you.”
The Jimmer Walk
Just as time expired, Fredette buried a half-court shot at the Huntsman Center to give BYU a 53-42 lead over the Utes on Jan. 11, 2011. With 32 first-half points, No. 32 headed to the locker room.
“Everybody was just stunned because he was putting on (such) a performance,” said Harmon. To the nation’s leading scorer, the buzzer beater was no big deal. “He turned and walked off the court like it was nothing.”
And just like that — a Harmon tradition was born.
“In my family, we call that ‘The Jimmer Walk,’ he said. “Whenever anybody does anything that’s really impressive, you do ‘The Jimmer Walk.’ You just walk off like it was nothing.”
Fredette returned in the second half and blistered Utah for a game-high 47 points. He made 16 of 28 shots and 6 of 9 3-pointers — including one long bomb from half-court. The No. 10 Cougars crushed the Utes, 104-79.
Good company
Fredette’s new residency in the rafters makes for a tremendous starting five. He joins legends Kresimir Cosic (No. 11), Roland Minson (No. 11), Mel Hutchins (No. 14) and Danny Ainge (No. 22), who each earned their own jersey retirements before he was born.
“These guys were showmen. They knew how to bring an audience into it. They played for the audience. They had so much fun,” Harmon said. “They were so excited to play the game, and they loved it so much that people could see it. You could feel it and because of that, you got excited about it.”
Minson and Hutchins led BYU to the 1951 NIT championship. At 6-foot-11, Cosic bedazzled defenses with a style so game-changing that it landed him in the College Basketball Hall of Fame. Ainge beat Notre Dame with a last-second basket that put the Cougars in the Elite Eight, and Fredette broke Ainge’s all-time scoring record with a 52-point night against New Mexico in the Mountain West Conference Tournament.
“They knew what they had, they knew how to display it. They could call upon that and deliver it almost on cue,” Harmon said. “They had bad games. They had games when they didn’t score more than 10-15 points, but a majority of the time they were the focus of the other team’s defense. Their teams believed in them, and they delivered over and over again.”
Is AJ next?
It’s too early to predict whether AJ Dybantsa’s No. 3 will earn the same enshrinement, but the freshman is off to an unprecedented start. Not only is he the nation’s leading scorer, candidate for player of the year and contender for the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft, Dybantsa is full of the same stuff that fueled the others — showmanship.
“They are playing in the best league. They have played four or five of the top teams in the country and had a chance to beat every one of them, and he’s been a big part of it,” Harmon said. “This is special. This is a guy that simply delivers. You get people talking about him all over the place (and) you have him on your floor, at the Marriott Center, with the crowd yelling for him, and what they are seeing is something we have never seen at BYU — ever.”
Dybantsa and Fredette are alike with their East Coast roots, tremendous talent, determination, humility and big dreams. They are also the last two Cougars to lead the nation in scoring. Their most noticeable difference is how they began — Fredette flew under the radar. Dybantsa arrived on a rocket.
What matters in sports is not the launch so much as the landing. On Saturday during halftime of the BYU-Colorado game (2 p.m. MST, FS1), Fredette’s jersey will go up in the rafters while Dybantsa sits inside the locker room plotting his plans for the second half.
His time will come.
Saturday belongs to Jimmer.
Dave McCann is a sportswriter and columnist for the Deseret News and is a play-by-play announcer and show host for BYUtv/ESPN+. He co-hosts “Y’s Guys” at ysguys.com and is the author of the children’s book “C is for Cougar,” available at deseretbook.com.