Unlikely tourney star making name for himself

No one wanted him. Not the Division 1 coaches in the state. Even the D-2 coaches had pegged him as too slow, too un-athletic, too small.

Ali Farokhmanesh was, more than once during his junior-college career, thinking of giving up basketball.

"I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was doubting myself,” Northern Iowa’s 5-foot-11 senior guard said. "I called home and told my parents I didn’t want to play anymore.”

His confidence was shaken, his smooth jump shot gone awry.

The same picturesque jumper that just sent top-seeded Kansas, the clear-cut favorite to cut down the nets in Indianapolis, back home to Lawrence, not even one weekend into the Big Dance.

Nearly everyone was yelling at Farokhmanesh to pull the ball out and burn some clock when he received the pass on the right wing, early in the shot clock, with 38 seconds left, and Northern Iowa leading the Jayhawks, 63-62.

Even his old junior college coach, the one who only rarely played him.

"When they threw him the ball, I yelled for him to keep dribbling, don’t shoot it,” Indian Hills coach Jeff Kidder said.

“I was yelling, `What are you doing?’ Then it went in.”

"Honestly, that didn’t even enter my mind,” Farokhmanesh said. "As soon as I saw we had a 2-on-1 and (Tyrel) Reed backed off, I didn’t even think about backing it out.”

"I’m a time and score guy,” said Panthers coach Ben Jacobsen. "For our team, that was a great possession for us, a great situation. (But) when Ali gets a look like that, time and score doesn’t really apply to this team as much – as crazy as it sounds.”

It was the second consecutive game-deciding basket for the kid who was passed over by everyone coming out of Iowa City West High School.

Farokhmanesh grew up in Pullman, Wash., where his mother, Cindy Fredrick, was the head volleyball coach at Washington State and his father, Mashallah Farokhmanesh, her assistant.

His parents pulled him out of day care at an early age and instead took him to the gym, where he grew up learning how to play volleyball from his father, a former star on the Iranian national team.

"I used to be really good,” Farokhmanesh said. "I’d pepper with my dad before games and we’d play short court.”

"He and his dad would win against two of our players,” his mother said. "He had very good ball control.”

But as Farokhmanesh grew older, he came to realize his friends were playing basketball – not volleyball – and turned his attention to the hardwood.

His parents moved to Iowa City and took over the Hawkeyes volleyball program when he was a junior in high school. Iowa wasn’t exactly brimming with kids of Iranian heritage, but that didn’t bother Farokhmanesh.

"I don’t look Middle Eastern,” he said. "People were surprised when I said my name.

"I always hate the first day of class,” he added. "It’s bad. I don’t think I’ve ever had a first day where they have gotten my name right. Usually, they stare at it for 10 seconds and then I jump in and help them with it.”

Farokhmanesh (pronounced Fuh-ROAK-muh-nesh) put up fairly impressive numbers in high school: 18.5 points and 5.5 assists per game.

But everyone passed.

"He had nothing,” Cindy said. "Just D-3 schools. It was the most devastating time for us. But to see it turn around, it’s been karma.”

Farokhmanesh landed at Iowa junior college power Indian Hills, where he marked time behind Marcus Walker – who signed with Nebraska and then went to Colorado State.

"I was the backup point guard, but I never backed up anything,” he joked. "I’d get in the game randomly. Some games I played 15 minutes and other games I wouldn’t get in the game at all. It just wasn’t a good situation for me.”

Cindy recalls the conversation she and her only child had on a car ride home when Farokhmanesh said he had lost the love to play basketball.

That’s when they made the decision to leave Indian Hills and transfer to nearby Kirkwood Community College, where he thrived under coach Doug Wagemester.

"He got everything back,” Cindy said. "It was like watching a kid being reinvented.”

Jacobsen would prefer to say he had never seen Farokhmanesh before, but he was one of the coaches who passed him over coming out of high school.

"We were like everyone else who thought he was too small and wasn’t quick enough,” Jacobsen said. "We saw him in camps in the summer.”

Jacobsen got another look at Farokhmanesh during his sophomore season at Kirkwood and noted the changes, even though he wasn’t making shots.

"I knew he could shoot the ball,” Jacobsen said. "It was the other things that impressed me – his demeanor, his confidence and the way he carried himself…. He had also gotten quicker.”

Farokhmanesh played well enough to earn several dozen D-1 scholarship offers, ultimately passing on Rick Majerus and St Louis to choose Northern Iowa – where he has become a key piece to the Panthers' two-year NCAA tournament run, and made arguably the two biggest shots in the history of the program.

Shots that have earned Northern Iowa a date with Michigan State in the Sweet 16 in St Louis.

The first was a 3-pointer with 4.9 seconds left to knock off UNLV in the first round. Then came the shot that shook the world, ruining millions of brackets in the process, Farokhmanesh landing the knockout punch on Kansas.

Of all of those voices at the end, there was only one telling him to do what came naturally.

"I was yelling for him to shoot it,” Cindy said. "He tells me I don’t know anything about basketball.”

In this case, though, mom was right.