Northern Iowa guard comes of age on big stage

OKLAHOMA CITY

She would be ending another practice, another day as a Division I-A volleyball coach, and glance to the other end of the court. Her son, then 10, would be doing what he always did when it was time to go home, standing at a free-throw line.

"So I would yell down to him, 'This is it, Ali! You make this free throw and we go all the way to the NCAAs!" Cindy Fredrick said. "So he would miss it, and I would make him run two sprints. Then I would say again, 'Make it and we win it all!'

"And he would make it."

Northern Iowa has a basketball team that probably won't win it all this season, but that the Panthers are alive to know a Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament is a testament to the exhilaration this event can create and the magic one player no one wanted coming out of high school can produce.

Ali Farokhmanesh is a hero in the Hawkeye State today, Cinderella is wearing a purple dress, and NCAA brackets have been ripped to shreds across the country.

Northern Iowa advanced to the Midwest Region semifinals by eliminating No. 1 Kansas 69-67 on Saturday at the Ford Center, where the nation learned a lot more about the Missouri Valley Conference champion and a senior guard whose 3-pointer defeated UNLV in the first round topped that one by, oh, the distance between Las Vegas and Cedar Falls.

Forget that he made the shot Saturday.

What about taking it?

What about knowing your ninth-seeded team leads mighty Kansas by one point with less than 34 seconds remaining and the ball has found your hands beyond the 3-point line and the one defender within any distance has chosen to backpedal to the rim as the clock elapses?

What about owning the choice of shooting or merely dribbling out as much time as possible before Kansas fouls?

What about taking the one shot that either could deliver your program and name to a level of national prominence it never has known or potentially be the miss everyone uses to define your career?

"I was going to see if I could drive it," Farokhmanesh said. "But (the defender, Kansas guard Tyrel Reed) backed off so far that I thought I might as well shoot this one."

He had missed all seven shot attempts in the second half to that point -- six of them on 3s -- after hitting all four in the first. He had forced shots, hurried his release, played in a very un-Northern Iowa-like manner as Kansas rallied from 11 down with 10:25 left, like he was trying to will the clock to tick faster.

Maybe he took the final shot because there was a time when no one took a chance on him, when he had zero scholarship offers after his senior season of high school in Washington state.

Maybe he took it because he always had been told he was too short, too slow, too this, too that, the son of a former Israeli national team volleyball player whose parents have teamed to coach that sport at such programs as Washington State and Iowa.

Maybe he wanted to prove Northern Iowa coach Ben Jacobson right for signing him out of Kirkwood Community College (Iowa) or because when his mother put up garbage cans with poles sticking out of them to act as defenders on the family's court when he was 7, he knew then that if this moment ever arrived, he would grasp it.

Farokhmanesh also made two free throws with five seconds left, the final nails in Kansas' coffin, two shots from the same straight line he stood at when it was time to go home each day and Mom yelled from the other side of the court about making the NCAAs and going all the way.

She yelled on Saturday, too. So did his father, Mashallah. Their cheers soon were followed with tears of joy.

Northern Iowa deserved to win a game against the first ranked opponent it faced all season. It deserves to be in St. Louis at the Sweet 16 this week. It deserves to wear the slipper for as long as it can defend and make shots as it did here the past few days.

Ali Farokhmanesh also deserves this moment.

Forget that he made the shot Saturday.

What about taking it?

"I really didn't think he was going to," Reed said. "I thought he was going to run some time off the clock."

But he did shoot it.

And made it.

And that's what makes this tournament so incredible and makes a kid no one wanted out of high school a hero today across a state of cornfields and farmhouses and purple-loving basketball fans gone wild.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618.