When the Crowd is Loud, Jimmer's on the Mind

-- Remembering Jimmer in the 2011 MWC Showdown


By the time BYU faced off against San Diego State in the first matchup in 10 years featuring a 20-0 squad versus a one loss team, I had grown quite fond of Jimmer Fredette. This sounds obvious. I'm a BYU fan, therefore I should like the best BYU basketball player of my lifetime, right? But long before 2011 I'd stopped caring about college basketball. 8 years had gone by since I mimicked Raphael Araujo's elbow drops in church ball. 7 years had gone by since I spent an entire Saturday camped out with a bag of sweetart hearts, waiting to watch USU take on Mark "Jack-On" Jackson. Like the Grinch my heart had shrunk from a polygamous love of all things BYU football, Jazz basketball, and BYU hoops, to a more maintainable relationship with BYU football as the main attraction and Jazz hoops serving as a solid springtime dish.

But then Jimmer happened.

I'm feeling nostalgic today, as BYU basketball is set to play in their biggest game since that 2011 BYU-SDSU showdown that became the ground zero of Jimmermania.

Man that game packed a punch. Among all the memorable moments, including Jimmer scoring 43, the crowd enveloping him post-game like a Beatle, celebrity internet going berserk with praise, a young Kawhai Leonard being outshone by the pale kid from New York,  my brother swearing in astonishment on the text line, what I often tell people about this game is this:

I went to a friend's apartment to watch the game. I lived in Logan at this time, an attendee of Utah State. I knew the roommates. These facts about the group are true:

1) They loved USU basketball
2) They hated BYU everything

This was not unusual. The people of Logan do not look favorably upon the Cougs. So you can see why I thought I'd hallucinated when midway through the first half my hosts began cheering for Jimmer. It started casually, with a few begrudging salutes as Jimmer began long bombing. Then this crossover really got to them. Once this three went in they had been converted, baptized by Jimmersion. They cheered alongside me. I don't imagine I'll ever see a player have that effect on rival fans again.

Jimmer was magic. Was it the joy of seeing a formerly pudgy, undersized white guy score the third most single season points in the history of college basketball? Was it just a fun name to yell?

Jimmer's last ten games saw scoring lines of 34, 25, 33, 38, 24, 52(!!!), 30, 32, 34, and 32. He didn't score 30 every game, but you had to watch just in case. His team was perhaps one missionary (Tyler Haws), one injury (Chris Collinsworth), or one honor code suspension (Brandon Davies) away from a run to the title. If fate gives BYU one of those three players I think they have enough in the tank to defeat Florida and go win the championship. I say that with full confidnece cause that's what Jimmer did. He made rivals into fans and fans into worshipers. He made me believe any opponent was vulnerable, that every game was winnable. Nine years later the memories haven't gone away.