State University rallied in the second half to stymie Farokh-manesh’s University of Northern Iowa team 59-52.
Northern Iowa’s Iranian-American basketball star was featured on the March 29 cover of Sports Illustrated magazine after he led his underdog team to two upsets during the annual “March Madness” tournament of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).
Ali told Sports Illustrated that being able to travel one day to Iran and meet his father’s side of the family would be just as sweet as nailing the winning shot in a big game in the national tournament.
Farokhmanesh, a senior at the University of Northern Iowa (UNI), was selected for the cover photo after he lead the Northern Iowa Panthers to two upset victories against Kansas and the University of Nevada at Las Vegas during the NCAA tournament.
The 6-foot, 190-pound, 21-year-old senior guard was the top scorer with 16 points during the March 20, NCAA upset between the Number 1 seed Kansas Jayhawks and Northern Iowa, who came into the tournament as the Number 9 seed in the Midwest Region. With thirty-five seconds left on the clock, Farokhmanesh made a three-point shot to cap a 69-67 victory over the favored Kansas Rebels.
During the interview with Sports Illustrated, the America sports weekly that has more than three million subscribers, Farokhmanesh was asked about his winning shot. “I went into the shot with confidence and luckily it went in,” he said.
But his performance against Kansas wasn’t the only game in which Farokhmanesh played brilliantly. During the March 18 game between Northern Iowa and the Las Vegas Rebels, Farokhmanesh was the leading scorer with 17 points, making his final 3-pointer with 4.9 seconds left, sending the Rebels packing with a 69-66 upset victory.
But the Cinderella story came to an end last Friday when UNI lost to Michigan State. Michigan State went on to the Final Four.
Northern Iowa started like a ball of fire. It scored seven points before Michigan State even got on the boards. Michigan State finally caught up and the two teams exchange the lead. But in the middle of the second half, there was a 10-minute period in which Northern Iowa failed to score even a single field goal and Michigan State began to pull ahead. But with 90 seconds left, Northern Iowa closed the gap to four points, trailing just 55-51. Unlike in the previous two games, however, Farokhmanesh couldn’t get three-pointers when he desperately needed a couple.
Throughout the game, he attempted six baskets from three-point range but only got one in. He scored a total of only nine points in the Michigan State match.
Northern Iowa has made the March Madness tourney of 64 teams in five of the last seven years. Until this year, however, it lost the first match and was eliminated. This time it made it to the round of 16 for the only time.
Farokhmanesh was born April 16, 1988, in Pullman, Washington, and grew up in Iowa with his parents, Cindy Fredrick and Mashallah Farokhmanesh—a former Iranian volleyball national team player. (See last week’s Iran Times, page one.)
Many American publications have said that the father played on Iran’s 1980 Olympic volleyball team. But Iran sent no athletes to either the 1980 or 1984 Olympics after the revolution, and it has never sent a volleyball team to the Olympics.
Mashallah came to the United States in the early 1970s and received his doctorate in Elementary School Physical Education from Brigham Young University. While still living in Iran, Mashallah played volleyball for seven years for the National Team, coached for three years at Esfahan High School, and coached another three years for the Iranian Volleyball Club Team. He is currently the assistant coach for Iowa’s Luther College women’s volleyball team, where his wife serves as head coach.
In an interview on the Dan Patrick Show, a syndicated sports talk show hosted by former ESPN personality Dan Patrick, Farokhmanesh addressed the uniqueness of his Iranian last name. Farokhmanesh, who has been teased as a sports announcer’s nightmare because of the difficulty of his name, said even his own teammates have problems pronouncing his name correctly. “My teammates call me Stroke sometimes. Or a lot of people just call me Mohammad,” he laughed.
Patrick asked Farokh-manesh about his now-famous three-point shot against Kansas that swished through the basket with less than 30 seconds on the clock.
“When did you know it was going in?” Patrick asked.
“Honestly, when I let it go, it didn’t feel that good when it left my hand just ‘cuz the previous … five shots before that I hadn’t made. So, once I let that go, I thought it was kind of iffy and then once it went through the net I went back on defense,” Farokhmanesh said.
“What did coach say to you?” Patrick asked.
“Uh, great shot,” Farokh-manesh answered.
Farokhmanesh’s stardom arose not out of natural talent, but out of hard work and a lot of practice. “You never have to motivate this kid,” his mom told America.gov, the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of International Information Programs (IIP). “He’s a hard worker. He loves to practice.”
His mother told Sports Illustrated, “Nobody wanted him. He was a 5′ 11” white boy. All my life I’ve said it’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog. And he is a fighter and he’s a hard worker. From the time he was just a baby, he’d drag us to the gym. Every single day: ‘Let’s shoot baskets, let’s shoot baskets,’” Fredrick said of her son.
Farokhmanesh told America.gov that there was no jealousy between the teammates when one player performed exceptionally well. “We’re all best friends. We all hang out together. We all have a role to play,” he said. “If somebody else makes a great play, it’s like you made that play. It just happened that in the two games the ball’s been in my hands” as the final seconds were winding down.
A senior at UNI, Farokh-manesh is contemplating sticking with basketball for now.
“I might possibly go overseas to play professionally while I’m young, or possibly coach basketball,” he told America.gov, adding that he would like to travel to Iran to meet his father’s side of the family. “That would be a dream come true,” every bit as much as hitting the winning shot in a big game in the national tournament.