Jimmer Fredette will dominate the Glens Falls news

There is a lot of interesting basketball to be played this week.

The Jimmy V Classic, which will feature two games between top 15 teams, happens on Tuesday. Wisconsin heads to Marquette in one of the must underrated rivalries in the country on Saturday. Notre Dame gets their two biggest tests of the season with games against Kentucky and Gonzaga. Notre Dame-Kentucky isn't the only interesting tip between a Big East and an SEC team, as Pitt and Tennessee also do battle. Arizona tries to get revenge on BYU for Jimmer Fredette's 49 point outburst, Xavier gets another shot against Butler after their controversial finish last season, and UNLV heads to Louisville as the two teams get a good gauge of how far along they are this season.

Like I said, there are a number of quality story lines to the basketball games played this week.


Perhaps the most interesting, the most unique, is Jimmer Fredette's homecoming.

Fredette is a mormon, but he didn't grow up in Utah. He's a native of Glens Falls, NY, a blue collar town an hour up I-87 from Albany. Part of pulling Fredette out of Upstate New York was BYU's promise to play a game close to Fredette's hometown.

That game happens on Wednesday at the Glens Falls Civic Center where BYU will take on Vermont. How excited are the locals? Back in September when tickets went on sale, fans camped out in order to be the first in line for tickets.

It wasn't easy to put together, either. For starters, Jimmer declared for the draft after an all-american junior season. BYU couldn't cement any plans until after Fredette withdrew his name a day before the May 8th deadline. Originally, the plan was for BYU to play Penn State in Albany, allowing the Nittany Lions to give Fredette's AAU teammate Talor Battle a homecoming as well.

But that fell through. Too many scheduling conflicts.

BYU tried to put together a game against Syracuse or St. John's or one of the other teams in the area, but it was a push from the mayor of Glens Falls that landed this game. 6,200 tickets, including some 700 standing room only, have been sold for the game. Glens Falls has a population of just over 14,000.

Think they are excited for the chance to get to see Jimmer play?

There will be plenty of talk in the media, especially in Upstate New York and Utah, about this game. There has been already. Some of the best anecdotes I've come across?

• Fredette once dropped 40 points in a game against prison inmates.
• Fredette shot 5-40 in the New York high school state title game (Ed. Note: Apparently, he shot 3-24 in the state title game. The other article says he missed 35-40 shots. Either way, it was an off night.) his senior season.
• He was good enough at football that Penn State and Boston College showed recruiting interest.
• Jimmer may not have ended up at BYU if it wasn't for a tip from Syracuse assistant coach Mike Hopkins.
• Easily the best, however, is that Jimmer's brother, TJ, was the one that pushed him athletically. To repay him, Jimmer is helping to further TJ's rap career. TJ is performing at halftime of the BYU game.