The Official Jimmerphilia Thread

[Surfah]

Cool article regarding hype and numbers:

http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/412572...ge_basketball/

[DrumNFeather]

SGC? Jimmer to be on PTI today.

[ERCougar]

SGC? Jimmer to be on PTI today.

Dang it. I just missed their segment on Jimmer. Any way to catch it?

[myboynoah]

Dang it. I just missed their segment on Jimmer. Any way to catch it?

You can probably podcast it.

Good interview, not great, but great exposure all the way around. Jimmer's answers in interviews are rather formulaic. No doubt in the future this will change to be more reflective of his game. I'm looking forward to some 40-footer answers.

I wish he would have expanded on what the fans were yelling from the stands during the prison ball.

All in all, pretty cool.

[cougjunkie]

SI with a feature on Jimmer:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vau...09/1/index.htm

[TripletDaddy]

SGC? Jimmer to be on PTI today.

I'm happy to see our resident Ute fans showing symptoms of acute Jimmerphilia!

[Art Vandelay]

SI with a feature on Jimmer:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vau...09/1/index.htm

Wow that is a nice size write up, very Jimmerly.

[MarkGrace]

Here's Jimmer on PTI: http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/blogsby...nsed.html.csp#

[SteelBlue]

For those that saw it live, was that brief scene where Tony was getting his nails buffed and talking to Mike supposed to be on air? It had the feel of not knowing they were on air yet and it cut away so fast that it didn't make sense as a segment. It was kind of funny, Tony says "that's a sweet kid". Mike says something like "yeah and ready to talk, that prison ball stuff was great".

Speaking of prison ball, you know who I'll bet is sick of hearing about TJ's contract writing, prison ball and the church hall gauntlets? His high school coach. You'd think that guy would get some love now and again.

[old_gregg]

For those that saw it live, was that brief scene where Tony was getting his nails buffed and talking to Mike supposed to be on air? It had the feel of not knowing they were on air yet and it cut away so fast that it didn't make sense as a segment. It was kind of funny, Tony says "that's a sweet kid". Mike says something like "yeah and ready to talk, that prison ball stuff was great".

Speaking of prison ball, you know who I'll bet is sick of hearing about TJ's contract writing, prison ball and the church hall gauntlets? His high school coach. You'd think that guy would get some love now and again.

that's part of their schtick. they do it during commercial breaks quite often.

[MarkGrace]

Jimmer has now trascended regular sports pages and is getting coverage in the Wall St. Journal. His service in the Provo, Utah mission continues to be more fruitful than the combined efforts of thousands of missionaries out knocking doors.

By BEN COHEN
Brigham Young University has one of the country's finest college-basketball teams, featuring a player that their fans insist should be the National Player of the Year.

It's a prestigious school that propels its graduates to desirable jobs. Wherever the team travels, especially in its conference, the opposing fans make it exceedingly clear that they would like to see them mashed into a pulpy sauce. And its team colors are blue and white.

In other words, BYU has become the Duke of the West.

Behind senior guard Jimmer Fredette, the nation's leading scorer, they're 19-1, ranked No. 9 in the polls and a trendy pick to wreak havoc come March.

While mid-majors with a national profile such as Gonzaga or Butler are usually appreciated as underdogs, in the Mountain West Conference, BYU is treated like the establishment, rich in basketball pedigree. It's the squad guaranteed to fill a student section in Las Vegas, bring out hatred in Wyoming and agitate the otherwise sunny people of San Diego. Opposing fans even camp out for tickets to see BYU—and welcome them with a chorus of heckles, slurs and catcalls.

"They're the team everyone loves to hate," said Joe Cravens, a men's basketball analyst for The Mtn., the network of the Mountain West.

BYU coach Dave Rose, who played on Houston's Phi Slamma Jamma teams in the 1980s, thinks of it in a different way. "The personality of this team," he says, "has been developed outside of the Marriott Center," referring to BYU's home court.

At UNLV earlier this month, a group of about 50 students purchased BYU shirts and replaced Mr. Fredette's surname with "BALL HOG." ("I guess you can't complain that much, because they're buying that stuff," BYU senior Jackson Emery said.) The gesture didn't affect Mr. Fredette. He scored 39 points, and the Cougars' 89-77 win quieted the spectators.

In the past, Mr. Cravens said, Wyoming fans routinely serenaded BYU with an obscene rhyming chant. Such animosity would be expected, even tame, from a rivalry game. BYU considers its main MWC nemesis to be Utah but other schools in the conference don't share the same opinion.

"It seemed like we were everybody's rival," said former BYU star Danny Ainge, the Boston Celtics' general manager.

Tonight (CBS College Sports, 10 p.m. ET), in its biggest game of the season to date, BYU hosts the league's other top-10 team, fourth-ranked and undefeated San Diego State, in a battle for conference supremacy.

Aztecs fans, though, are already anticipating the Cougars' trip to Southern California on Feb. 26. Traditionally, some SDSU students dress up in white shirts and black ties—missionary attire, they say—an allusion to the school's affiliation with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. "We see them as our biggest rivals, and they wouldn't," said David Pope, a recent SDSU graduate. "That's the whole reason we hate them so much."

BYU students live by a different culture from the rowdiest college sports fans. The university's honor code requires them to abstain from alcohol, tobacco, tea and coffee, use clean language and "live a chaste and virtuous life."

Last season, BYU brought out the worst in a coach, too. In the post-game handshake line, New Mexico's Steve Alford called a BYU player an extremely vulgar name.

So what is it about BYU? Just like Duke, for example, BYU is an exclusive private school, derided for a certain arrogance. Since Mr. Rose took over in 2005, the Cougars are 146-41, including a 69-16 mark in the MWC. The contempt for Duke also peaked when it has a veritable stud, like Christian Laettner or J.J. Redick.

BYU has Mr. Fredette, the 6-foot-2 senior guard who scores like other players dribble. He's leading the nation in scoring, averaging 26.7 points per game, and is known throughout the country simply by his first name. In Provo—the epicenter of Jimmermania, where Mr. Fredette fields marriage proposals during home games—his first name is also a verb, as in "You got Jimmer'd."

When Mr. Fredette returned to his hometown of Glens Falls, N.Y., to play Vermont earlier this year, he poured in 26 points in front of a sellout crowd that treated him like a hero. "I've never seen a standing ovation last for a couple of minutes for one player," junior forward Noah Hartsock said.

But elsewhere on the road, Mr. Fredette isn't quite as revered. He recalls seeing signs that read, "Jimmer Who?" while his teammate, Mr. Hartsock, has heard taunts like, "What's a Jimmer?"

Mr. Fredette seems to use those taunts as motivation, as if he needed any more. He's scored at least 30 points 14 times in his career, including 13 times away from home. In the last two weeks, he's unleashed a pair of virtuoso performances on the road, dropping 42 points at Colorado State on Saturday and 47 at Utah on Jan. 11—two off his own career high, which he set at Arizona last year.

Fans in the Mountain West Conference won't have much longer to jeer the Cougars. This is the university's final year in the MWC, with its football team forging independence and the basketball team joining the West Coast Conference.

"They've always been perceived as a little arrogant, and with their religious values, maybe a little holier-than-thou," said Ryan Thorburn, a Wyoming graduate who wrote the book "Black 14" about Wyoming's football program. "And now that they're leaving, the hatred's back on. Everybody would like to see them fall."

A fall might not happen, however. The Cougars opened the season in the top 25, and they've climbed their way into the top 10, even after an upset loss to UCLA in December.

Their two leading scorers—Messrs. Fredette and Emery here are seniors, and four of their starters played big minutes in BYU's opening-round win over Florida in last year's NCAA Tournament.

That experience, plus the unparalleled scoring threat of Mr. Fredette, has fans in Provo thinking this could be the university's first Final Four team. And there's one school, in particular, that Mr. Fredette admitted he'd like to be paired with at a neutral site in the NCAA Tournament. It's Duke, of course.

"If we play them, later on down the road, it would probably be in the Sweet 16 or Elite 8," he said. "Or even farther."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...EYWORDS=Jimmer

[myboynoah]

It's a prestigious school that propels its graduates to desirable jobs. Wherever the team travels, especially in its conference, the opposing fans make it exceedingly clear that they would like to see them mashed into a pulpy sauce. And its team colors are blue and white.

In other words, BYU has become the Duke of the West.

Priceless.

[cougjunkie]

Priceless.

I am waiting for SU to chime in before I decide if I agree or not.

[Lost Student]

Recent Tweets from Seth Davis:

Three words you'll hear over and over during tonight's State of the Union: Jobs. Bipartisanship. Jimmer.

Boeheim just turned to his assistants and said, "Which one of you @$!$&$!! told me not to recruit The Jimmer?!"

[myboynoah]

Recent Tweets from Seth Davis:

That's very good.