Frahm takes his best shot with IBL

Victoria Sun

Monday, Nov. 20, 2000 | 11:15 a.m.

The moment Richie Frahm learned he had broken the fifth metatarsal on his left foot in April, he knew it would cost him more than a few months on the sidelines.

Frahm, a 6-foot-5 shooting guard out of Gonzaga, was playing in the second game of the Portsmouth Invitational, an NBA pre-draft camp, when he stepped on another player's foot. After he hobbled off the court, he found out he had aggravated a nagging bruise to that bone and that it was broken.

Coming off an impressive senior year for the Zags that included a 31-point performance against Louisville in the first round of the 2000 NCAA Tournament in March, Frahm calculated his chances of being taken in the NBA draft following his injury and it didn't look good.

"I was devastated (when I broke it)," Frahm said Thursday after a workout with the Las Vegas Bandits at Warren Walker Upper School. "Because I was smart enough to know that you need to have everything to get the breaks.

"Being a 6-foot-5 white guy, you know you've got to be on top of your game at the right situations. Unfortunately, I had that injury and that just kind of took me out of the picture for a while.

"I don't think any team, if I was in their shoes, I wouldn't have taken a gamble on myself either. So I think a lot of teams were waiting around to see how I'm going to respond to my injury."

Frahm was the Bandits' second pick in the IBL draft.

So far, he has used the fact that he wasn't taken in the NBA draft to motivate him the same way he and his Gonzaga teammates used their underdog status to make two improbable runs in the NCAA Tournament the last two seasons.

Yes, Gonzaga is the school that has produced Utah point guard John Stockton, but the small Jesuit school that plays in the West Coast Conference has never been thought of as a basketball power.

That is until Frahm and a scrappy bunch including Matt Santangelo, Axel Dench and Casey Calvary helped put the program on the national radar screen in 1999.

Frahm, Santangelo and Dench were juniors and Calvary a senior when the team registered wins over Minnesota, seventh-ranked Stanford and Florida before falling to eventual champion and third-ranked Connecticut in the 1999 Elite Eight by five points.

"We just had a chip on our shoulder," Frahm said. "A lot of the guys on the team are overachievers.

"After our sophomore year we kind of got gypped by the NCAA selection committee so that was kind of a chip on our shoulder. We had a great preseason my junior year playing some great teams. We got beat, unfortunately, but we got a good learning experience that we could play against anybody.

"We were fortunate enough to have guys for three years playing together and so we had a lot of experience and when that situation came around, we were fortunate to win those ballgames on the right stage, the NCAA Tournament, so that was a lot of fun."

Frahm, who led the team with 14.4 points as a junior and 16.9 points as a senior, worked hard to make sure the Zags didn't disappear in the tournament the following year after an overtime victory against Pepperdine in the WCC tournament assured them of a bid.

First up was Louisville.

Though Gonzaga had earned the respect of the college basketball world the previous year, Louisville was still favored to win the game.

The final scoreboard read Gonzaga 77, Louisville 66.

"It was a high emotional game," Frahm remembered. "A lot of magazines said that we were a one-hit wonder and naming all these names.

"And we didn't want to be classified as a one-hit wonder and that kind of was our motivation. Just to get that off our shoulders and be one of a kind so to speak. I think we achieved that."

Gonzaga then knocked out St. John's in the second round before falling to Purdue.

Because Frahm hasn't been able to play hard for the last seven months, he has spent many days reflecting on what he helped build.

"The basketball," Frahm said proudly. "That was it. That's what everybody looks back on. That's what the school is getting noticed for. That was awesome. It was an unbelievable moment. I still get goosebumps thinking about some of those games. Walking into the arena and having everybody cheering for you.

"It was just a 50/50 crowd, but everybody was cheering for us because we were a small school. It was awesome, a great feeling." It is a feeling he hopes to have in an NBA arena one day.

Following the NCAA Tournament, Frahm won the NABC 3-point contest in March, beating Arizona State's Eddie House, who is now with the Miami Heat.

Playing in Portsmouth was supposed to be the start of what Frahm hopes will be a promising career in the NBA, but the injury has helped him realize how much harder he must work to get there.

"I'm working a lot on my ballhandling," Frahm said. "I consider myself sort of a Jeff Hornacek-Allan Houston type of player.

"Lateral quickness, that's something I really need to work on, and it will come after my foot is completely healed. Now I'm just starting to get that chip on my shoulder. I just want to get out there, play some basketball, get healthy and let my game do the talking."