Could BYU's Fredette be next March darling?

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Jimmer Fredette has all the ingredients to be the next out-of-nowhere star in the NCAA tournament: the catchy nickname, the sweet shot, the late-game heroics.

He's even got the intriguing back story of toughening up his play with a handful of pickup games against inmates at a couple of upstate New York prisons.

After he scored a tournament-high 37 points in BYU's double-overtime thriller against Florida, all that stands between Fredette and a trip back to Salt Lake City for a close-to-home regional is Big 12 behemoth Kansas State and its own talented backcourt of Denis Clemente and Jacob Pullen.

First, though, Fredette spent Friday soaking in the star treatment brought on by his first-round performance. Just after he got done answering a series of questions from reporters on one side of the Ford Center and wrapped up a quick visit with CBS, he returned to the BYU locker room to find another two dozen reporters and television cameras in a huddle, eagerly awaiting his return. A handful of national radio interviews were sprinkled in, too.

"I've been in a small market for my whole life," Fredette said, "and obviously we're on a bigger stage now."

Fredette — whose mother gave him the nickname to avoid confusion with her brother, who's also named James — grew up in Glen Falls, N.Y., with his older brother, T.J., as his de-facto basketball coach. He trained Fredette on random drills such as dribbling down a dark hallway and made him sign a contract that he'd work to reach his dream of playing in the NBA.

Once Fredette turned 18, his brother talked him into going to the prisons to play.

"At first, I didn't believe him, of course," Fredette said. "I was like, 'What are you talking about?' I thought he was playing another joke on me like he always does. But he went a couple times without me and I realized that it was real."

Even more real were the looks he got when he first walked through the prison yard to get to the gym, and the fouls that made him a tougher player.

"They were very physical. They were big, strong guys," Fredette said. "But it was good. They were good sports, they went in and they fouled you hard and they'd help you back up because they knew that if they didn't act good, their privileges would be taken away from them and they didn't want that. They wanted to stay out and they wanted to play against us."