The Return of Fasoula(s)

Former NC State star Ernie Myers and Vanderbilt junior center Mariella Fasoula.

https://www.contra.gr/Columns/zan-pres/ntokoymento-o-fasoulas-sto-ncaa-video.5368124.html
 
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© Tim Peeler, 2018

Rarely do I get this excited about the arrival of an opposing player to face an NC State basketball team.

Don’t judge me.

You probably weren’t here for the 1985-86 NC State basketball season, but those of us who were will never forget the greatest one-and-done player of the 1980s: Panagiotis Fasoulas.

Arriving practically unannounced from Thessaloniki, Greece, Pano was a 7-foot center with a gloriously floppy mop of shoulder-length hair. He had a bright smile he flashed whenever someone asked question he didn’t understand, which happened quite frequently when his Greek understanding met with Southern sportswriters, one of whom was actually nicknamed “Country.”

He could block shots by the dozens. He had a decent baby hook shot. He never passed, at least not to someone who made a shot. He went the entirety of his only season at NC State without an assist. Had he been available to play in the NCAA tournament, head coach Jim Valvano may have won his second national championship in four seasons.

Tonight, Pano’s daughter Mariella Fasoula, a junior center for the Vanderbilt women’s basketball team, returns to the place of her father’s greatest college basketball glory to face the Wolfpack in a 7 p.m. game at Reynolds Coliseum. She played twice before against the Wolfpack, scoring 20 and 19 points in two seasons at Boston College, but never at Reynolds Coliseum.

“My dad loved NC State, and he loved his coach,” says Fasoula, who will become the first child of a Jim Valvano-coached player to play at Reynolds since the school announced it was naming a portion of the coliseum the James T. Valvano Arena. “He talked about it all the time when I was growing up.”

Fasoula, whose name is sans “S” because Greek uses different feminine and masculine surnames, vaguely remembers seeing her dad play. He retired when she was just 3, so her recollection of the Greek National team star known as “The Spider” is opaque at best.

So here’s how Pano’s teammate Ernie Myers, the former Wolfpack star who is doing color analysis for tonight’s ACC Network Extra television broadcast, and I told Mariella about her father’s Pack days.

There was something electric about the big Greek center who Jim Valvano found one day in the shadow of the Acropolis, when he took his 1983-84 team on a preseason tour of Greece. Fasoulas played two games against the Pack, one for his club team and one for the Greek National team. The 7-0, 225-pound center with the size 17 shoes played well against Charles Shackleford, Chris Washburn and the rest of the Wolfpack lineup in those two games.

So well, in fact, that Valvano said, “If you are ever in the States and are looking for a place to play, I’ll have a spot for you.”

Fasoulas had played the 1980-81 season at Hellenic College—where else would a native of Greece go to play basketball?—a junior college seminary in Brookline, Massachusetts, leading them to an undefeated season.

And the he left, dissatisfied with the level of competition. Four years later, he spent a two-week vacation with some old friends in Boston. He called Valvano up and said, “I’m here.”

Unfortunately, the coach had 15 scholarship players and the spot on he promised Fasoulas was not available.

Suddenly, in September, junior forward Russell Pierre announced he was leaving NC State for Virginia Tech, and Pano’s path to NC State was cleared. He enrolled in school and began practicing with his former foes a few weeks later.

The jersey was never corrected.

For whatever reason, Fasoulas became a big fan favorite. He was a big, gregarious man of intrigue. Students came to games wearing frizzy Pano wigs. He played the entire season with his name misspelled on the back of his No. 13 jersey as “Fascoulas.” (When someone pointed it out to Valvano, he said “Hell, he’ll never see it.”) It was spelled "Fassulas" in the student telephone directory and "Fasulis" and "Fassoulos" in local newspapers.

A wily Technician sports editor and a local sportswriter noticed that through more than a dozen games, Pano had not recorded a single official assist. The paper began publishing the weekly “Pano Watch,” tallying up his opportunities. He never did get one in his 29 games with the Wolfpack.

Fasoulas never started a single game, coming off the bench as a substitute for Shackleford and Washburn. The last time was in the regular-season finale at No. 14 Oklahoma, when students and fans taunted him mercilessly before the game ever started, causing him to go after an entire student section. He was held back by his teammates and an arena security guard.

Then, in the postseason, Fasoulas disappeared. He didn’t play in the Wolfpack’s 64-62 loss to Virginia in the first round of the ACC Tournament. He was not dressed out for games against Iowa and Arkansas-Little Rock. When asked, Valvano said Fasoulas had a back injury.

In 29 games, Fasoulas blocked a team-high 56 shots.
(Agromeck photo by Roger Winstead.)

As it turns out, though, Fasoulas was being held out of postseason games because NC State athletics director Willis Casey was worried that he would be declared ineligible and any NC State wins would be invalidated. The week before the ACC tournament, St. John’s Italian-born center Marco Baldi had been declared ineligible, as had LSU’s Marco Vargas of the Dominican Republic. The NCAA was determined to make sure international players who might have been paid playing for club teams weren’t undermining the concept of amateur athletes.

“If we had had your dad in the 1986 tournament,” Myers told Fasoula Thursday afternoon at Vanderbilt’s pregame shootaround, “we would have gone to the Final Four.”

Late in its Elite Eight game against second-ranked Kansas, played less than 40 minutes away from the Jayhawks’ campus at Kansas City’s Kemper Arena, State was leading by double-digit points. That’s when the partisan crowd began chanting “Rock..Chalk…Jawhawk.”

The sound swelled every time Danny Manning and Greg Dreiling scored another basket. When Myers missed a free throw on a three-point play and Nate McMillan was called for a questionable charging foul, the Jayhawks took control of the game and advanced to the Final Four with a 75-67 victory.

Fasoulas was drafted in the second round of the 1986 NBA Draft by Portland, one pick before the TrailBlazers took Croatian superstar Drazen Petrovic. He never played a regular-season game, deciding to head home, where he became an international superstar. He played for years for the Greek National Team, helping his squad win the 1987 EuroBasket Championship and a silver medal at the 1989 event. He played for Greece in the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games in Atlanta, averaging 13.4 points and 5.1 rebounds.

With eight assists.

In retirement, he used his electric personality to win consecutive terms as mayor of Piraeus, the third largest city in Greece, from 2006-10. He helped his home country secure the 2004 Olympic Games, carrying the torch into the Olympic stadium for the Opening Ceremonies. And he's been active in developing women’s basketball.

He taught his daughter to love rebounding and blocking shots, which she will attempt to do against the Wolfpack in tonight's game.

Fasoulas made a remarkable transition from fan favorite to international basketball superstar. Only four people affiliated with ACC basketball have ever been inducted into the FIBA Hall of Fame: Michael Jordan and Dean Smith of North Carolina and Kay Yow and Panagiotis Fasoulas of NC State.