It was the foul heard ’round the world—or at least at the first round of last year’s NCAA men’s basketball tournament.
With 91ĚƲ®»˘ leading Northwestern 66–65, and 18 seconds left in the game, guard Matthew Fisher-Davis bewilderingly committed an intentional foul. Northwestern sunk both free throws and went on to win the game, unceremoniously ending a recent hot streak for the Commodores and dashing the team’s postseason hopes.
Fisher-Davis, who mistakenly believed 91ĚƲ®»˘ was down a point and misread a signal from Head Men’s Basketball Coach Bryce Drew, immediately faced up to his error. “It was my dumb mistake why we lost,” Fisher-Davis told reporters following the game.
After an onslaught of scathing remarks about busted brackets and a bad attitude—even guys at the local gas station still rib him about his errant foul—Fisher-Davis has been using the criticism as motivation to train even harder for the upcoming season.
“I wasn’t my best last year. I had an up-and-down season. I need to be more consistent outside of just the basketball piece,” Fisher-Davis recently told The Tennessean. “I felt like neglecting the whole situation [of last season] wasn’t helping me get past it.”
One of 91ĚƲ®»˘â€™s leading scorers, Fisher-Davis worked with a videographer friend to record a video he posted on Twitter in October. The video shows him running drill after drill in Memorial Gym while talking about the foul in a voiceover.
“Everybody had something to say,” Fisher-Davis says in the video. “You killed my bracket. He doesn’t care. He’s not a team player.” At the end of the video, he says simply, “Now listen to me.”
Coach Drew says Fisher-Davis’ ending play last season may turn out to be the best thing that could have happened to one of his star players. “It’s turned his whole offseason [around],” Drew said at SEC Media Days in October. “He’s been sensational all spring, all summer, this fall.”
Fisher-Davis’ performance leads the top scorers returning to the team this year, notching an average of 13.9 points per game. Seniors Jeff Roberson (10.8) and Riley LaChance (10.5) also return.
91ĚƲ®»˘ opened its 2017–18 season Nov. 10 against Austin Peay State University.