Ali Fredrick Farokhmanesh (born April 16, 1988) is an American former professional basketball player and current Colorado State Rams men's basketball assistant coach.
Farokhmanesh gained nationwide fame in the 2010 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament as a member of the Northern Iowa Panthers men's basketball team, when he hit a crucial three-point shot to help UNI upset top-overall seed Kansas in the second round.[1]
Farokhmanesh played a total of 69 college games in two years and started all of them.[2] His heroics in 2010, which came two days after hitting the game-winning three-point shot against UNLV in the first round, led to an appearance on the cover of Sports Illustrated.[3]
After going undrafted in the 2010 NBA draft, Farokhmanesh signed a deal to play for SAM Massagno Basket, an LNB Division A team based in Massagno, Switzerland.[4][5]
In 2011, Farokhmanesh signed with the Austrian team WBC Raiffeisen Wels. His contract was renewed in June 2012.[6] Farokhmanesh averaged 13.7 points per game in Austria.
On August 14, 2013, Farokhmanesh signed with SPM Shoeters Den Bosch in the Netherlands.[7] In April, Farokhmanesh won the DBL Sixth Man of the Year award.[8]
In 2014, Farokhmanesh stopped playing professionally, becoming a graduate assistant at Nebraska.[9] In 2016, head coach Tim Miles promoted him to director of player relations and development.[10]
On April 28, 2017, Farokhmanesh joined the Drake men's basketball program as an assistant coach for Niko Medved.[11] On March 26, 2018, he followed Medved to become his assistant at Colorado State University.[12]
Regular season
Farokhmanesh was born in Butler, MO, where he attended high school at Butler R-V for two years before moving to Iowa and attending West High School in Iowa City, Iowa. He then attended junior college at Indian Hills Community College and Kirkwood Community College before transferring to the University of Northern Iowa.
Farokhmanesh is of European and Iranian descent. His father, Mashallah, was born in Borujerd and was a member of the Iranian men's national volleyball team, before immigrating to the United States in 1977, where he played for professional teams and eventually became a coach.[13]
Mashallah married Ali's mother, Cindy Fredrick, who became the head coach for the women's volleyball team at the University of Iowa in 2004. Before moving to Iowa, Fredrick was the head coach of the Washington State University's women's volleyball team for 15 years, where she had a record of 278 wins and 192 losses. Cindy and her husband briefly coached at Luther College.[14] As of 2014, Cindy and Mashallah coached the UNLV women's volleyball team as head coach and assistant coach, respectively.[15]
In 2014, Farokhmanesh married the former Mallory Husz. They have four children.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused the cancellation of the 2020 NCAA tournament and all NCAA-sponsored spring sports and also led to most U.S. universities going to online-only instruction, the Farokhmanesh family re-created his famous NCAA tournament shot in an empty Moby Arena on the 10th anniversary of the UNI–Kansas game. The shot was captured for a web video that Colorado State posted on its official athletics Twitter account.[16]
