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Fasting: Pepperdine game sums up Griz basketball
by: Bill Schwanke of MontanaGrizzlies.Com
Thursday, October 21, 2010 Updated: Friday, October 22, 2010
Roger Fasting - Oct. 21, 2010
Audio Interview
It was a game Roger Fasting - and others who saw it - will never forget.
The three-overtime, 89-88 road win in 1991 over Pepperdine, led by future NBA player Doug Christie, was what Fasting believed Grizzly basketball was all about.
Hampered by foul problems late in regulation and through the three overtimes, the Grizzlies made every adjustment necessary to win the game, including having Delvon Anderson - already undersized for his normal forward position - playing in the post.
“That was a chance for us to play in a bigger media market,” Fasting said. “We knew there were several scouts there. Everybody knew the roles of everybody else so well and everybody was adjusting.
“We just kept on clicking and kept the pressure on, played great defense and wouldn’t go away,” he added. “I can remember Travis DeCuire shadowing Christie all the way down the floor and making him miss the long jump shot at the end.”
The team lessons learned from his basketball career at Montana and in Europe, along with those already learned growing up in Glendive have served Fasting well as a high school administrator in southern California. Fasting currently is in his fourth year as principal at Pomona High School, an urban school with 1,700 students.
"Every day is different, and I really enjoy my job down here," Fasting said.
Fasting, his wife of 12 years Liliana - whom he met while playing pro ball on the Mediterranean island of Malta - and their 9-year-old son Lucas live in nearby Claremont.
"When people think about Los Angeles they don't think of mountains," Fasting noted, "but we live right at the foothills of the San Gabriels, and there's actually a ski run 10 miles from my house."
After completing his pro career Fasting and Liliana moved to Eureka, Mont., where he taught and coached while she commuted to attend Flathead Valley Community College in Kalispell. With Lucas on the way, they decided to find a different place with a broader lifestyle and better financial opportunities.
She had been to Montana three times - mostly to Missoula - during the five years they dated before being married. Even though living in the Eureka area was “a great life experience,” it wasn’t what they wanted to do for the long haul.
After attending an education job fair in Missoula Fasting landed a job in Palmdale, Calif., where he taught for five years before moving into administration. He spent one year as junior varsity basketball coach, leading his team to a 19-2 record.
He also played a year of city league basketball, winning a championship, before the years and years in the gym and playing basketball were enough and he gave up the game.
Now Fasting can get on his mountain bike and be on a beautiful mountain trail three blocks away for his house. He also uses free weights, a treadmill and an exercise bike in his garage to stay in shape.
The adjustment to southern California might have been more difficult for Fasting had it not been for the travels he experienced playing college and pro basketball.
“I think the biggest culture shock I ever had was leaving Glendive and going to Missoula,” Fasting laughed. “Missoula has so many different angles on life that come together and so many different personalities and styles.”
Fasting and his Grizzly teammates traveled plenty, seeing many different places and meeting lots of new people. His pro career saw him “putting my feet on 19 different countries around the world in those six years, and I just loved it (and) still look forward to travel whenever I get that opportunity.”
Coming out of UM Fasting originally signed a contract to play in Portugal, but the team didn’t honor his contract or even tell him they wouldn’t. His agent then arranged “viewings” in Italy and Slovenia for about two weeks leading up to his signing in Malta, a place with a location unknown to him until his first trip to Europe.
After two years on Malta Fasting played half a season in Germany trying to learn the point guard position.
“The lifestyle and social life in Malta were just outstanding and the basketball and money were okay,” Fasting recalled. “In Germany it was just the opposite. The basketball was really good, but everything else was just okay.”
So it was back to Malta. He and Liliana met while enjoying the night life there with their own groups of friends. Since Malta is a crossroads in the Mediterranean Liliana is a mix of a lot of ethnicities, as is Roger.
“Our son has 13 different ethnic bloods flowing through his body,” Fasting laughed. “We kind of mark ‘other’ for him when we fill out forms.”
Fasting was like most kids his age growing up in Glendive or elsewhere with dreams of playing professionally someday. He played for three to four hours a day from the time he became a teenager until he was 31 years old.
So getting a chance to play for pay - no matter where it was - was the result of his dreams and hard work.
“My agent told me I had million-dollar skills but not a million-dollar body,” Fasting laughed.
Fasting and his friends participated in every sport that was available. He also rode motorcycles. His mother constantly ordered him outside to keep him active.
It wasn’t until his sophomore year in high school that he began focusing on basketball.
The Fastings have grown to really like the metropolitan area they live in now. Lucas is a lot like his father, involved in numerous sports and other activities.
“We are encouraging him and trying to expose him to anything and everything,” Fasting said.
Like others across the nation the challenges of No Child Left Behind are huge for Fasting in his current position. The goals to be met several years from now are basically impossible, so he has worked at succeeding and improving year by year, with impressive results.
“We have 30 to 40 students every year who are immigrants that can’t speak or read or write a word of English,” he explained, “and the expectation is that they’re going to master it within a year.
“It’s caused everybody to rethink what they’re doing and refine their programs,” he went on, “but it’s also caused a lot of frustration and people feeling inadequate when there’s a lot of hard work and people that are doing everything exactly the way they should.”
Fasting’s school district has 43 schools including 11 middle and high schools, serving about 30,000 students. His school has shown more progress than any other in the district.
“We’re meeting the state targets each year and all of our students groups - Latino, African American, English learners, low-income families, special education - are improving each year that we’ve been working here,” he said.
The sagging California economy has created its own set of problems. His district alone has had to cut some $55 million from its budgets in the past four years. The cuts have finally affected personnel, with layoffs occurring more often. But Fasting still loves his job.
“Kids are kids wherever you go,” he said. “They can’t choose their life circumstances (or) who their parents are. They just want to be successful.”
Fasting constantly reminds his staff and students that kids in his school can match anyone in the world on a pure IQ test, but after throwing in other elements they haven’t had much exposure to strategies for them to access the content.
“Our kids have the capacity, they can do it,” Fasting reminds them. “But they don’t have the strategy, they don’t know how, so we have to teach them the strategies to be successful.”
Last spring Pomona High School had its largest graduating class ever with more than half advancing to four-year colleges and universities. In almost every case students were the first in their families to attend college.
“It’s really a great spot and a great scenario because we’re helping so many kids,” Fasting stated, “and they appreciate and respond to that.”
It was UM’s basketball tradition that helped draw Fasting across the state to Missoula in 1987.
“Just the environment,” Fasting recalled. “I had a great visit when I went there (and) felt a real strong connection to Stew (Morrill) and Blaine (Taylor) and felt comfortable right away. It was an outstanding experience.”
His biggest adjustment was to the size, speed and skill level of the players at UM and on other teams. Playing man-to-man defense was another adjustment after playing mostly 2-3 zone in high school, but Fasting learned well enough to earn the team’s outstanding defensive player award as a senior in 1991-92.
“There’s a whole scheme to it,” Fasting said of man-to-man defense, “and once you learn it you make each other look good and know they’re going to be there if you get beat.”
Fasting, based on returning personnel and his desire to play more, asked head coach Morrill to redshirt him for a season after he played as a true freshman.
It was during that redshirt year that he really figured out he could play at that level, bolstered by a summer spent playing numerous pick-up games in Seattle, Wash. and time working out with football friends in the UM weight room.
“Tony Reed and Nate DuChesne were both graduating,” Fasting noted, “and then I saw it was kind of wide open and there were a lot of opportunities as long as I came back in good shape.”
Fasting still ranks seventh in UM career assists with 363 and 20th in scoring with 1,047 points. He was a first-team all-Big Sky Conference selection as a senior and played on league championship teams and in the NCAA Tournament as a junior and senior.
What stands out most besides the win at Pepperdine was the first Big Sky title in 1991 that took a long-established monkey off the program’s back.
“I can still remember being up by about 10 points (on Idaho) with seven minutes to go and saying, ‘Man, we’ve got this, we’re gonna win this championship game,’” Fasting recalled. “Doing that got us into the NCAA Tournament which is the dream of every basketball player, I think.”
While playing overseas Fasting would stay in contact with Griz teammate Matt Kempfert when he came back to Missoula to visit. He still talks to DeCuire, now Mike Montgomery’s assistant coach at Cal, and occasionally exchanges text messages with Delvon Anderson.
“Nobody super consistently,” Fasting said, “but when we get the opportunity we reach out and talk to each other. It’s like no time has gone by when we do see each other.”
Fasting said his experience at UM was a “launching pad for understanding the broader things in life and all of the different scenarios that you could become involved with.
“The warmth of the University of Montana and the feeling of being together were really positive.” Fasting explained, “We had kids from all over the place and we just came together and had a common cause.
“It was just a great experience,” Fasting continued, “and it translated into what I do now. You start at the beginning of the year with a certain team and you do everything you can to make and build and create roles. And (then) it’s over and you starting planning and getting ready for the next year.
“The lessons I’ve learned are still being played out in my current life,” Fasting concluded. “I’ve been working for almost a decade in schools, and every school I’ve worked at we’ve improved student achievement.
“I’ve never been at a school that slid backwards, and I think all those attributes and things that I’ve learned have had a direct influence on a lot of that.”
by: Bill Schwanke of MontanaGrizzlies.Com
Thursday, October 21, 2010 Updated: Friday, October 22, 2010
Roger Fasting - Oct. 21, 2010
Audio Interview
It was a game Roger Fasting - and others who saw it - will never forget.
The three-overtime, 89-88 road win in 1991 over Pepperdine, led by future NBA player Doug Christie, was what Fasting believed Grizzly basketball was all about.
Hampered by foul problems late in regulation and through the three overtimes, the Grizzlies made every adjustment necessary to win the game, including having Delvon Anderson - already undersized for his normal forward position - playing in the post.
“That was a chance for us to play in a bigger media market,” Fasting said. “We knew there were several scouts there. Everybody knew the roles of everybody else so well and everybody was adjusting.
“We just kept on clicking and kept the pressure on, played great defense and wouldn’t go away,” he added. “I can remember Travis DeCuire shadowing Christie all the way down the floor and making him miss the long jump shot at the end.”
The team lessons learned from his basketball career at Montana and in Europe, along with those already learned growing up in Glendive have served Fasting well as a high school administrator in southern California. Fasting currently is in his fourth year as principal at Pomona High School, an urban school with 1,700 students.
"Every day is different, and I really enjoy my job down here," Fasting said.
Fasting, his wife of 12 years Liliana - whom he met while playing pro ball on the Mediterranean island of Malta - and their 9-year-old son Lucas live in nearby Claremont.
"When people think about Los Angeles they don't think of mountains," Fasting noted, "but we live right at the foothills of the San Gabriels, and there's actually a ski run 10 miles from my house."
After completing his pro career Fasting and Liliana moved to Eureka, Mont., where he taught and coached while she commuted to attend Flathead Valley Community College in Kalispell. With Lucas on the way, they decided to find a different place with a broader lifestyle and better financial opportunities.
She had been to Montana three times - mostly to Missoula - during the five years they dated before being married. Even though living in the Eureka area was “a great life experience,” it wasn’t what they wanted to do for the long haul.
After attending an education job fair in Missoula Fasting landed a job in Palmdale, Calif., where he taught for five years before moving into administration. He spent one year as junior varsity basketball coach, leading his team to a 19-2 record.
He also played a year of city league basketball, winning a championship, before the years and years in the gym and playing basketball were enough and he gave up the game.
Now Fasting can get on his mountain bike and be on a beautiful mountain trail three blocks away for his house. He also uses free weights, a treadmill and an exercise bike in his garage to stay in shape.
The adjustment to southern California might have been more difficult for Fasting had it not been for the travels he experienced playing college and pro basketball.
“I think the biggest culture shock I ever had was leaving Glendive and going to Missoula,” Fasting laughed. “Missoula has so many different angles on life that come together and so many different personalities and styles.”
Fasting and his Grizzly teammates traveled plenty, seeing many different places and meeting lots of new people. His pro career saw him “putting my feet on 19 different countries around the world in those six years, and I just loved it (and) still look forward to travel whenever I get that opportunity.”
Coming out of UM Fasting originally signed a contract to play in Portugal, but the team didn’t honor his contract or even tell him they wouldn’t. His agent then arranged “viewings” in Italy and Slovenia for about two weeks leading up to his signing in Malta, a place with a location unknown to him until his first trip to Europe.
After two years on Malta Fasting played half a season in Germany trying to learn the point guard position.
“The lifestyle and social life in Malta were just outstanding and the basketball and money were okay,” Fasting recalled. “In Germany it was just the opposite. The basketball was really good, but everything else was just okay.”
So it was back to Malta. He and Liliana met while enjoying the night life there with their own groups of friends. Since Malta is a crossroads in the Mediterranean Liliana is a mix of a lot of ethnicities, as is Roger.
“Our son has 13 different ethnic bloods flowing through his body,” Fasting laughed. “We kind of mark ‘other’ for him when we fill out forms.”
Fasting was like most kids his age growing up in Glendive or elsewhere with dreams of playing professionally someday. He played for three to four hours a day from the time he became a teenager until he was 31 years old.
So getting a chance to play for pay - no matter where it was - was the result of his dreams and hard work.
“My agent told me I had million-dollar skills but not a million-dollar body,” Fasting laughed.
Fasting and his friends participated in every sport that was available. He also rode motorcycles. His mother constantly ordered him outside to keep him active.
It wasn’t until his sophomore year in high school that he began focusing on basketball.
The Fastings have grown to really like the metropolitan area they live in now. Lucas is a lot like his father, involved in numerous sports and other activities.
“We are encouraging him and trying to expose him to anything and everything,” Fasting said.
Like others across the nation the challenges of No Child Left Behind are huge for Fasting in his current position. The goals to be met several years from now are basically impossible, so he has worked at succeeding and improving year by year, with impressive results.
“We have 30 to 40 students every year who are immigrants that can’t speak or read or write a word of English,” he explained, “and the expectation is that they’re going to master it within a year.
“It’s caused everybody to rethink what they’re doing and refine their programs,” he went on, “but it’s also caused a lot of frustration and people feeling inadequate when there’s a lot of hard work and people that are doing everything exactly the way they should.”
Fasting’s school district has 43 schools including 11 middle and high schools, serving about 30,000 students. His school has shown more progress than any other in the district.
“We’re meeting the state targets each year and all of our students groups - Latino, African American, English learners, low-income families, special education - are improving each year that we’ve been working here,” he said.
The sagging California economy has created its own set of problems. His district alone has had to cut some $55 million from its budgets in the past four years. The cuts have finally affected personnel, with layoffs occurring more often. But Fasting still loves his job.
“Kids are kids wherever you go,” he said. “They can’t choose their life circumstances (or) who their parents are. They just want to be successful.”
Fasting constantly reminds his staff and students that kids in his school can match anyone in the world on a pure IQ test, but after throwing in other elements they haven’t had much exposure to strategies for them to access the content.
“Our kids have the capacity, they can do it,” Fasting reminds them. “But they don’t have the strategy, they don’t know how, so we have to teach them the strategies to be successful.”
Last spring Pomona High School had its largest graduating class ever with more than half advancing to four-year colleges and universities. In almost every case students were the first in their families to attend college.
“It’s really a great spot and a great scenario because we’re helping so many kids,” Fasting stated, “and they appreciate and respond to that.”
It was UM’s basketball tradition that helped draw Fasting across the state to Missoula in 1987.
“Just the environment,” Fasting recalled. “I had a great visit when I went there (and) felt a real strong connection to Stew (Morrill) and Blaine (Taylor) and felt comfortable right away. It was an outstanding experience.”
His biggest adjustment was to the size, speed and skill level of the players at UM and on other teams. Playing man-to-man defense was another adjustment after playing mostly 2-3 zone in high school, but Fasting learned well enough to earn the team’s outstanding defensive player award as a senior in 1991-92.
“There’s a whole scheme to it,” Fasting said of man-to-man defense, “and once you learn it you make each other look good and know they’re going to be there if you get beat.”
Fasting, based on returning personnel and his desire to play more, asked head coach Morrill to redshirt him for a season after he played as a true freshman.
It was during that redshirt year that he really figured out he could play at that level, bolstered by a summer spent playing numerous pick-up games in Seattle, Wash. and time working out with football friends in the UM weight room.
“Tony Reed and Nate DuChesne were both graduating,” Fasting noted, “and then I saw it was kind of wide open and there were a lot of opportunities as long as I came back in good shape.”
Fasting still ranks seventh in UM career assists with 363 and 20th in scoring with 1,047 points. He was a first-team all-Big Sky Conference selection as a senior and played on league championship teams and in the NCAA Tournament as a junior and senior.
What stands out most besides the win at Pepperdine was the first Big Sky title in 1991 that took a long-established monkey off the program’s back.
“I can still remember being up by about 10 points (on Idaho) with seven minutes to go and saying, ‘Man, we’ve got this, we’re gonna win this championship game,’” Fasting recalled. “Doing that got us into the NCAA Tournament which is the dream of every basketball player, I think.”
While playing overseas Fasting would stay in contact with Griz teammate Matt Kempfert when he came back to Missoula to visit. He still talks to DeCuire, now Mike Montgomery’s assistant coach at Cal, and occasionally exchanges text messages with Delvon Anderson.
“Nobody super consistently,” Fasting said, “but when we get the opportunity we reach out and talk to each other. It’s like no time has gone by when we do see each other.”
Fasting said his experience at UM was a “launching pad for understanding the broader things in life and all of the different scenarios that you could become involved with.
“The warmth of the University of Montana and the feeling of being together were really positive.” Fasting explained, “We had kids from all over the place and we just came together and had a common cause.
“It was just a great experience,” Fasting continued, “and it translated into what I do now. You start at the beginning of the year with a certain team and you do everything you can to make and build and create roles. And (then) it’s over and you starting planning and getting ready for the next year.
“The lessons I’ve learned are still being played out in my current life,” Fasting concluded. “I’ve been working for almost a decade in schools, and every school I’ve worked at we’ve improved student achievement.
“I’ve never been at a school that slid backwards, and I think all those attributes and things that I’ve learned have had a direct influence on a lot of that.”
