Kieran Shannon: Fulton now right at home at the heart of March Madness

ON THE BALL: CJ Fulton, right, of the Charleston Cougars drives by Tyler Stephenson-Moore of the Stony Brook Seawolves in the first half of last week’s clash in Washington. ‘I’ve always found that once that ball is thrown up, everything calms down and I’m okay,’ Fulton says. Picture: Mitchell Layton/Getty Images

Almost every house in America will be keeping an eye on whether CJ Fulton’s Charleston Cougars can upset Alabama tonight.

Even – especially – the White House.

Part of what made Barack Obama the hippest president in US history was that every year he sat in the Oval Office he would publicly share his March Madness bracket; being mindful that more than half of the adult population of his country place a wager on the NCAA tournament, a third of it are willing to call in sick or skip work to watch it, and yet 80% of employees believe the tournament with all the office pools it spawns boosts morale in the workplace. 

Like a lot of other features of the Obama administration, the practice of filling out a bracket was discontinued by his successor but it has been renewed by the current incumbent.

And one of the standout features of President Joe Biden’s 2024 bracket is that he opted for the College of Charleston, a lowly number 13 seed, to fell Alabama, a number four seed who share the same campus with the most successful football programme in the country.

There’s a reason Biden is in a minority. Alabama are the highest scoring team in all of America (there are over 350 Division One schools in the NCAA, with just 68 making it to The Dance that is March Madness), averaging 90.8 points a game.

Their guard, Mark Sears, was just voted onto the All-American second team.

But maybe Biden’s pick was informed by the identify and stat line of Charleston’s guard.

Twenty-one-year-old Christopher James Fulton from Belfast happens to lead the entire country in assists to turnovers; for every time he gives the ball away – which is precisely just once a game – he will rack up 4.21 assists. The next best in all of NCAA basketball is way back on 3.8. 

As College of Charlestown coach Pat Kelsey has said, “His [CJ’s] assist-to-turnover ratio is ridiculous. As a coach you want a point guard that takes care of the ball. If you give it to him at seven o’clock, you want it back safe and sound at nine o’clock.” In Fulton, Kelsey has the safest hands in college basketball.

Even someone as solid and steady as Fulton will admit that it has been hard to remain unaffected in all the commotion around March Madness. He returns our call only a couple of hours before he and his team will leave for Seattle, followed by a further five-hour bus drive upstate Washington to Spokane, the scene of their dance against Alabama.

“I didn’t sleep much during the [Coastal Athletic Association] conference finals [which Charleston had to win to secure a ticket to the NCAA tournament],” he says. “And since then there have been more butterflies.

“But this is what you play for, this is why I came to Charleston. And I’ve always found that once that ball is thrown up, everything calms down and I’m okay.” 

He has a deep archive and reservoir of experiences to draw from: I’ve been somewhere like this before. His first competitive game in college basketball, in November 2021 for Lafayette, Pennsylvania, was against Syracuse in the Carrier Dome, the largest indoor arena in college sport. A fortnight later he played in Duke in their last season with Coach K at their helm.

And then there were the games back home, for St Malachy’s, for Star, coached by Dad, Adrian.

Like the 2018 U16 schools cup final against St Mary’s Tralee. Again he was a bag of nerves or excitement – both – and again it worked out being “a pretty cool day”; he’d finish up with 47 points, hitting a staggering 15 three-pointers.

Adrian recalls a big Cup game the previous year against St Joseph’s, ‘The Bish’, of Galway. “At halftime their crowd were shouting [at him], ‘Over-rated! Over-rated!’ He was there in the huddle to me, ‘That’s a pretty cool chant.’ 

“I said, ‘Prove them wrong. Just put the ball in the basket.’ He’d have been looking at me. ‘What offence are we running?’ And I said, ‘I don’t care. You have to score.’ And he did. He’ll always be a pass-first guy but whatever the occasion is or occasion demands, he tends to rise to it. Once he gets out there, he’s more comfortable between those lines than anywhere else.” 

He was always going to play basketball; growing up in the house he did it was never going to be any other way.

His grandfather Danny was the first coach to enter the Irish Basketball Hall of Fame, not least for coaching the national team and a couple of Star teams to the Superleague title.

Adrian himself was the starring point guard on those teams and various Irish national sides, seeped as he was in the sport. As a kid he’d tag along with his father to coaching camps across the country, shadowing the likes of Pete Strickland and living by their various creeds like if you’re even going to the corner shop to get bread for your mum, dribble a ball along the way. CJ was similarly immersed in the game, following his dad and granddad everywhere.

He still played a range of other sports. His mother Jackie was a showjumper and works in the fitness game, just as Adrian is a PE teacher. Jackie’s father, Seamie Granaghan, was on the first Donegal team to win an Ulster title, back in 1972 along with Brian McEniff, and when they won it again in 1974, being the only man to score from play in every game in both championship successes. 

So CJ himself played a good bit of football for St Enda’s and was a handy soccer player too. But by 15  he had to start choosing, and there was always going to be one choice. It was just a question of whether he’d ever play it in the States and when.

Adrian would have had thoughts of him playing high school ball over there but is now glad that he didn’t. By nature CJ is a homebird and it would have been too soon. Instead he stayed and after the Star national league team lost a few guards through injury, he started playing with them at 16 and thrived. At 17 he’d helped them to a Superleague title. It not only exposed him to playing and training with grown men, an advantage Luka Doncic often cites as what he had over the rest of the NBA draft class of 2018. 

During Covid they decided it was time. As well as his league title, he now had his A-levels, so that autumn of 2020, he headed over to Winchendon, Massachusetts, following in the footsteps and example and advice of Darragh O’Sullivan, son of the legendary Tom.

“We felt the prep-school route was the best one for CJ,” says Adrian, “because we weren’t sure if he could hack being away for four years while he’d be able to cope for a year. But as it turned out he adapted well.

“It was definitely the right move,” concurs CJ. “I realised pretty quickly that if I wanted to keep getting better, it was the place to be. There were just a lot better athletes over here, and the game was at a quicker pace.” 

Within weeks he had got an offer to play the following season with a D1 school: Lafayette in Pennsylvania. He didn’t immediately bite, following the advice of others that there’d be other, possibly better offers, but by March it was as good as it gets; with Covid prolonging the career of so many existing college players, few high school players were being offered any spots.

It worked out well for Fulton. In his first month he was playing in Syracuse and Duke; by the end of his first season he was leading the nation in assists to turnovers.

By the end of last season though he was ready for a change. Everything else in Lafayette was changing: the coaching staff, players, and with all the turnover, the chance to win and play in March Madness was moving on too. So he put himself into the transfer portal, a sort of collegiate form of free agency that has only come into the NCAA scene in recent years. Charleston were in like in Flynn.

Right away both parties felt they were right for the other and the feeling hasn’t changed. Fulton offers that security and game intelligence Kelsey highly values while Charleston have provided Fulton with the winning culture and stage that he craved.

Charleston is renowned for its beach, cobblestone streets and horse-drawn carriages, but although with 150,000 people it’s the biggest town in South Carolina, it has no pro sports team. The biggest show in town are the Cougars, with every Thursday or Saturday night a sellout, folks wanting to see CJ & Co.

It’s not all glitz and glam. If anything being a student-athlete with a D1 programme is a grind. You might not get back from a road game until two in the morning, then be expected to be in class at 10. If you didn’t have a road game, you’re lifting at 8.45. After those couple of classes you’ll shoot with some assistant coach, catch another couple of classes, then work out with the main team from three to six o’clock. Film, weights, workouts when not playing or studying (his degree in political science): it’s relentless.

At first it was a shock to the system. “As a freshman I was naïve as to how much work was involved.” Now it’s a routine he and his body relishes. Charleston’s S&C coach Eli Foy previously worked at Arizona with NBA talents like Lauri Markannen and Deandre Ayton. Under his tutelage Fulton has developed from a mere baller into an athlete, coming in now at 195 pounds.

The scrawny kid is no more, and the accent, he’ll self-depreciatingly admit, is fading too; over the phone he could be mistaken for Rory McIlroy, his accent now residing somewhere between the Lagan and the Cooper rivers that respectively traverse his hometown and his adopted one.

He hasn’t forgotten his roots though and his roots haven’t forgotten him. The other day his father, mother and sister made the 23-hour commute from Belfast to Spokane. After the Alabama game they will hot-tail it back home. On Sunday at 4pm Star have a Superleague home quarter-final against UCC Demons. Their flight from Seattle gets into Dublin at 1pm.

“I’m going to just drive up the road and walk into the gym,” smiles Adrian. Could be just as it’s about to start. Game could even have already started. Either way he wasn’t going to miss March Madness, the one here or over there.

Not when you’re from a house where they’re basketball mad all year, all the time.