Foye Somehow Found Right of Way
Randy Foye was in no mood to celebrate when he returned to Villanova’s hotel about midnight Friday. He didn’t want to eat, didn’t want to hang out with teammates, didn’t even want to flip on the TV to check out highlights of the victory that had just propelled his team into the Elite Eight.
The senior guard played all 45 minutes in the Wildcats’ 60-59 overtime triumph over Boston College in a Minneapolis Regional semifinal, staying in the game despite his repeated requests for a breather, and his only desire was to sleep.
“I was tired,” Foye said Saturday afternoon. “A lot of times I was asking to come out, but Coach just didn’t take me out. I just tried to fight through it.”
Playing with weary legs, Foye scored 21 of his 29 points in the second half and overtime to help complete a stirring comeback that moved the top-seeded Wildcats (28-4) into today’s regional final against third-seeded Florida (30-6) at the Metrodome.
The ability to thrive under challenging conditions has become a motif for Foye, who has dealt with a number of heartbreaking circumstances. His father was killed in a motorcycle accident when Foye was 3 years old, and his mother abandoned him shortly after he completed kindergarten.
Foye doesn’t remember his father and has only a few scattered memories of his mother, including the time she took him to an amusement park before the sorry day when she reportedly slipped into a van and out of his life.
Regina Foye left her son to carve out a hardscrabble existence in Newark, N.J., shuffling between the residences of an aunt and a grandmother, both of whom Foye adoringly calls his grandmothers.
Foye also credits ZeGale Kelliehan, a childhood friend who goes by the nickname “Z,” as a steadying influence who helped him at a time when he could have easily gone astray. Kelliehan, 30, now a special education teacher, will be at the Metrodome this afternoon to root for the kid he once routinely tapped for pickup games.
“There’s definitely something about him that enabled him from a young age to pick the right people to listen to,” Villanova Coach Jay Wright said of Foye. “Of all the guys on the street, the guy he picks is the guy who turned out to be a teacher and an educator, and he picked him at a young age. That’s amazing.”
Said Foye: “I just tried to keep my little circle, surrounded by great people.”
Still, the path to becoming the Big East Conference player of the year who, along with senior guard Allan Ray, has Villanova poised on the brink of its first Final Four since 1985, was filled with detours.
There was the time he witnessed a shooting in the elevator of a housing project when he was 9, and the multiple occasions when he skipped class even though his high school advisor marched him right up to the classroom door.
“I would look inside and wait until she turned the corner,” Foye recalled, “and then just sneak off and cut class.”
Foye also mouthed off to his coach at Newark East Side High, telling him about all the parochial schools that coveted him as a transfer and contending that the only reason apparel giant Adidas had agreed to outfit the team was because of his presence.
“I told him I shouldn’t be playing at East Side,” Foye said. “He was like, ‘Well, you can leave, then.’ ”
But Foye refused to split or to use his circumstances as an excuse for failure.
“I never felt cheated,” Foye said. “I think if I was in my teens and I lost my parents, I think it would be much harder to concentrate on my sport and concentrate on school. But I lost them at a young age when I didn’t really know them as well.”
Foye nearly lost another family member two years ago when younger brother Christopher was shot 11 times after being targeted by a gang. He has made a full recovery.
“He has two kids, and he’s just trying to live a normal life,” Foye said.
Foye still manages to keep his mother close. In September, he had a tattoo of her likeness with the words “In memory of Regina Foye” inscribed on his chest.
“I just felt I needed something of her attached to me, so I put it over my heart,” Foye explained.
Foye presumes his mother is dead, figuring that if she were alive she would have presented herself by now because of her son’s burgeoning fame. But he still might conduct a search for her after he graduates, just to be sure.
“Deep down inside, I’ll probably want to do it just to see if she’s still out there,” he said.
