Written before last night's game--and he did get a little playing time!
Ricardo Arguello column: SMC's Frozena lives out his dream
Former Zephyrs star joins Golden Eagles
Milwaukee
Somebody, anybody, feel free to pinch Robert Frozena. You remember Frozena, don't you?
The former St. Mary Central basketball star who was one of the state's top scorers last season and is currently a Marquette University freshman — and who recently became a member of the Golden Eagles basketball team as a walk-on.
And Marquette is no run-of-the-mill Division I team. The Golden Eagles, with one of the best backcourts in college hoops, are regarded as a potential Final Four team.
Surely this is a dream, right Robert?
"It's just so surreal," Frozena said. "It's kind of a whirlwind of things. It hasn't really hit me that you're playing basketball and on a top-10 college team."
Frozena, who attends Marquette on an academic scholarship, initially had no designs to try out for the Golden Eagles.
According to Frozena, a family friend affiliated with Marquette got in contact with the coaches in September and "things picked up from there."
Frozena, a 6-foot-1 guard, went through some initial workouts for Golden Eagles coach Tom Crean.
He did enough to impress him and the rest of the Golden Eagles staff because in November he got the call to go through some more workouts.
As fate would have it, a knee injury that sidelined freshman recruit Trevor Mbakwe opened up an opportunity for Frozena.
"One of the assistants said they had some injuries on the team and that they wanted to put me through some more workouts," Frozena said. "I did that and came to a couple of practices and I ended up making the roster."
Frozena officially joined the team shortly before the Golden Eagles' 100-65 rout of UW-Milwaukee on Nov. 30.
He scored his first point, on a free throw, in Marquette's 82-51 victory over Sacramento State on Dec. 15.
"That was exciting, but my parents were not at the game. They were in Houston at the time and didn't get to see it," Frozena said. "(Crean) was telling me to get in there and I ended up getting fouled and ended up hitting the first free throw.
"It was one of those feelings that is pretty incredible."
Frozena picked up a couple of more points and a rebound in the Golden Eagles' 77-47 win over Savannah State last Saturday.
Those minutes may become tougher to get during Marquette's Big East slate, which begins today against Providence.
But Frozena's former coach at St. Mary Central, Mark Ziebell, thinks Frozena will do whatever it takes to help the Golden Eagles in preparation for those conference games.
Ziebell is now the head coach at Green Bay Southwest.
"It doesn't surprise me at all," Ziebell said of Frozena joining the Golden Eagles. "First of all, he has a fantastic positive attitude and when you have that, good things happen to those kinds of people. Also, he's a good student and a quality young man. When you've been around him as long as I have, there's nothing that is going to surprise you.
"I really think that the sky's the limit for a guy like that."
Ricardo Arguello: 920-993-1000, ext. 558, or rarguello@postcrescent.com
http://www.postcrescent.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080103/APC0201/801030667/1892
