Spanning the Globe, Fordham Finds Talent Wherever It Can

Even if you had never heard of Joseph Chartouny before he verbally committed to Fordham last week, is it really all that surprising that he decided to play his college basketball in the Bronx?

After all, one of the biggest stories of the Rams' busy offseason has been the welcoming of talent from outside the United States to Rose Hill.

Chartouny, from Montreal's College Jean-de-Brebeuf, is the most recent international player to commit, but this story started a while back. Nemanja Zarkovic, Chartouny's high school teammate, Christian Sengfelder (Germany), Zaire Thompson (Germany) and Dekeba Battee-Aston (Australia), all from outside the country, arrived on campus this summer. 

It's not that Fordham hasn't been a destination for local talent. Of the 15 players listed on the team's roster, seven are from New York, including highly touted recruits Eric Paschall and Jon Severe.

In an interview with Bleacher Report this summer, Fordham head coach Tom Pecora indicated that this is one of the ways the Rams have to go about their business.

"We're Fordham," he said. "We're a unique place, and we have to find a unique way to put together a winning basketball program. I think we're doing that."

Canada has been kind to the Rams of late: Zarkovic is a freshman, Chartouny will be on campus next summer, and in late August the Rams took a foreign trip to Canada, where they went 4-0.

They may be on to something here, tapping into a market known more for its hockey than for hoops. Zarkovic told B/R that he feels Canadian basketball is on the rise.

"There's a lot of good basketball that's played in Canada," he said. "I know the reputation of Canadian basketball is getting much better. They've beaten some pretty good teams recently. NCAA teams [have gone] there and [lost]."

No one would know better than Zarkovic. Last summer, a full year before his Fordham career began, Zarkovic averaged 20.5 points in four games against college programs. He learned that he could compete at the highest level. Fordham learned that he could do so as well.

“We evaluated him on tape against Division II opponents that went up and played there (Canada) last summer," Pecora told B/R before Zarkovic joined the Rams, "and he played great in a lot of those games against good, veteran upperclassmen. And then when I went and saw him work out, I felt very comfortable with him.”

After Chartouny verbally committed, Mike Chmielewski, the head coach at Jean-de-Brebeuf, said that while it's nice to send players to Division I schools, he wants those guys to make real contributions to the programs they join.

"It's nice to place guys D-I, but we want to place guys D-I that actually have an impact on the game," he said. "We expect them to actually have an impact, [to] help turn around a program like Fordham that's been making strides but has a big challenge of competing in the Atlantic 10.

"We want them to actually succeed and have a playing career, not gather bench splinters."

Quotations in this article were obtained firsthand.

Charles Costello covers the Fordham Rams for Bleacher Report. A full archive of his articles can be found here. Twitter: @CFCostello