‘Ike was tough and fearless’: Set to enter the Inland Northwest Sports Hall of Fame, former WSU hoops star Isaac Fontaine can still fill it up

The 49-year-old tax accountant spots nearly 20 years to most of his opponents in the weekly 30-and-over league basketball games he plays every week at his local community center.

But he can still get up to dunk. And his game is effective at all ranges from beyond the arc to the rim. Asked about his scoring, the numbers-cruncher said he averages about 20 points a game.

“I still know a few tricks,” Isaac Fontaine IV reported, the younger guys not being familiar with a guard unleashing power moves in the lane.

Fontaine always was wily with the ball. No, wait, more accurately, he was a cold-blooded scorer.

And for four seasons at Washington State (1993-94 to 1996-97), Fontaine scored more than any player in the school’s history (2,003 points).

This week, Fontaine will be added to the Inland Northwest Sports Hall of Fame.

By phone, Fontaine confirmed the story that best exemplified his scorers’ mentality. Having barely set foot on the WSU campus, he consulted the basketball media guide for the totals of the career scoring leader.

When he saw Steve Puidokas’ 1,894 points at the top of the list, Fontaine informed senior teammate Eddie Hill that he was going to break that record.

“I remember that,” said Hill, associate head coach of men’s basketball at University of California-Riverside. “Confident kid that put in the work to achieve his goals. … Ike was tough and fearless. … I loved that kid.”

What’s not to love? Fontaine averaged 16.7 points over 120 career games (21.9 as a senior), shooting a remarkable 45.7% from 3-point range on 455 career attempts.

For perspective, former Cougar Klay Thompson, now with the Dallas Mavericks after being a feared perimeter threat for 11 seasons with the Golden State Warriors, had a career 3-point percentage of 39.0 in three seasons at WSU.

Not only was Fontaine a two-time All Pac-10 first-team selection, he was also an honor student.

Both his confidence and competitiveness were passed on from his father, Isaac Fontaine III.

“My father played semiprofessionally, went to college at Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo and was a high jumper, 6-10 or 6-11,” Fontaine said. “He gave me my confidence.”

After leading Jesuit High (Sacramento suburbs) to a NorCal championship, Fontaine targeted either Washington State or Washington, having worn a Pac-10 T-shirt as a kid. (“It had pictures of all the teams’ mascots on it”).

He visited both schools. “When I went to Washington State, everybody on the team was very welcoming. It just seemed like a good fit to me, and I really enjoyed Pullman.”

But he wasn’t quite prepared for the demands of coach Kelvin Sampson.

“His coaching style was different from what my high school coach did,” Fontaine said. “Like running drills, running lines, those sorts of things. I had to get used to running when somebody messed up. It took a little while, but it was good for me; he taught me to play hard, to a different level.”

He reached a different level rather quickly, scoring 33 points in a win over Michigan State in his second game as a freshman.

“I got on a roll and I just kept shooting,” Fontaine said. Eighteen years old, in first big-time game, he hit 9 of 14 shots, going 5 for 6 from beyond the arc.

Sampson’s response? “He said to just keep following what he said and I’d have games like this all the time.”

Well, not all the time, but often, as the Cougars advanced to the NCAA Tournament his freshman season, losing in the first round to Boston College.

After that season, when Sampson accepted the offer to take over the Oklahoma program, he invited Fontaine to come with him to Norman.

“I did not want to play in the Big-12 and I did not want to go to Oklahoma,” Fontaine said. “It wasn’t even a hard decision to stay. During my time, nobody really transferred that much. I was already where I wanted to be and in the conference I wanted to be in.”

Fontaine went on to start 90 consecutive games. The Cougars made two NIT appearances before sliding down the Pac standings and missing the postseason his senior season.

He most fondly recalls the games in Beasley Coliseum, such as his 38 points against Arizona in a scoring duel with Wildcat guard Damon Stoudamire, and his senior game against UCLA when he broke the 2,000-point mark.

“We always had good crowds and the great cheering section,” he said, particularly recalling the pep band playing the theme from the movie “Superman” when he came on the floor. “That used to pump me up at the beginning of the game, so I started requesting them to play it.”

Teammate Carlos Daniel, also a WSU Hall of Honor inductee, bonded with Fontaine over their shared seriousness toward their academics.

“It was something Ike and I took seriously; I was kind of inspired by him,” said Daniel, kinesiology chair at Concordia University in Texas.

And on the court: “I was always taken aback by how he could score,” Daniel said. “He was crafty. He knew the angles and thought the game in a different way. To be able to score the amount of points he scored when the other team knew it was coming, you’ve got to be creative. If you let (him) shoot 3s, he can give you 30. If you take the jumper away, he can give you eight to 10 points in transition and get to the line four or five times, and all of a sudden he’d be back up to his average.”

Daniel said that before games he used to wonder: “How’s he going to do it tonight?”

But, Daniel clarified, “he was never going to put his scoring over the success of the team or program.”

That must have made him the perfect teammate, right? “Well, he could have given me more assists,” Daniel added. “He wasn’t going to lead the team in assists.”

From start to finish, though, Fontaine led his conference in joy per game.

“I don’t think Ike ever had a bad time playing basketball,” Daniel said. “He may not have had a great game and maybe we lost, but at the end of the day, Ike was always like ‘I got to hoop today.’ That joy was always fun to see.”

After WSU, Fontaine played around the world, but got only six games in March 2002 in the NBA, scoring 11 career points with the Memphis Grizzlies.

“A lot of times (making it) is being in the right situation in the right time,” he said. He speculated that maybe his ballhanding was a limiting factor, and his in-between size, at 6-foot-4.

“I believe if I got an ample chance and gotten somewhere (fitting) I would have excelled. It just wasn’t in the cards for me.”

Always being “a numbers person,” his accounting career has been rewarding, and he has time to pass on his crafty insights to his son, Isaac Fontaine V, a high-school freshman showing promise.

Given the increase transfer mobility of college players, he doubts top scorers are likely to stay in one place long enough to break his WSU scoring record. Thompson had 1,765 points, but left for the NBA after three seasons in Pullman.

As for his hall of fame recognition: “I’m really appreciative when somebody recognizes all the hard work I put in and want to say thank you for the time I was on the court and brought enjoyment to the fans.”

Isaac Fontaine IV is not ready to give up his time on the court. It not only brings him joy, he said, but serves as his “therapy,” keeping him sane and grounded.

Nobody plays the theme from “Superman” when he takes the court now, but you can be assured that if his community center league keeps track of a career scoring record, Fontaine knows what it is, and he’ll play until he breaks it.