Christina Pham arrived at her college decision about two weeks before she announced it on Oct. 8. She didn't have a specific deadline date in mind, but knew who she'd tell first: her uncle, longtime coach and father figure, Vinh Bui.
Pham texted him that she was ready to commit to Fairfield while Bui was driving to Nobles for a workout. He told her he cried in the car when he saw the text, and as soon as they met up, they hugged.
Pham choosing the Stags represents a significant win for a player and a program who have each charted their own paths to success. For Fairfield, it showed their unique play style and on-court branding resonates with the top prospects in the area. For Pham, it's another testament to her bond with Bui. Together they helped turn an unknown Shooting Touch AAU program into a regional competitor, win back-to-back NEPSAC AA titles at Nobles and develop a 5-foot-7 guard from inner-city Boston into one of New England's top-scoring guards.
"I can't even explain the amount of times where I've just been, literally in the dumps, crying through through it all, and then he's just been there for everything," Pham said. "Even the ups too, like this big accomplishment, all the others with Shooting Touch, with Nobles — literally every single moment, he's been by my side, and it's a two-person thing for both of us."
Fairfield beat out several Ivy League schools, close finalist Tulane, and even some local high-majors like Boston College and Providence that had initially offered Pham. It was a hard decision; Pham held out longer than most of the local top recruits, but didn't want to have her choice made for her when schools filled their scholarships and dropped out.
As she narrowed her list, basketball fit became a differentiator. Pham averaged 12.1 points and 5.1 assists last winter at Nobles as a sharpshooter who could score as an off-ball sharpshooter or act as a lead playmaker. She wanted to join a team that would give her both roles again.
"Obviously, there's space for me to grow and evolve and learn different things, but I want to play fast, I want to do pick-and-rolls (and) hand-offs, I want the ball in my hands and I want to be able to shoot," Pham said. "So that's super important to me, and then I also don't want to just be seen as a scoring point guard. I am a scoring point guard, but I want to go somewhere where I have teammates that I can facilitate for as well."
Fairfield calls itself "Shooters University," which was a good start. When Pham watched practices, she appreciated the team culture, high communication level and focus on transition play and those aforementioned ball-screen actions. The Stags coined a unique name for their forwards: Road Runners, or "Meeps," to emphasize that they're fast and versatile, unlike traditional post players. Pham liked that style; she rarely played with traditional bigs on her Shooting Touch teams.
But most importantly: Fairfield gave Pham proof that its approach under third-year coach Carly Thibault-DuDonis leads to national success.
The Stags offered Pham at one of Nobles' open gyms more than two years ago. Pham remembers taking an unofficial visit to the school where Thibault-DuDonis and the coaches outlined their vision. Pham was intrigued at the time, but then she saw last year's historic season. The Stags went 31-2 — including a 29-game win streak and an unbeaten MAAC season — made the NCAA Tournament and earned their first AP Top 25 ranking in program history. Suddenly Fairfield was one of the best mid-majors in the country, and Pham took note.
"The really cool part is that at my official (visit), we had that same meeting, and they got to prove to me all the stats of what they said they were going to do and what they ended up doing," she said. "So that meant a lot. The proof and the evidence definitely meant a lot, that they weren't just lying, that they did it and that they proved that they can even do more."
Seeing proof became a critical factor for Pham during her recruiting process. She's had to prove a lot herself as a smaller guard who has put in countless hours of workouts with Bui to separate herself as a shooter and scorer. When Pham and Bui started at Shooting Touch, their team, they'll both admit, was not competitive. But they proved they could lead the way and have since built the program, made up largely of Boston-area girls like Pham, into a formidable opponent.
Pham is one of the local community's most active players, and when she does get to Fairfield, she wants to show that girls like her can thrive at a high college level.
"(I want to be) paying it forward and being someone at Shooting Touch at every single practice, where these girls can look at me and think, 'Hey, that's possible because Christina did it. It's possible because Christina was where I was at, and now she's going to a Top 25 team, playing Division 1 basketball, and she's also giving back to me and the rest of my team.' I think that's great," she said. "And that continues the cycle, because then those girls will do it, and that only empowers more people from the city and more people like them."
