From fortune to family: How a freshman from Minnesota came to lead George Mason’s men’s basketball team.
May, 2018
Down by three in a tight conference game at home against UMass, George Mason freshman forward Goanar Mar was fouled on a last-ditch three point attempt with one second remaining.
This was not unfamiliar territory for the Mankato, Minn. native. Back in November, Mar hit four critical free throws in a comeback win on the road against James Madison. This time the stakes were different, as a fourth place finish in the Atlantic 10 was on the line, which would grant them a bye through the first two rounds of the conference tournament.
After the Patriots blew a 16-point lead at halftime, the energy inside Eagle Bank Arena shifted from despair to hopeful nervousness as Mar stepped up to the charity stripe.
For the game to be resting in the freshman’s hands felt like a matter of destiny, because if things played out differently, he may not even be playing basketball here in the United States.
Mar’s roots can be traced back to South Sudan, where his mother Elizabeth Jiech resided with her family and raised four children before emigrating to the United States in 1998 primarily to get treatment for her daughter’s polio. She settled in Des Moines, Iowa, and later that year on December 1, Goanar was born.
“She definitely liked being there with her mom and her family, so the move was hard,” Mar says as he looks back on his mother’s journey. “I think if my sister didn’t have polio, my life might be completely different. I don’t know what I’d be doing or where I’d be. I don’t even know if I’d play basketball or not.”
Shortly after, Elizabeth traveled north with her five children to Mankato, Minn., where Mar would eventually discover his passion for the game of basketball.
At first, he only played at the RAC and the local YMCA, never against high competition and never really taking it too seriously. That all changed the summer after eighth grade when Mar joined an elite AAU program in Minnesota coached by Nick Carroll.
“That’s when I had to start taking it seriously, just so I was able to compete with those guys who have been competing at a high level since fifth and sixth grade,” Mar remarks. “This was the first time that I knew what it took, and I was playing up a year, so on top of that most of the guys were already bigger and had a year of high school under their belt.”
Seeing basketball as opportunity to be the most successful person in his family, Mar asked Carroll and his wife Laura if he could move in with them. They welcomed him to their home in Plymouth, where Carroll not only provided him the resources to improve his game, but also played the role of a father figure that Mar never had growing up.
“He showed me a lot about life in general, more than just basketball,” Mar says. “He’s taught me a lot of things in terms of taking care of your business and being not only a complete player but a complete student.”
After seeing what it took and being so far behind, the next school year was a real grind for Mar. It was his freshman year at DeLaSalle High School, and the head coach of the boys’ basketball team was Dave Thorson, who spent over 23 seasons in that role and whose nine state championships at the Minnesota school are the most by any coach in state history.
“I was working out every morning before school, lifting after school, and shooting some more after school,” Mar recalls. “We would practice at 6 a.m., so there were days that I would leave the house at 4:30 in the morning to go and get shots up before so I could be ready to go when practice starts.”
Mar credits Thorson’s winning program for setting a foundation in his routine and work habits.
“He was hard, but at the same time he was pushing you because he knew you could do more. My freshman year we had some really good players that helped me grow, and I was able to see what it’s like to be a leader.”
Under Thorson, Mar’s high school basketball achievements included four state titles, one of five finalists for the 2017 Minnesota Mr. Basketball Awards, and a member of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune All-Metro First Team.
Accolades and experience in a winning program isn’t all Mar collected during his time at DeLaSalle. It was also where he developed an interest in math, so much so that he’s now planning on majoring in mechanical engineering, aware of the difficulty that he would face from such a demanding curriculum.
“I like working through the ways that certain things work and trying to figure out how to change and make things easier. I just like that challenge, but the route’s definitely not going to be easy.”
The 19-year-old is the first in his family to attend college, and he had a significant list of potential suitors from Iowa State to Minnesota and Wisconsin before suffering a shin stress fracture during the AAU season prior to his senior year.
“That kind of hurt my recruitment a little bit, so a lot of schools went in a lot of different directions,” Mar says. “But through all that, Mason still wanted me to come and visit, and they took the time to build a relationship ever since my high school games when I was a freshman. The beginning of that relationship and their loyalty was very strong for me.”
Mason assistant coach Dane Fischer was a catalyst in forming that connection. Having grown up in Rochester, Minn., Fischer first saw Mar play as a freshman at DeLaSalle when he was a part of Dave Paulsen’s staff at Bucknell and was instantly impressed by his versatility on both ends of the floor.
When Paulsen took the helm for the Green and Gold in 2015, Fischer and the rest of the staff ramped up the recruiting toward the end of Mar’s junior season.
“He’s one of the most versatile players we have, and one of the biggest things that we talked about as we were recruiting him was, ‘We don’t have anybody like you in our program right now, and we really value that and think you’d have a great opportunity to contribute early on here because of the unique skillset that you bring,’” Fischer recalls.
The 6-foot-7 forward didn’t merely contribute early on, he started every game during his freshman campaign, averaging 10.9 points and 4.4 rebounds and shooting 35 percent from beyond the arc in nearly 32 minutes per contest.
With a shorthanded roster due to transfers, Mar started the season at the five spot in games against powerhouse programs such as Louisville and Auburn, having to defend against taller and more experienced big men as tall as 7-foot.
“He very much had the mindset of having whatever role that we asked of him to help us be as good as we could be,” Fischer says. “He was able to pick up different things on both ends of the floor from multiple positions and to ask him to do what he did as a freshman right at the start of the season was almost unfair.”
Fellow freshman forward Greg Calixte helped take some of the load off Mar’s shoulders down low in December when the two started together in the front court against Penn State. The adjustment allowed Mar to play a more natural position of a stretch four in Paulsen’s three-guard offense.
Not surprisingly, the change coincided with the duo finding their top form, with Mar dropping a career-high 26 points in a win on the road against VCU and Calixte collecting a career-best 12 rebounds on the road against UMass.
“Not every freshman can come in and get immediate minutes and have a big impact to the team as much as me and Goanar did,” Calixte says. “Ever since we got here we’ve just had some type of bond since day one.”
Off the court, Mar is just like your average teenager. He and his teammates get into intense competitions playing video games such as “NBA 2K” and the increasingly popular “Fortnite,” and their insatiable appetites often lead them to spots on campus such as Chipotle and Wing Zone.
Fischer commends the freshman’s work ethic and competitiveness, but Mar’s personable nature outside of basketball is what impresses him the most.
“He’s one of those guys who can talk to a teammate about basketball and do all those things but he can also talk to somebody that’s from a completely different background who maybe doesn’t have the same interests as him.”
“Outside the fact that he’s 6’7, if you met him, you wouldn’t think he’s a really good Division I basketball player. You’d just think he’s a really nice guy.”
“He’s just responsible. If it’s school work, he’s somebody you can rely on for anything like that,” Calixte adds. “He’s the type of person that you could talk to about anything, and he’s always lifting the spirits in the room.”
When Mar’s going through a rough spell on the court or facing a challenge off of it, he often thinks of his mother, who at one point was legally blind due to a battle with glaucoma but is now headed in a positive direction as a result of successful surgeries.
“When I think things are hard for me, it definitely helps to put things in perspective sometimes of what she’s done and that she didn’t give up because I know things would’ve been hard on her coming over here.”
Perhaps that strong foundation is what enabled Mar to act as a chiseled veteran on a Mason team that had one of the youngest rosters in the nation for the 2017-2018 season with an average age of 20.
When the Patriots needed a go-ahead bucket late or found themselves in a close game where shots at the free throw line would determine the result, Mar was the one they looked to.
“He’s built for those types of moments,” Calixte says. “During the year when we would have our struggles, we just looked to Goanar to settle things down.”
The highlight from that February evening against UMass ended up being Ian Boyd making his second game-winning shot for the Patriots in as many games, but without Mar’s poise to knock down all three free throws and send the game into overtime, the jubilation that the Green and Gold faithful felt at the buzzer would’ve been washed away.
“When it gets to certain situations like that, I just have a confidence because I know what I can and can’t do,” Mar explains. “Basically just knowing your game and having confidence in what you’ve worked on is what gets you through that moment.”
“When he’s in those situations, a lot of times we forgot that he was a freshman,” Fischer adds. “When he went to the free throw line against UMass I don’t think there was any doubt in our coaching staff’s mind that he was going to make all three of those shots. He’s wise beyond his years in basketball without a doubt.”
With three years ahead of him, Mar’s put some thought into where his life will lead him once he’s suited up for the Patriots for the last time. Ranging from playing overseas to putting to use a degree that he’s set on earning, the deciding factor in his career will be what brought him to this country in the first place: family.
“Just because of how much I love the game, I’m going to pursue it as long as I possibly can at the highest level I possibly can,” he asserts. “I’m definitely open to anything, just depending on what me and my circle of family and friends want to do. Family’s a bond that has to go deeper than anything.”