The Potato

Sarah Polech: Staff Writer / Lady Person Extraordinaire

Fabulous Melon, known in Central New York as “Fab Melo”, was noticeably absent during Saturday’s match up between Syracuse University and Kansas State. Just days before, news had come out that he was ineligible to partake in the NCAA game due to a prior scholarly engagement. 

Melo, a sophomore at Syracuse University, has been widely known as an intellectual, graduating at the top of his class in high school. Upon receiving a full scholarship to Syracuse University, Fabulous had a guy instinct he would find ease in his classes and readily took up a spot on the basketball team. 

Always putting his studies first, Melo earned an astounding 4.1 GPA at Syracuse his freshman year. This gained the attention of Princeton University, Brown University, as well as Yale University. Each sought to get in touch with him after he maintained this GPA during his first semester this year.

According to Fab’s older brother, Spectacular, the seven-foot-tall Syracuse star struggled his senior year to choose between majoring in chemistry, and taking the route into dentistry.

“When Fabulous found out he was being summoned by the Ivy Leaguers, he dropped everything and left,” explained his brother. “They were sending a letter a week, and finally each asked him to pay a visit.”

This plan seemed ideal to begin with, until the basketball player learned of when his travels would begin; none other than the week Syracuse started the NCAA Tournament. Faced with a tough decision, he turned to his teammates.

Syracuse had lost only one game during the regular season, a day in which Fab had midterms the next day he “just needed to study for.” Repenting for his sin of flawing the otherwise flawless season, he decided to approach them first before just dashing off to the other schools.

However, dash he may. Senior Kris Joseph reassured him the team was strong enough without him to handle Kansas State. That being said, Melo flew out Thursday night to visit his first university, Princeton, for the weekend.

After Syracuse’s win on Saturday afternoon, Melo decided to extend his stay in the Ivy League arena for an additional two weeks. Though missing the NCAA Tournament, Fabulous Melon remains a promising prospect among the elite universities.