At North Davidson, Themus Fulks had the highest-scoring senior season in NCHSAA history. But after his scholarship wasn’t renewed at South Carolina State, he entered the transfer portal.
Fulks received immediate interest from Winthrop and Longwood, but neither pulled the trigger. He visited Catawba, loved the coaching staff and loved how they played, but came to a crossroads between a Division II school and missing out on his Division I dreams. At that point, he had a conversation with his mother, Delta Cain.
“When a little doubt comes to your mind, you start speaking it and it’s to my mom, so I try to talk to her about whatever is going on,” said Fulks, the current leader in assists at Louisiana (26-7), a 13 seed which faces fourth-seeded Tennessee (23-10) in the first round of the NCAA Tournament in Orlando on Thursday night. “I was just telling her, I was like, ‘Mom, maybe I’m just not a Division I point guard; maybe, I’m just not,’ and then she told me I am.”
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Cain told her son he could attend Catawba if he wanted to, and that she would support him no matter what. “’ … But I believe you can do it, I know you can do it, you know you can do it, so if we both believe you can do it, then do it.’”
Louisiana-Lafayette’s Themus Fulks starred at North Davidson in high school before stints at prep school and junior college.
When Brandon Mullis arrived to coach North Davidson, he met with his players. Mullis has coached at the college level, helped develop dozens to make it there and has guided several to the pros.
After the June 2017 meeting with Fulks, Mullis quickly recognized that the junior’s D-I intentions were more than just talk. Fulks, a three-sport athlete, played football during the fall and was on the track team, but Fulks constantly asked Mullis if he could get into the gym.
Before Mullis’ arrival, the Black Knights went 23-49 over the previous three seasons. In 2017-18, North Davidson made the playoffs for the first time since 2014, with Fulks leading the 16-12 team averaging 24.4 points, 4.6 assists and 1.8 steals.
As a senior, Fulks had team highs in points (35.2), assists (4.5) and steals (3.1), while also being second in rebounds (6.6) for a 24-6 team that won a conference championship for the first time in 26 years. His 1,055 points are the most in NCHSAA history for a senior and just two shy of the all-time mark for any season.
His 29 20-point games are tied for the all-time high, while a streak of 18 straight 30-point games is eight higher than the nearest competitor.
“Themus just had such a ridiculous ability to break his defender down off the dribble,” Mullis said. “And Themus will never be known as the quickest or the fastest, but when he got that ball in his hand, he was like lightning.
“He had the ability to use his shiftiness and his ability to control the basketball to get a step ahead of his defender and once he got into the paint, he had so many different ways that he could finish around the rim.”
At 5-foot 11 inches and 155 pounds, Fulks proved he could score over and around taller defenders. But scouts from higher-level schools saw his size as a concern and thought his lateral quickness wasn’t good enough at the other end of the floor.
Fulks had a 3.6 GPA, maintained good grades and, according to Mullis, has had no red flags off the court.
Only 17, Fulks decided to pursue the prep school route over a smaller four-year college. His top choices were Hargrave and Fork Union, but neither took him, so he ultimately chose in-state Moravian Prep.
At the post-grad program, Fulks lived away from Davidson County for the first time. In a team house away from his mother and father, Themus Sr., he learned how to live on his own, took online classes and took advantage of the sports-focused culture, working out or working on his game up to four times a day.
During that time, Fulks grew two inches and gained 20 pounds of muscle. In high school he couldn’t bench press 185, but says he now can do it in sets of five.
At the same time, being on a team with high-level college prospects meant nobody cared about his past accolades or the records he broke at North Davidson.
“Going there helped me learn that you can be a great player, but really good players know how to play with other good players,” Fulks said.
He played his college freshman season at Division I South Carolina State under Coach Murry Garvin. But COVID-19 meant limited practice time, affected the season and took the team out of the MEAC Tournament field.
Fulks received MEAC All-Rookie honors, but with a 1-17 record, the school made the switch to Coach Tony Madlock, a longtime college assistant who had most recently worked under Penny Hardaway at Memphis.
In 2020-21, the Bulldogs’ top six players in minutes were all underclassmen. Madlock said that the school only allowed eight full-ride scholarships, compared to the NCAA Division I maximum of 13.
Hoping to rebuild, Madlock said he planned to have an older roster, which meant making a tough decision not to renew Fulks’ scholarship.
“Coach Garvin let us know that he was fired basically and the new coach came and he wanted me to have a conversation with him,” Fulks said. “Long story short, I had the conversation with him, he told me he was bringing his son in and he basically told me it wasn’t going to be a fair opportunity for me.”
Madlock did bring in his son, T.J. Madlock, who would be the only first-year freshman on the 2021-22 roster. But he made the All-MEAC third team as a freshman as South Carolina State improved to 15-16.
Themus Fulks had a team-high 23 points against South Alabama to help the Cajuns win their first Sun Belt Conference Tournament title since 2014.
Fulks arrived at Dodge City, facing what he called the most significant challenge. He went there thinking that if he could play against the best players and the best teams in junior college, it would be worth it.
Coach Jake Williams of Dodge City Community College said he thought Fulks was a “15 minute-type” guy, but that didn’t stop him from playing against some of the top junior colleges in the country.
Williams said he didn’t envision Fulks being more than a bench player. But in a guard-heavy competition, Fulks and New Mexico State transfer Kalen Williams battled to where Williams decided he had to make room for both.
Williams shifted to shooting guard. While they had to adjust chemistry-wise, the Conquistadors finished 30-5, a program record for single-season wins. It also made the NJCAA national tournament for the first time since 1974.
Fulks shot 55.4 percent from the field, 41.5 from 3-point range and averaged 17.1 points as the school’s first player named second team all-American or higher since 1984. His 5.4 assists per game led the KJCCC, for which he was named newcomer of the year and first team all-conference.
Mullis has watched his former player from afar, saying determination has helped Fulks develop into a more well-rounded player.
After the season, recruiters came calling. When Louisiana assistant Brock Morris called him the first time, Fulks didn’t know much about the program. But the Ragin’ Cajuns were Sun Belt Conference Tournament runners-up in 2022 and Morris realized Fulks was the missing piece at point guard.
This season, Fulks is fourth on the team in scoring but leads in assists at 5.9 per game. Fulks, now a redshirt sophomore, has started in each of the team’s 33 games.
In the March 6 conference tournament final, Fulks had a team-high 23 points, but also had a key late-game assist that helped lead Louisiana to a 71-66 victory over South Alabama. The Sun Belt title gave Louisiana its first NCAA Tournament berth since 2014.
“I mean, I’m speechless because I know a lot of people, that’s what they play for, I know a lot of people don’t get this opportunity,” Fulks said. “I know first-hand, when an opportunity presents itself, you have to act on it fast.”
