Born and raised in France, Tariq was a rising star in the French league on the Evreux team, when he decided to make the big leap and joined Michigan university, whose coach had recruited him based on what Tariq's uncle had told him. Things started going well for Tariq, who was still known as Olivier Saint Jean at the time, and he even got some exposure thanks to the presence on the team of the "remnants" of the famous Fab Five (on that subject read the fabulous book by Mitch Albom,Fab Five, namely Juwan Howard, Jalen Rose, Jimmy King and Ray Jackson. But his sophomore season did not see him making any real headway, and he decided in Dec 94 to transfer to a little-known college, San Jose State University, where he would have much less exposure to a national audience (playing on the West Coast, in a small league, you get the picture), but much more opportunities to show his ball skills.
After redshirting and sitting out the mandatory year, he took the WAC league by storm. But his San Jose State Spartans also had success, namely by having a huge cinderella season. The way things worked is the team was in a division where only the first four teams qualified for the league tourney. Being around 6-10, the Spartans appeared unlikely contenders. But they won some games they had to win, and found themselves in the tournament, mostly with teams who had a good deal of success during the whole season. That's when the team, led by its French senior, started doing it Hoosiers style, and beat teams it should not have beat to end up in the WAC tournament finals. So while everyone in class was stressing over the year-end exam. Olivier had already scored 25 points in the semis to lift his team to where it was..  But something funny happened, and  was right in front of ESPN 2 on a nice warm Sunday.The team started playing like one, and even though Tariq had 27 pts, it took a huge last-second trey by Rich Taylor to win it, and in effect get qualified for the NCAA tournament, even though the Spartans had a 13-19 record ! Unfortunately that record also made them a no 16 seed, so they had to face mighty Kentucky. But they did more than all right, even leading the score at one point in the first half until the Wildcats got a hold of their senses and took over the game. Olivier's contribution to his team ? Oh, just 18 pts and 7 boards..

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