The last thing he wanted to hear from that loud speaker was, “The Rickard Raiders have won the 2020 Basketball State Championship.” Heartbreaking for any high school baller who’s just lost against their rival team, but especially for Dallas Graziani, who’s worked tirelessly throughout a grueling 3 month season, all for it to come up short when it mattered most. One of Charter’s most prolific players in school history, Graziani has been doubted his whole life. He’s heard claims of not being tall enough, or athletic enough, or fast enough. But he responded with something stronger: “No one can control how tall or fast they are but they can control how much time they put into it.” That grind Graziani endured paid off on March 25th, 2023, when he won the NCAA Division 2 Championship with Nova Southeastern University. 

  As a transfer from Cooper City High School in his senior year, Dallas, like many others was brought in by Coach Roca to Pines Charter and made an immediate impact, averaging 17 points per game and shooting an impressive 50% from the field in Charter’s first ever run to a state championship. Attributing a lot of success to the man who brought him in, he says, “I love Coach Roca and the coaching staff. Him and his staff are awesome people and genuinely care about their players and the program. Coach Roca is the one who helped me get to NSU and that’s what he does so well. He is great at getting guys to the next level.” 

  A successful high school career is a feat in itself, however, to go on and do it at the highest level in college is a different challenge that many athletes don’t get to achieve. It wasn’t always this way for Graziani; like with any athlete, adversity found its way to Dallas’s doorstep. His freshman year at NSU was the dreaded “COVID year” for collegiate athletics, meaning that there was no season to look forward to. After the NCAA resumed as usual the next season, Graziani broke his foot after only playing in eight games. “It was tough having to sit out, everyone was constantly out there working and I just didn’t get the same chance.” After losing in the “Elite 8” of the NCAA tournament in 2022 and not getting to touch the court with that broken foot, Dallas finally got his chance to show why he was one of the highest recruits to come out of the Charter system. 

  With a 20 point “double double”, racking up 11 assists in his first game back with NSU, Dallas put his name back on the map. This performance set the tone for the season for both Graziani and the Sharks. Dallas had multiple 20 point performances throughout the year while leading the team in minutes per game and making his presence known on the All NCAA Tournament First Team.

 Nova Southeastern went on to have a perfect 35-0 record going into the championship game against a West Liberty team who had a great season in their own right with a record of 33-4. Graziani and the team did what they do best and score the basketball like no other team in the country. Behind Dallas’s 24 points, NSU broke the all time NCAA scoring record for points in the championship game putting up a whopping 111 points. When asked about the feeling of winning a National Championship, he described it as “any athlete’s dream” saying, “The feeling [of winning a NCAA National Championship] is one of the best feelings in the world, it’s almost hard to describe. It was awesome getting to experience it with my team and my family. I think every player dreams of it and tries to imagine the feeling but when it actually happens, the feeling is so much greater than anything I could’ve imagined.”

  As only classified as a redshirt freshman in college, Dallas plans to finish off his four years at Nova Southeastern and ultimately get back to the National Championship. Even at 5’9, Dallas and the Sharks look to bring back more hardware to University Drive  Although Dallas Graziani was not a “Charter Starter” or anything close, his impact on the Jaguar basketball program is undeniable.