When Randy Foye stood at the podium of the 2006 NBA Draft, he might have been forgiven if he took a extra moment to stop and remember what it took for him to get there.

Foye was born in 1983 with a rare and potentially deadly medical condition known as situs inversus--literally, his internal organs were all reversed, with his heart on the right side of his body and his liver on the left. His father died when he was two and his mother disappeared from the family when he was five, and was found in an unmarked grave 27 years later. He grew up on a street that formed the demilitarized zone of Newark's two largest street gangs, and was raised by his aunt and supportive members of the community. As he grew older, he had problems with asthma. In 2005, he nearly died in an emergency landing of the Villanova charter plane in Providence. Through it all, Foye became one of Villanova's all-time greats, and a remarkable Big East story.

Foye excelled on the court at one of Newark's toughest schools, East Side High School, where his AAU coach minded no words--Foye was one of the best guards of high high school recruiting class. "I think he's the best guard in the country," said Sandy Pyonin of the AAU new Jersey Roadrunners. "I've coached a lot of great guards: Bobby Hurley, David Rivers, Brevin Knight, but he is the best guard I've ever had. By far."

Though not heavily recruited for a top-50 prospect, Foye chose Villanova over Seton Hall and Syracuse, joining what was the greatest Villanova recruiting class of its time: Foye, Allan Ray, Curtis Sumpter, and #5-ranked prospect Jason Fraser, whose basketball career would be sidelined by seven surgeries in four seasons. Foye started 29 of 31 games for the Wildcats as a freshman, finishing third in scoring, and was one of three freshman on the court in the 2003 Big East tournament, when 12 Villanova players were suspended over unauthorized use of a university phone card. Playing just five players for all but two minutes of the game, Villanova narrowly missed an epochal upset of Georgetown, as the Hoyas advanced, 46-41.

Foye improved his scoring as a sophomore to 13 points a game, but was still the third option behind Sumpter and Ray on a 2003-04 Villanova team that dropped six of its final seven games in Big Eat play en route to a third NIT bid. By his junior season, however, Foye became the go-to option for a Villanova team that turned the tables on 2004, winning its last seven in conference play en route to the school's first NCAA bid in six years. The Wildcats advanced to the regional semifinals against eventual champion North Carolina, where a disputed traveling call on Villanova's Allen Ray before a UNC foul proved the margin of defeat.

With Curtis Sumpter out for the 2005-06 season following an injury suffered in the North Carolina game, Foye helped carry the Wildcats to its best record in a decade. Foye led the Wildcats with a 20 points per game average as the Wildcats went 14-2 for its first Big East regular season title since 1997, and 24-3 overall heading into the tournament. Upset in the semifinals by Pittsburgh, the Wildcats earned its first #1 NCAA seed in program history and advanced to the regional finals before falling to the eventual champion Florida, 75-62. Foye was named the Big East Player of the Year and a consensus All-American, only the second consensus selection for the school since Paul Arizin in 1950.

The 2004-05 and 2005-06 Villanova teams were important in another respect. After a decade of being a decidedly middle-tier team in the Big East with one NCAA bid since 1996, Wright returned the Wildcats to the NCAA's, and they've never left. Since 2005 and through 2019 Villanova has qualified for 14 NCAA tournaments in 15 seasons, with a tradition of strong guard play that began in Foye's tenure at Villanova.

Randy Foye was selected seventh in the 2006 NBA draft, the highest Villanova selection since 1965. He played 11 years in the NBA among seven teams, averaging 10.3 points per game. His jersey was retired by Villanova in 2011.

"My AAU coach said that I'm going to be an NBA player, so I wanted to be an NBA player; to me that would have been a failure if I hadn't," he told NBA.com. "My grandmother and my aunt was like, 'You're going to graduate from college.' Well, my junior year I could have left because I had a big second half of the year, but I decided to stay after having that talk with my grandmother about getting my college degree. So that's where I was afraid to fail. I'm not afraid to fail on the court; I'm afraid to fail with the people who are really there when you're down and out, who are there to talk with you."