The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
For Heron, playing UConn now just ‘another game’
He’s over it. Mustapha Heron admitted that playing UConn at the XL Center a year ago was truly special. The Waterbury product grew up going to games and concerts there, but had never played basketball at the arena.
Heron didn’t have his best game, scoring 15 points on a mere 5-for-22 shooting, but hauled in eight rebounds and hit a free throw with 7.6 seconds left in overtime to help the Tigers notch a 70-67 victory.
On Saturday, Heron welcomes his hometown team to his new hometown, when UConn (7-4) saunters into Auburn Arena (2:30 p.m., ESPN2) to face the Tigers.
“Now, it becomes a more relaxed feel,” Heron said by phone earlier this week. “It’s a college game where I just want to go in and help my team get the win.”
Heron and the Tigers have been doing a lot of winning lately. After losing to Temple in the Charleston Classic on Nov. 17, Auburn has reeled off eight straight wins and sits at 10-1 overall. All this despite beginning the season under the cloud of an FBI investigation that caused assistant coach Chuck Person to be fired and has kept two of its top players, sophomores Danjel Purifoy and Austin Wiley, ineligible.
“We’re just playing hard, trying to play together, being unselfish,” said Heron, who is second on the team in scoring at 15.9 points per game. “Those are the key things we picked up from last year,
trying to make those connections.”
And how has the team weathered the storm of the FBI investigation?
“By trying to win games,” Heron said. “Winning cures a lot of ills. We feel like there’s a target on our back, our backs are against the wall. So, winning games is a way to get over things like that — sticking together and being a team.”
UConn (7-4) could take a cue from the Tigers. While the Huskies haven’t been embroiled in any major controversies this season, they have largely underperformed and need wins.
The Auburn game comes in the middle of a tough three-game stretch. UConn put up a game effort but faltered over the final five minutes in a 73-58 loss at No. 18 Arizona on Thursday night.
After the Auburn game, the Huskies get a week off before hosting No. 11 Wichita State on Dec. 30 in Hartford.
Pick off both or even one of these final two games of the calendar year and there’s renewed enthusiasm for the Huskies’ season. A three-game losing streak into the New Year, however, could push this season further into irrelevancy.
“We need to win these type of games,” Christian Vital said after the Arizona loss. “But we definitely do feel like we got our groove back. Now, it’s just that next step. There’s always a next step, which is finishing the game. Which I think we will do.”
Vital paused for a moment, then added, “Which I know we will do.”
Certainly, the FBI investigation appeared close to derailing the Tigers’ season altogether back at one point. Person was arrested for allegedly taking more than $90,000 from financial advisers in exchange for steering players to those advisers once they
left school.
Auburn head coach Bruce Pearl, who was fired from his job at Tennessee in 2011 for lying to NCAA investigators and given a three-year show-cause penalty, reportedly wasn’t cooperating with Auburn’s internal investigation — though he recently said that he has started cooperating.
Through all this, the Tigers have kept winning, in no small part thanks to Heron. The 6-foot-5, 218pound sophomore forward is also third on the team in rebounding at 5.6 per game, though like any good player, he’s not satisfied with his own performance thus far.
“I definitely think I could do more, there’s always more to be done,” said Her- on, who led the Tigers in scoring last season as a freshman. “I’m watching film, getting better day by day.”
Heron was recruited by UConn while starring at Sacred Heart High but never really came close to committing to the school.
“I just didn’t want to stay at home,” he said. “I took care of my recruiting early.”
He committed to Pittsburgh in January 2014, but de-committed a little over a year later and wound up pledging to Auburn in August 2015.
Heron played with or against several current UConn players — Vital, Mamadou Diarra, Jalen Adams — in high school or different AAU all-star events. He’s looking forward to Saturday’s game.
“It always means something,” he said. “When the guys here play against UAB or Alabama, they want to beat them. When I play UConn, I want to beat UConn. But it’s another game. I expect it to be really loud, a fun environment to play. Both of us have gotten better from last year.”