San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
‘He just has this X-factor’
After staying home, freshman sensation has Gaels drawing bigger crowds than ever as they seek first top-four seed
St. Mary’s athletic director Mike Matoso was reviewing men’s basketball ticket sales Monday when it dawned on him: The 17th-ranked Gaels generated almost $120,000 more revenue from home games this season than any other year in program history.
That’s a seismic jump for a program that plays in a 3,500-seat gym. As Matoso tried to make sense of the numbers, he realized that the biggest difference this season is a floppyhaired 19-year-old from just down the road.
Aidan Mahaney has brought an unprecedented buzz to Moraga, quite the feat considering it has long been the Bay Area’s best college basketball environment. The face of perhaps the greatest St. Mary’s team in coach Randy Bennett’s 22-year run, he dazzles crowds with clutch jumpers, smooth ball handling and plenty of bravado.
“He just has this X-factor about him,” Matoso said of Mahaney, who averages 14.6 points on 44 percent shooting (40.9 percent from 3-point range), 2.3 rebounds and 2.0 assists for the top-seeded team in the WCC tournament. “You just can’t take your eyes off him, you know?”
Bennett can’t recall a freshman with Mahaney’s star power since Patty Mills touched down from Australia in 2007 and led the Gaels to a 25-win season. But as transcendent as Mills was for the tiny Catholic college in the East Bay, there’s something special about a hometown guy propelling the program he grew up cheering to new heights.
Mahaney has known Bennett since he began playing rec league basketball with Bennett’s son Cade as a 5-year-old. By middle school,
Mahaney was training multiple times a week with Justin Joyner, now St. Mary’s associate head coach.
Around that time, Mahaney started attending Gaels games on a regular basis.
His favorite player was Emmett Naar, a sweet-shooting point guard who went a combined 109-27 in four seasons. It wasn’t until years later, though, that Mahaney recognized just how ideal a fit St. Mary’s was for him.
A basketball junkie who has been obsessed with reaching the NBA for as long as he can remember, he wasn’t about to choose a college for sentimental reasons. Mahaney’s sole focus was on identifying his best path to the pros. After weighing offers from Arizona and Stanford, he committed to the Gaels before his senior season at Campolindo High School.
“I get why some people might think I was always coming here,” Mahaney said. “But the truth is, I came here because it checks all my boxes. It just so happens that I’ve known the staff a long time.”
Some college basketball experts now wonder whether Mahaney’s early emergence can help usher in a new era of St. Mary’s basketball.
Despite being one of just four programs in the country to have made the NCAA Tournament or NIT each of the past 15 seasons, the Gaels remain under the radar. Many sports fans still know them as that other school in Gonzaga’s conference. Even in the Bay Area, St. Mary’s often receives significant media attention only when March rolls around.
Part of the problem is the Gaels’ style of play. For the eighth straight season, they rank 339th or lower in pace among 358 Division I teams.
Then there is the program’s lack of March Madness success.
The Gaels have reached the NCAA Tournament eight times under Bennett, but they’ve survived the first weekend only once, in 2010.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that what’s keeping us from getting to that next level as a program is just going further in the tournament,” Bennett said. “If we can do that, we’ll begin to build more of a national brand.”
Last season St. Mary’s won 26 games and landed a programbest No. 5 NCAA seed, only to get routed by UCLA in the second round. Solid fundamentals couldn’t make up for the Gaels not having a go-to option when it mattered most.
In Mahaney, they finally have a reliable floor spacer to take the pressure off leading scorer Logan Johnson down the stretch.
In front of 15,843 at BYU on Jan. 28, Mahaney dribbled toward the key and, with his defender blanketing him, nailed a fadeaway 12-footer with threetenths of a second left to give St. Mary’s a 57-56 win. A week later, in an overtime win over Gonzaga, he poured in 16 points and three assists over the final 6½ minutes.
“It kind of feels like he’s been here for a long time,” freshman center Harry Wessels said. “It’s really hard to believe he was in high school last year.”
Mahaney’s mother, Patsy Mickens, traces that poise to his childhood in Lafayette. As a young kid, Mahaney wasn’t afraid to speak up if he saw someone laughing at his older brother Noah, who has Down syndrome.
At Campolindo, Mahaney sat with classmates at lunch who had no one else at their table, volunteered for special-needs charities in his free time, and awoke at 5 a.m. every weekday so he could be in the gym by 6. His goal was clear: to join Gary Payton, Jason Kidd and Damian Lillard among the East Bay’s pantheon of great point guards.
But when an ankle injury sidelined Mahaney for AAU basketball the summer before his senior year, he began to slide on recruiting rankings. Some major-conference schools pulled their scholarship offers.
Scouts worried that, at 6foot-2 and 160 pounds, Mahaney would get outmuscled at the next level.
Bennett knew better. For well over a decade, he had seen Mahaney’s competitiveness firsthand. This was a kid, Bennett told himself, who could become his next elite point guard.
Instead of pitching Mahaney whenever he was at the house with Cade, Bennett stayed patient. His occasional recruiting conversations with Mahaney were limited to him explaining how his system could help Mahaney achieve his goals.
Still, even Bennett didn’t anticipate all this for Mahaney as a freshman: first-team All-WCC honors; NBA scouts at games; comparisons to Mills; a burgeoning endorsement portfolio. With an NIL valuation of $117,000 on On3.com, Mahaney is the Bay Area’s highest-earning men’s college basketball player.
He is also a teenager who makes the 12-minute drive to his mom’s house whenever he wants a home-cooked meal or needs to pick up an Amazon package. Those visits might have to wait a while, though, as Mahaney tries to do things that have never been done at St. Mary’s.
Fresh off sharing the WCC regular-season title with Gonzaga, the Gaels (25-6) hope to parlay a conference tournament championship into a top-four seed in March Madness. A deep NCAA Tournament run would enhance Mahaney’s Moraga lore.
“I feel like you could pretty much write a movie about what has gone on with my basketball career, and how everything has worked out so far,” Mahaney said. “The crazy thing is, it’s not close to done yet. There’s still a lot to be written.”
“It’s really hard to believe he was in high school last year.”
St. Mary’s center Harry Wessels,
on Aidan Mahaney