Bennedict Mathurin speaks at a press conference about being inducted into the McKale Center Ring of Honor prior to Saturday's game. Mathurin was honored for being the Pac-12's Player of the Year in the 2021-22 season.
Having Benn Mathurin officially join the Arizona Ring of Honor on Saturday was just a matter of time. Once he picked up the 2021-22 Pac-12 Player of the Year award, the former Arizona standout wing qualified automatically.
The surprise was that many of his Indiana Pacers teammates were among those on hand at McKale Center to watch. After playing the Trail Blazers on Friday, Indiana chartered a jet straight from Portland to Tucson and took a bus from the airport to McKale Center to arrive about 40 minutes before tipoff.
βItβs fun,β Mathurin said. βWe had to wake up pretty early, so seeing how my teammates care about me pretty much says a lot.β
The Pacers' appearance had a lot to do with Indiana coach Rick Carlisle, who encouraged his players to go. He even invited the Pacersβ beat reporter for the Indianapolis Star, Dustin Dopirak, on the charter from Portland to Tucson so he could take in Mathurinβs moment and write about it.
βIt makes it makes sense for any team but our group is particularly close to one another. They support one another,β Carlisle said. βBenn is a guy who's become an obviously a big part of our team and the guys embrace him. He's a little different kind of personality on our team, but very important.
Indiana plays at the Phoenix Suns on Sunday n ight, and had to squeeze their Tucson stopover into a typically hectic NBA road trip Carlisle said βof all the hard things in the NBA, this is one of the easiest.β
It just took a little travel rearranging to make it happen β sending the whole team through Tucson, when typically NBA players heading to McKale before or after a game with the Suns will branch off in Phoenix and drive down I-10 with whoever wants to go.
βBenn told me about this about two weeks ago, so we were working through logistical ways to get as many people here as possible and then we came up with the idea to just fly direct here from Portland,β Carlisle said. βIt worked out so we have almost all of our guys here. It's a great honor for him. It's a great honor for us to be here. This is a very special moment.β
Dark days brightened
Mathurinβs appearance at midcourt during halftime, when he watched a video of his highlights along with sister Jenn Mathurin and UA athletic director Dave Heeke, was a drastic change from the way he entered the building as a freshman in 2020-21.
Mathurin played his entire freshman season behind closed doors because of COVID protocols and for a different coach that he finished with, since UA fired Sean Miller and replaced him with Tommy Lloyd in April 2021.
Mathurin then led the Wildcats to Pac-12 regular-season and tournament titles in 2021-22, picking up the leagueβs Player of the Year Award, before the Pacers made him the No. 6 pick in the 2022 NBA Draft.
βCOVID was a really big impact on my career, but I was fortunate enough to come to this school,β Mathurin said. βIt was such a bad thing that turned out to be great, to be part of this experience and to get to where I am today.β
Mathurin is averaging 14.5 points while starting 14 of 42 games so far this season for the Pacers. His scoring average is down slightly from 16.7 last season, but both his 2-point shooting percentage (50.9) and 3-point percentages (36.2) have improved.
Though Lloyd didnβt recruit the Montreal native out of the NBA Academy Latin America, Mathurin said he learned how better to be involved with pick-and-rolls under Lloyd and carried that with him to the NBA.
βObviously, this was a thing I was gonna be involved in going pro, and I feel like he pretty much understood that it was an area for me to grow,β Mathurin said. βHe helped me become that player.β
Among the Pacers on hand to watch Mathurin were Pacers guards T.J. McConnell and Tyrese Halliburton, sitting next to each other in front-row baseline seats.
McConnell, a standout point guard of the Miller era at Arizona, needs just one more NBA season to qualify for his own Ring of Honor induction. Among the criteria are winning a major Pac-12 honor (as Mathurin did) or playing 10 years in the NBA β and McConnell is in his ninth season after first reaching the league via Philadelphia despite not being drafted in 2015.
βWeβre gonna have to figure that out,β Carlisle said of returning for that potential ceremony. βTo have our guys sitting courtside (Saturday), T.J. and Tyrese sitting together, and Buddy (Hield) and Myles (Turner) sitting with Benn and his sister Jennifer, itβs just super cool.β
Thoughts for Koloko
Mathurin said he still stays in touch with the Wildcats he played with in 2021-22, including seniors Oumar Ballo and Pelle Larsson, while he expressed concern for Christian Koloko, who reportedly has been referred to the NBAβs Fitness-to-Play panel because of a career-threatening blood-clot issue.
The Toronto Raptors waived Koloko this week as the final move to complete a three-way trade between Toronto, Indiana and New Orleans.
βChristian is my guy, so obviously it wasn't a great thing,β Mathurin said. βI just told him to keep his head high and just take care of his health.β
Lloyd said he hadnβt been in contact with Koloko yet but expressed sympathy.
βI don't know the ins and outs of it specifically as much as I should but I love C-Low,β Lloyd said. βHeβs one of my all-time favorites.β
(Dress) code red
Just in case Zona Zoo student fans didnβt wear red to their Zona Zoo seats Saturday, they were given a red T-shirt to wear.
They had the Zona Zoo logo with the words: βMemories Made Hereβ on top and βEst. 2002β on the bottom.
Quotable
βYou know Benn: It was the usual βKick their ass.' Benn keeps it pretty simple.β β UA coach Tommy Lloyd, on what Mathurin said to the Wildcats before Saturdayβs game.
The big number
19: The first-half deficit Arizona overcame to beat UCLA, the biggest deficit it has erased in a win since early in the 2013-14 season, when the Wildcats came back from 19 down in the first half to beat Drexel 66-62 in an NIT Season Tip-Off game at New York.