With time to kill before the biggest game of the year to that point, Andrew Wiggins and his teammates went to Masonville Place, a mall in London, Ont., site of the 2011 Ontario provincial championships.
“I can still remember him laughing and smiling,” says Gus Gymnopoulos, head coach at Vaughan Secondary School where Wiggins played before heading south for his last two years of high school. “It made me relax because I knew he was ready to play.”
The freshman star with the Kansas Jayhawks might be the sexiest name in the NCAA tournament and will be looked on to lift the iconic school to their fourth national title and provide an exclamation mark on a season that has been unlike any other in the history of Canadian basketball.
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Five Canadians before him have been on teams that have won an NCAA championship, but Wiggins would be the first expected to lead his team to a title – a tall order for a 19-year-old freshman, but one that comes with being tagged a future NBA all-star.
Those who have coached him in the past are confident that the moment won’t overwhelm him — quite the opposite.
“He’s a big-stage player,” says Rob Fulford, who coached him for two seasons at Huntington Prep in West Virginia after he left Vaughan. “The bigger the stage, the better the player he’s up against, the better he’ll play.”
The Jayhawks are the No. 2 seed in the South Region and open their tournament on Friday against No. 15 Eastern Kentucky. Their task is simple: Win it all.
But perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this year’s edition of the NCAA tournament is that not only is the headline act Canadian, but that Wiggins has so much Canadian company on the marquee.
Wiggins is one of the 15 finalists for the John Wooden Award – emblematic of the top player in U.S. college basketball – but so are fellow Toronto-area ballers, sophomore Nik Stauskas of Michigan, a No. 2 seed, and fellow freshman sensation Tyler Ennis of Syracuse, a No. 3 seed and potential Sweet 16 opponent for Kansas.
The all-Canadian team is undoubtedly New Mexico State (No. 13 in the West Region) who relies on three Canadians including 7-5 Sim Bhullar (his brother Tanveer, 7-3, was a redshirt this season), Daniel Mullings, and Renaldo Dixon – while Kevin Pangos of Toronto helped Gonzaga (No. 8 in the West) to their 16th straight NCAA tournament bid.
This past weekend the Jayhawks were ousted from the Big 12 tournament in the semifinals, but Wiggins’s departure added to the Canadian flavour of the event as they were eliminated at the hands of Iowa State who lean on Toronto’s Melvin Ejim, who beat out Wiggins for conference player of the year honours, and whose top bench player is Naz Long, a long-distance threat from Mississauga, Ont.
The Cyclones, a No. 3 seed, went on to outlast upstart Baylor in the tournament championship with Baylor leaning on Brady Heslip of Burlington, Ont., and Kenny Chery of Montreal. Combined the four Canadians in the Big 12 final scored 52 of 139 total points in the game and shot 11 of 19 from the 3-point line.
Meanwhile Wiggins’s older brother, Nick, comes off the bench for undefeated Wichita State, the No. 1 seed in the Midwest Region
Still, fair or not it will be Wiggins who will be looked upon to carry the flag for Canadian basketball’s coming out party.
He’s been ranked as the likely first pick in the 2014 NBA draft for so long that he’s already been the victim of a backlash after performing unevenly out of the gate.
“It’s the age we live in,” says Fulford. “He’s been evaluated possession by possession. He had 22 points the other day and the caption on ESPN was ‘Wiggins struggles.’”
He comes into the tournament playing his best basketball of the season, averaging 31 points, eight rebounds, three steals and two blocks over his past three games, and taking on more responsibility in the absence of fellow freshman star, centre Joel Embiid, who is out for at least the first round of the tournament with a stress fracture in his back.
Wiggins needs just 26 points to become the all-time leading freshman scorer in the Jayhawks rich history.
Any suggestion that he’s not going to be an immediate star at the next level has largely faded. It’s almost certain he’ll go either first or second in the draft, and while NBA talent evaluators have some concerns about his possession-by-possession intensity and relatively raw skill, they are encouraged more by his willingness to play within the system at Kansas.
“He’s playing within the team and getting 17 points a game,” said one NBA executive who couldn’t speak on the record. “That’s impressive in my book. He’s a stud; his game will translate well to our league. He’s a special talent.”
The last time he won an end-of-season title was the Ontario high school championship he earned with Vaughan Secondary School on home soil in Grade 10.
His coach there sees the same person then as now, if not a far more developed basketball player.
“He’s more comfortable going all the way to the basket with his left; earlier in the year teams were setting up for him to go right and spin back to his left; the release point on his shot is better and his ball-handling has improved,” he says.
Gymnopoulos coached all three of the Wiggins brothers (the oldest brother, Mitch, plays at Southeastern University in Florida, an NAIA school) at Vaughan and has plans to head to the Final Four in Dallas if either of the two younger ones make it that far.
He likes his chances of making the trip. Gymnopoulos says the real key to Wiggins’s success now and in the near future may be what hasn’t changed at all: He remains the same low-key guy who could relax at the mall before a provincial championship game.
“He’s willing to fit in with his teammates; he’s relaxed and doesn’t get too high or too low,” says Gymnopoulos. “People see it as a weakness, but I think it’s a strength.”
While others might get anxious under the pressure, Wiggins manages to remain coolly Canadian as the lights heat up, and they have never burned brighter than they will in the coming weeks.