In case you missed it in Sunday's Star Tribune, please check out my story on Minnesota point guard DeAndre Mathieu, reported from his home town of Knoxville, Tenn. It was, without a doubt, my favorite story I've reported.

I thought I'd share a few leftovers that didn't make the print edition here:
*It remains to be seen whether Mathieu will play professionally beyond this year. But he's technically already made money at his craft. In Lonsdale, the neighbors would pull up their cars to whatever street hoop 6-year-old Mathieu was balling on and offer a few dollars for him to show off his dribbling moves. "When he was able to walk, he was able to dribble," his grandmother, Candis Johnson said. A couple years later, he had improved dramatically. At a Thanksgiving get-together, Mathieu convinced his older cousin, Phillip Weaver (known as "Bam") to give him a dollar for every free throw he made. "He got to ten and I said 'Uh oh,'" Weaver said.
*Mathieu sang in the church choir growing up. His aunties bragged about his voice. Does he still sing? "Sometimes in the shower," he said with a grin. "Or when I'm bored."
*Leading seemed to come naturally for Mathieu. As a 10-year-old kid, his aunt Lori Simpson coached him in tee ball for one year. When the team lost a game, Mathieu would retreat to cry. But then he would gather himself and lead the team in prayer. It became his role.
*Brandon Lopez, walk-on at Tennessee and good friend of Mathieu on competing against a 7-year-old Mathieu, whose AAU team once beat Lopez' 45-5. "Watching him play when he was younger was ridiculous. His game was so much better than anybody else's. It was a mess. There was nothing we could do ... I'll never forget that game, it was crazy. He probably had half of them if he didn't account for every single point that day."
*The first time eventual Knoxville Central High School coach Mitch Mitchell saw Mathieu, he was coaching at a rival school. He watched a short, skinny, babyfaced kid with Allen Iverson- style braids and headband combo, walk out onto the court. He would be the starting point guard against Mitchell's eventual state championship team. Then the game began. "He was surprising because even against our good, athletic, bigger guards, even then he was able to penetrate and look to dish. He was starting to do his thing even then. And you saw there was something there that this kid is not normal."
*Mitchell on Mathieu: "He was always pushing and pushing his teammates to keep fighting. He was always competing. It was 'no matter what happens, I'm either going to prove you wrong or I'm going to beat you, and then you'll have to admit I'm right.' That's how Dre is. You can't replace those intangibles at all. That's the part you can't coach."
*Has he surprised himself with his success? "Surprised is an understatement," Mathieu said. "I never in my life dreamed of playing Big Ten basketball or being a JUCO All-American, things like that. I always had that dream, but after my senior year in high school where no one is calling and I'm going out and having these 30-point games, things like that, I'm thinking 'Man, this is not how I thought it was going to be.'
Did he have a chip on your shoulder about that? "Chip?" he said. "It was more like a brick. I was so frustrated for so long."
*Mathieu says he truly learned about being a leader in JUCO. During his senior season of high school, former assistant coach Mitch Mitchell took over the program and asked Mathieu to take more of a leadership role. But when he transferred from Morehead State (where he was a walk-on) to Central Arizona, it was the first time he acted as a leader to teammates he just met. "It really showed me I could lead guys I don't know," he said. "They all banded behind me. They didn't know me either."
*At Minnesota, though, things were different. This was the Big Ten. This was the big time. Mathieu just wanted to make life easy for stars Andre Hollins and Austin Hollins. "I just wanted to pass them the ball, get them easy looks," Mathieu said. "Coach Pitino came to me one day and said 'You're not just this JUCO guy that came in. You're one of our better players. You've got to be more of a leader.' That's when it really started to come to me -- at Minnesota, I could be a leader too."
*Pitino and Mathieu have a different relationship. Mathieu sees something in his coach that resonates with him. Pitino sees similarities between the two of them. He's talked to Mathieu about the pressures of carrying his last name, about being more than his father's son. "We kind of have that same fiery personality," Mathieu said. "We're both small, fiery guys and all we want to do is win.
*Mathieu on making a living to help his family: I remember one day [when he was a freshman in high school] after my step dad moved out, my mom came to me crying. She said she had to ask her mom [his grandmother] for $300 to pay a bill. I never want to see my mom cry again. I think about that before every game. I thought 'I gotta do something. I've got to get paid somehow. It's hard to watch your mom cry because she can't pay a bill ... My mom is tough. That's the only time I saw her cry until Tookie's funeral."
*Mathieu on Tookie: "You'd never know he lost his whole family. His mom, his dad, his sister. He was always joking. Always happy. Just the most outgoing person. On the basketball court, it showed too. Making threes, hand signals, all that. We were complete opposites. He was a lot more fiery, a lot more showy when he was on the floor. And just in person. You knew he was in the room, there was no doubt."
*A couple of nights after Tookie died, Tracy Johnson, Mathieu's mother, woke to the sound of crying. When she walked into the living room, Mathieu was there, curled up on the couch with his phone. Years of text messages between the two best friends were pulled up on the screen. Johnson gently urged Mathieu to delete them. She knew he could never forget. "That could have broke him," she said. "But he stayed strong.
*Simpson, Mathieu's aunt, on Lonsdale's support for Mathieu: "One thing in Lonsdale, they might talk about the crime, but people stick together. If they see somebody trying to make it in the world, they'll come together ... I'm proud to say I'm from Lonsdale."
*Jacqueline Daniels, Tookie's aunt on her nephew and Mathieu: "Him and Dre had that bond that nobody could have ... I believe if Tookie was here, he would have made it too. They would have made it together."
*Lopez on Mathieu's success: "I'm just happy for him. I can't even explain how happy I am for him because I've seen him struggle. From a basketball perspective, people always thought he was too short or not as big as he needed to be to really compete. But his work ethic is unmatched."