Dre Mathieu is a 5-11, 160-pound JUCO guard currently attending Central Arizona Community College. The Tennessee native averaged 17.1 points, 6.1 rebounds and 6.5 assists last season and was named a NJCAA first team All-American. Last week, Mathieu narrowed his list of potential schools to four, including Minnesota. The following is from an interview conducted mostly over email due to a very poor cell phone connection which Mathieu says is typical in Coolidge, Ariz. (When the call started to break up, Mathieu apologized, saying, "I'm sorry, I'm in the middle of nowhere").
Gophers target Dre Mathieu is finally starting to feel some redemption.
"Undersized" is no longer the first thing on the 5-11 junior college guard's scouting report, and several major programs have ignored that detail altogether, going after Mathieu aggressively.
"No doubt all my life I have felt like people underestimated me because of my height," Mathieu said. "It feels good to get some attention. I have worked really hard to get where I am now and I'm just happy that the hard work is paying off and has got me some nice options."
Richard Pitino's Gophers are among those options, and after last week, on Mathieu's final four list, despite Minnesota first reaching out to him just two weeks ago, right after the new head coach started.
Comparatively, Minnesota is very new to the game coming months after other programs first started going after Mathieu. But in the abbreviated time Pitino and Co. has been around, they've made quite an impression on the Tennessee native, who would be available to play right away.
"If it's not coach [Kimani] Young calling me, it's [Pitino]," Mathieu said. "They switch days. Every day I get a call from either one of them. Or at least a text to make sure I'm doing alright. Some days, both of them will call me. They sure are letting me know that they want me. They're showing me a lot of interest. … No one is doing it quite as hard as they are. Everybody wants to feel wanted and I feel wanted by them. That does impress me that they are so consistently keeping in touch."
Minnesota will be competing for Mathieu's attention with Memphis, Ole Miss and Pepperdine – the other three scools on the list -- over the next couple of weeks. Mathieu has visited Pepperdine already, calling the campus "wonderful" and noting that head coach Marty Wilson has been recruiting him the longest. He travels to Ole Miss today for an official visit, followed by Minnesota on May 3. After that, Mathieu wants to visit Memphis right away, but he does not have a specified date yet.