I thought I’d hop on here and provide a little more context on the feature sports story from today’s paper, a “Where are they now?” piece about former Terp basketball player Byron Mouton.
The story will be the kick-off to a small series about former Terp athletes we’re calling “For Love of the Game.”
But I got the idea to focus on Mouton, an integral part of the Terps’ 2002 run to its lone National Championship when I was waiting to interview Greivis Vasquez after practice a month or so back for this piece.
During my wait, I struck up a conversation with university alum Mark Grey, who was waiting for Mouton to finish practicing with the team so they could record a segment for Mouton’s radio show on Grey’s Web site, www.playersvoice.com.
I thought it was interesting that Mouton, who famously toiled in a number of different leagues for a number of different teams in an effort to prolong his pro career, still maintained such a connection to the team.
With the Terps season officially over, I set about tracking down Mouton. On Friday, I attended the Maryland Greenhawks’ game at Coolidge High School in D.C. Two days later, I sat down with him after a tryout at Comcast Center for his AAU program, the 6th Man Warriors.
As I conveyed in the article, Mouton seems to be loving his basketball-filled life right now.
His affiliation with the Greenhawks is just a small part of that as he seems to be much more focused on growing his AAU teams and working with an after school program run by the Montgomery Sports Association.
“It’s just an opportunity for me to reach out for those local fans that are wondering what I’m doing and get an opportunity to come out and watch me play,” said Mouton, who was clearly perturbed with the dismal 3-16 season the Greenhawks have put together this season.
One aspect of the story I didn’t get a chance to play up due to space concerns was his opportunity to play with his cousin, Terrance.
Terrance Mouton, a 24-year old who went to Rider University, would like to get where his older cousin has been. Byron helped get Terrance his Greenhawks tryout.
Now, Terrance is hoping to catch the eye of a European or Asian pro team to jumpstart his pro career.
Terrance said he’d grown up in Louisiana hearing the stories about Byron and his younger brother Brandon, who played for Texas. But because of the seven year age difference, he’d never really gotten a shot to play with Byron.
In the game I saw, in which the Greenhawks fell to the Halifax Rainmen (yep, that’s Halifax, Nova Scotia), Terrance and Byron combined for 36 points despite not playing in the fourth quarter because they were trailing by double-digits and faced a quick turnaround in Vermont the next afternoon. Terrance paced the Greenhawks with 27 points, seven rebounds and six assists.
Even with his recent good play, Terrance left no doubt about the most popular Greenhawk.
That would be Byron, who is using his Terp contacts to help him grow his basketball development business.
Some day Byron hopes to become an NCAA head coach or NBA scout, but he’s clearly willing to work for it by starting at the bottom.
Right now, part of that plan for Byron Mouton is being the face of the Greenhawks’ franchise.
“He won their first championship for the University of Maryland,” Terrance said. “People love him for that.”
Eric Detweiler is The Diamondback’s Terrapin Men’s Basketball Team beat writer. He can be reached at edetweilerdbk@gmail.com. You can follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/edetweiler.