Villanova's Mouphtaou Yarou nears completion of remarkable journey

SIX YEARS AGO, Mouphtaou Yarou remembers, there were many, many difficult phone calls home to Benin. He came here from that small West African country for high school, and for basketball, and for all of the attendant opportunities, but he wondered sometimes what he had gotten himself into. He wondered whether it was worth all of the anxiety.

"I was very homesick," he said, a couple of days before the Villanova Wildcats begin another NCAA Tournament journey. Yarou, 22, is their senior big man, the oncourt leader of a team that swung wildly between disaster and elation - sometimes in the same week.

They will be the underdog in their tournament opener against North Carolina on Friday night in Kansas City. For Villanova, it could be a long trip for nothing - except that the very act of being selected is not nothing, and except that Yarou says he isn't even thinking about the game, not yet. When prompted, though, he talks about the journey.

"I laugh about it now, but I was very homesick," he said. "The thing I learned from my teammates was how to laugh. I could laugh about every mistake I made. I could laugh and make fun of myself. I always did that when I made a mistake, when I struggled in the past. I made fun of myself and that's how I got better."

He arrived at Villanova to great acclaim. Along the way, he has dealt with hepatitis B and also with the NCAA, which was forced to investigate him (and quickly clear him) when someone suggested he really was several years older than claimed. There was that, and there was the disappointment of last season, and there was the wild ride of this season, and now there is the tournament reward. How ever long the run lasts, Yarou's time as a Villanova basketball player is now measured in days. And then?

"I hope to keep playing," he said. "I don't know where, but I hope. I just want to play basketball. It doesn't matter where I play. Whoever picks me up, I'll go; here or Europe, I'll go. I want to play."

And then?

"I'm going home," Yarou said.

Benin is a small country. It is not a wealthy country. It is the kind of place where the U.S. State Department warns tourists about being out in its largest city, Cotonou, between dusk and dawn, and on the beach alone at any time. It is a country where police say they foiled a plot to poison the president in 2012 and thwarted a potential coup to overthrow the government earlier this month.

It is Yarou's home. His family is there. And with a double major in finance and international business packed into his carry-on, it is where Yarou says he will live his life.

"Because of the education I got, and what I learned by living far away from my country, and learning and living in a different culture, I think I can help my country," he said. "I think I can help it to develop more."

The goal is as noble as it is simple: to help. The reality undoubtedly will be much more complicated. I am not going to pretend to know Yarou, or to be able to predict his future, but there is one thing about him in the here and now that is beyond obvious: that he is aware of the gift he has received, the gift of an opportunity.

"I always think about it," he said. We are back to talking about the journey.

"I always think back," he said. "That's why I enjoy the moment, and why I am trying to live in the moment now. I'm thankful to have been a part of Villanova. It's a great honor for me, coming from Africa, from Benin. I'm the first player from my country to come here and play D-I.

"So I enjoy every moment. I enjoy my teammates, I enjoy the coaches, I enjoy everything."

The Wildcats flew to Kansas City on Wednesday. They will practice Thursday, and do interviews, and catch some of the other games on television. They are in the best spot, playing Friday night. They get to watch the whole carnival unfold before taking their shot against the Tar Heels.

And then? It is unknown and unknowable, of course - for Villanova, for Yarou, for all of them. The only certainty is the start of the next journey, and the next, and the next; time and distance to be determined.

Time and distance . . .

"In my country, I think I could help in a business sense," Yarou was saying. "I think I could help in a political sense. Basically, everything I learned here - the work ethic, everything - I can teach it to the younger guys. I can teach them how to go about it."

Time and distance . . .

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