For some insight into how Villanova's Saddiq Bey developed into one of the Big East Conference's best players and a potential first-round pick in this year's NBA draft, you have to go back to those long car rides home from his AAU travel-team days with his mother, a former college basketball player.
"She was probably my toughest critic, I would say, besides myself," the Wildcats' sophomore forward said in a recent interview. "There were a lot of times when I was younger in the car with her kind of telling me how much I need to get better or what I'm not doing.
"Honestly, at a young age, you're like, 'Why am I hearing this right now?' But it helped me, just her being there. She's my role model. Everything she's done in her life, I just look up to. So I can't really describe in words how much she's meant to me."
Drewana Bey has achieved much in her life, from her playing days at North Carolina-Charlotte, where she was team MVP in the 1997-98 season, to earning her doctorate in educational leadership from Bowie State in 2011. A former high school principal, she is an instructional superintendent of secondary schools in the District of Columbia public schools system.
To hear Bey tell it, his mother's examples of how to work hard and stay focused on goals are a major reason he has flourished this season. He leads the Wildcats in scoring with a 16.0-point average and has improved his game in a number of areas, not the least of which are shooting, defense, and ballhandling.
"She'd put in the work every day and then she'd come home as a mom and support her kids," he said. "So I just looked up to it. I just got to think how much she grinds each and every day and I try to take that with me. I think, 'Am I really too tired to do certain things?' No, I'm not because if she can do it, then I can do it."
