How Mallory Heyer has helped Minnesota take a step forward this season

Heyer arrived at Minnesota for the 2022-23 season, in what ended up being Lindsay Whalen’s final season as head coach. Minnesota parted ways with Whalen following the Gophers’ Big Ten Tournament loss to Penn State.

Heyer, along with classmates Amaya Battle, Mara Braun and Niamya Holloway, decided to stay at Minnesota rather than enter the transfer portal. The move has paid off as that group, which was considered the best recruiting class in program history, has made the Gophers a legitimate threat in the Big Ten.

Braun has been sidelined due to injury this season, but the other three have proved invaluable to the team. Heyer is Minnesota’s leading rebounder (7.7 per game), and Battle leads the team in assists (4.2). Before being sidelined, Braun was the team’s leading scorer (13.6).

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Plitzuweit is certainly glad that Heyer and her fellow recruits decided to stay. Those players have served as the backbone for the team. In Heyer, Plitzuweit sees a player who is a game-changer on the glass and on the defensive end.

”Mal is someone [whose] effort speaks for itself, and a lot of the time, the stats back it up, too. She had four offensive rebounds against a team that is hard to get offensive rebounds against because of her work ethic,” Plitzuweit told reporters following the Gophers’ loss to UCLA on Feb. 2.

One of the roles that Minnesota has needed from Heyer this season is leadership. The Gophers’ roster is heavy with upperclassmen, but with Heyer being one of the longest-tenured players along with Battle and Braun, those three have taken it upon themselves to help integrate the younger players as well as transfers.

“We’ve kind of taken on that leadership role, especially as we have new girls coming in on the team and freshmen contributing,” Heyer told The Next. “We’ve been able to help them into the system and help them learn.”

This season’s record is the best that Minnesota has finished in the three seasons this talented group has been together. Heyer believes this is the culmination of their chemistry coming together.

”We all have the same goal, and we came here to win. We came here to bring this program to the top. I think that bond that we’ve created has helped us on the floor, too,” Heyer said. “We’ve been able to build that chemistry over the years and now it’s finally paying off. I feel like this season, we’ve had our best season yet.”

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Heyer has started all 30 games for the Gophers at power forward. She’s averaging 8.5 points and 7.6 rebounds in 29.1 minutes per game while shooting 42.6% from the field.

Heyer credits Plitzuweit’s system for allowing her to continue to grow as a player.

“She’s done a great job of really breaking the game down. We’ve been focusing a lot on fundamentals and being a fundamental team,” Heyer said. “My role, I feel like, is just to do whatever the team needs me to do on a given night. … I feel like I work well into our system. We’re just on the rise and we’re a process-driven program.”

Heyer has become more of a threat from the outside this season, shooting 30.7% from the 3-point line on just under four attempts per game. She’s also become a little more of a ball-handler, making plays off the dribble.

”I played … inside more with the system we ran our freshman year, and then now we’ve kind of spaced it out and we shoot threes. We screen and we read screens,” Heyer said. “So just kind of being able to learn how to read screens, that’s helped me develop my game. Working on ball-handling and doing different moves off the dribble, being able to score inside and out, I’ve worked on that.”

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Following the February loss to UCLA, the Gophers were near the top of the Big Ten standings. They didn’t finish quite where they wanted to, falling to the No. 13 seed in the upcoming Big Ten Tournament. But they still have an opportunity to sneak into the NCAA Tournament.

While a strong Big Ten finish would have been nice, this team’s goal has long been the NCAA Tournament. The Gophers have not made an NCAA Tournament appearance since 2018, before this group came together.

”We all want to make the tournament. That’s been the goal since we stepped on campus,” Heyer said. “We’re really working on that. … We’re just excited to keep it rolling. These games are only going to help us. … You can go back, watch film and learn from it and get better.”

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