By ADAM ZAGORIA
St. John’s is listing senior guard Mustapha Heron as day-to-day with an ankle sprain heading into Saturday’s big game with No. 16 Arizona in San Francisco.
“He hasn’t practiced yet. … He’s still a day-to-day situation,” head coach Mike Anderson said after the team’s 85-57 win over Albany Wednesday night.
One source close to Heron said he would “hopefully” be able to play Saturday.
Heron injured the ankle during a Dec. 10 win over Brown. He is averaging 14.4 points, 2.1 rebounds and 1.7 assists per contest through 10 games.
St. John’s (10-2) will take a six-game winning streak –including a victory over West Virginia at Madison Square Garden — into the game with the Wildcats. Arizona (10-2) is coming off an 84-80 loss to Gonzaga last Saturday.
“I hope we are a much better basketball team by the time we get Mustapha back,” Anderson said. “That’s the goal. We want to be playing some of our better basketball later down the line.
Of Arizona, Anderson added: ““That’s going to be a tremendous challenge. We have had some games where we played some pretty good basketball teams, but it’s probably one of the more talented player-for-player [opponents]. We’re going to be traveling out to the west coast, so I want to see what our guys do in terms of their game traveling. Can you bring that same kind of intensity offensively? Can we execute? … I think rebounding is going to be a big battle in that game. They have some tremendous players.”
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