'Enjoy the journey': Meet the beloved player at the heart of Bradley's magical Valley run

PEORIA — Rienk Mast fell in love with basketball as a 10-year-old sitting at the top of an arena in Phoenix, watching Suns point guard Steve Nash play against the 76ers, so far away he used binoculars.

Now all eyes are on him as he stands on center stage with the Bradley Braves, an NCAA automatic bid in his sights as they head into Arch Madness this weekend in St. Louis.

"My aunt and uncle lived in Phoenix, and we visited them and I got to watch Steve Nash play," Mast said, grinning at the recollection. "We went to a game against the 76ers, and I was like three rows from the very top of the arena, using binoculars to see the game because we were so high up.

"It was an amazing experience as a little kid. And I've been in love with the game ever since."

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Mast is the main character on a Bradley team that heads into Arch Madness as the No. 1 seed, fresh off its first regular-season Valley championship since 1995-96.

The Braves won it back-to-back in 2018-19 and 2019-20, but COVID forced the cancellation of the NCAA Tournament in the latter year.

Now Mast, an academic senior who is graduating this spring, but a junior in terms of basketball eligibility, is leading the Braves in what might be his last college run.

"One more year, one more year, I heard that and it was special," Mast said, referring to the chant a sellout crowd aimed at him Saturday when BU beat Drake for the Valley title. "Hearing that was cool. To feel that appreciation from the fans, with my parents sitting there watching … it was an emotional, amazing moment for me."

Mast had an ACL injury to his left knee as a freshman and had a medical red shirt. He could technically play two more years, including the extra COVID year granted from the NCAA. But the 6-foot-10 big man says he hasn't decided anything about that yet. His focus is on Bradley, Arch Madness and the NCAA Tournament.

Korfball, Bradley and the Netherlands

Mast grew up in Groningen, Netherlands, with his mother, Willy Reinalda-Mast, his father, Erik, and his brother, Jelte. His parents played Korfball, a very popular game played primarily in Netherlands and Belgium, invented in 1901 by an Amsterdam schoolmaster named Nico Broekhuysen.

By the 1970s, it had grown into international play. It's a co-ed sport, with four male and four female players on each team. The object is to throw a ball through a basket mounted on a pole 11.5 feet high. There is no net and no backboard, and the playing surface extends a few feet behind the pole.

"It's a hoop without a backboard," Mast said. "There's a World Cup. Both my parents played it, that's how I started. But a week after my 8th birthday I went to a basketball practice. That's when I decided I was a basketball player. I just loved it so much. But Korfball was the first thing I played and it was pretty fun."

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Mast's father would tape NBA games for him — they couldn't watch games live because of the time zone difference — and he soaked those up.

By age 12, he was 6-foot-4 and cast as a center. He went on to play at the highest amateur levels in his country, playing on the Netherlands FIBA 16-under team in 2017, and for Holland in the 2018 European 18-under Championship, and then in the professional Dutch Basketball League.

As a teenager, Mast battled against another rising Netherlands star — Malevy Leons, now his teammate at BU.

While he developed as a basketball player on the court, he developed something else off it. "I have this inner passion for competing," said Mast, who can solve a Rubik's Cube in less than a minute. "Board games, card games, I love competing, always been that way."

Choosing Bradley, and physics

Mast, a power brain with a power game, had Ivy League offers. He had lots of interest from low- and mid-major schools as well. But it was then-Bradley assistant coach Drew Adams who first found him in Netherlands.

"People back home guided me," Mast said. "My family didn't have a basketball background, it was all new for us. Through conversations and visiting Bradley, I liked the place, the coaches, the culture and I said 'Let's do it.' Bradley was such a good fit for me."

He is a physics major, one of only two true physics majors left at Bradley.

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"Coming out of high school I liked doing physics, I'm good at math, all that science stuff," Mast said. "But I don't know what I want to do other than basketball. I was telling my mom, she's a chemistry teacher, that today in class we were just writing letters on the board for mathematical formulas.

"At this point, I can't say I love it. Just kind of want to be done with it so I'm going to grind it out."

Pressed on what he would do next if there was no such thing as basketball, Mast said:

"No basketball at all? That's a tough world to live in. Maybe go into architecture."

Teammates and friends for life

The heart of Bradley's veteran presence includes Mast, grad student forward Ja'Shon Henry and senior guard Ville Tahvanainen. Mast and Tahvanainen could decide to stay another year. But Henry is gone and these last few games are all that is left for this trio together.

Henry and Tahvanainen say Mast is like a brother, that they love having him as a teammate and a friend.

"It will be emotional for us, knowing this is the last time all three of us will be together," Mast said. "We've been talking, the last time this, the last time that. Could be last game at Carver, those kinds of things."

Tahvanainen, when asked for a funny story about Mast, recalled the time the 6-10 big man appeared to be sleep-walking.

"We were all in the apartment, Ja'Shon and I were doing homework and Rienk came in and headed to bed," Tahvanainen said, grinning. "About 30 minutes later he opens his door and walks out into the living room, stands there staring at us and mumbling in Dutch.

"We were so confused."

Rienk Mast has a dream

Perhaps Mast was dreaming about the NBA. That's on his mind now for sure.

"Every kid's dream is to play in the NBA and that's what I want to do," Mast said. "If I don't make it there, I'm not 100% it's NBA or nothing else — I'll go back to Europe and try to make the EuroLeague. I'd like to play in Spain. It's one of the only countries in Europe I've not been to. I've heard great stories from friends who have played there."

He has the credentials. All-MVC third team last season and first team this season. MVC All-Freshman Team in 2020-21 and MVC Most Improved Team in 2021-22. This season, he was second in the MVC in rebounding at 7.79 per game, 11th in scoring at 14.4 points per game and third in field goal percentage at 51.7%.

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'Enjoy the journey'

Mast understands the expectations that surround the Bradley team as Arch Madness arrives.

"After winning the regular season and being the No. 1 seed, of course there's going to be expectations of us winning the thing," Mast said. "You want to hear those. But at the end of the day, you want to stay within our group and go for it."

Mast says this 2022-23 team is different in some respects than the two that won consecutive bids to the NCAA tourney before COVID, but has the same program identity — compete, defend, rebound — that is the bedrock on which coach Brian Wardle builds.

In the hallway outside the Bradley practice gym there are huge framed photos mounted on the walls. Then-freshman Mast is wearing a red polo shirt in one of them, caught up in the middle of a celebration as the 2019-20 team clinched a ride to the NCAA tourney.

He walks past that picture every day.

"It's a good memory for sure," Mast said. "But I want to do it again. I really want to do it again, put some more nice pictures up there.

"It's time for some new ones."

When he was asked what 2023 Rienk Mast would tell that freshman in the photo, he said: "Stay the course, keep working. All the work I've put in from that moment on is what brought me here. Enjoy the journey."

That last part — enjoy the journey — is written on a sign outside the Braves locker room in Carver Arena. "When we go out into the arena, everyone touches that sign," Mast said. "I think it's a very important message, not just for our team but for everyone around us.

"Everyone in life, really."

Dave Eminian is the Journal Star sports columnist, and covers Bradley men's basketball, the Rivermen and Chiefs. He writes the Cleve In The Eve sports column for pjstar.com. He can be reached at 686-3206 or deminian@pjstar.com. Follow him on Twitter @icetimecleve.

This article originally appeared on Journal Star: Rienk Mast is at the heart of Bradley basketball's magical Valley run