THE ATL IN THE ACC
Virginia’s roster includes three metro Atlanta players, the most among the ACC with the exception of Georgia Tech. A glimpse of area players around the conference:
Player, High school; Ht.; Pos.; Class; PPG; RPG; APG
Clemson
Jaron Blossomgame; Chattahoochee; 6-7; F; Soph; 13.6; 8.4; 1.2
Florida State
Phil Cofer; Whitewater; 6-8; F; Fr.; 7.4; 5.1; 0.3
Virginia
Malcolm Brogdon; GAC; 6-5; G; Jr.; 13.6; 3.5; 2.8
Evan Nolte; Milton; 6-8; F; Jr.; 2.5; 1.4; 0.6
Isaiah Wilkins; GAC; 6-7; F; Fr.; 2.1; 3.3; 0.8
Virginia Tech
Adam Smith; Fayette County; 6-1; G; Jr.; 12.9; 2.8; 0.9
When Virginia coach Tony Bennett first saw Malcolm Brogdon — love at first cross-over at the 2010 Peach Jam tournament before Brogdon’s senior season at Greater Atlanta Christian — he embarked on an unlikely recruiting voyage that would include discussions of Biblical scripture and fending off the program at Harvard.
But the usual stuff? Like pursuing destiny? Not so much.
“Coach Bennett told me I could be a piece of turning the program around.” Brogdon said. “But we never talked about being one of the best teams in the country. He never said that specifically.”
Maybe, but Brogdon has helped to make that a reality. Georgia Tech visits Charlottesville, Va., on Thursday to find Virginia (17-0, 5-o ACC) ranked No. 2 in the nation, its highest listing since 1983, Ralph Sampson’s final season. On a team without a dominant player, Brogdon is as close to a star as the Cavaliers allow, their second-leading scorer (13.6 per game), ranking second in assists (2.8) and a killer at the free-throw line (84.3 percent).
And in an understated way that defines Bennett program, Brogdon, a 6-foot-5 junior, senses this is all as it should be.
“I’m not surprised where we are today,” he said. “I feel like we’ve worked really hard. We have a humble approach to everything that we do and we’re a self-less team. So we enjoy this journey together.”
Tech will remember him from last Feb. 2, when Virginia trailed by a point at the half before blowing out the Yellow Jackets by 19 behind Brogdon’s double-double (14 points, 11 rebounds). He is coming off a season-high 20-point game in a 61-51 win Saturday at Boston College. He is shooting 56 percent over his past three games, including 7-for-11 on 3-pointers.
But then, Brogdon’s game has never really been all about numbers.
“He understood the value of possession defensively, understood offensively the soundness that’s needed,” Bennett said of his first impressions. “His physicality, how he was trained coming up and he’s very mature for his age. You just talk to him and you can sense that maturity.”
He has needed it. Three years ago, Brogdon had worked himself into a third-guard role as a freshman when he began experiencing pain in his left foot. It was mid-February when X-rays determined he’d been playing on a broken ankle.
“It was a clean break (of the navicular bone), but it wasn’t a recent break,” he said. “They said it could have happened years ago. They didn’t know when it actually happened.”
After a month of physical therapy failed to improve things, he underwent bone-graft surgery that involved the insertion of three pins into the ankle and the clipping of his Achilles tendon to relieve pressure on the midfoot. He would not appear in a game for 18 months.
“It makes you realize a lot of things that you wouldn’t have thought about, having to sit out as long as I did,” he said. “You realize you can watch film. Your mind can really grow during that period. You can become a better player just by watching film of yourself and other people and picking up things. Then sitting on the sideline of your team and listening to what your coach wants and how he likes to coach and what he likes to see out there on the floor.”
Brogdon realized he was too right-hand oriented. He recognized his shot needed more arc. He listened to how Bennett worked a game and started offering teammates advice turning timeouts.
“I was willing to put in the work to really get back to be better than I was,” he said. “I didn’t want to get back to where I was. I wanted to be better.”
It happened. Last year in his first full season, Brogdon was voted first-team All-ACC by the league coaches. Virginia won the ACC tournament for the first time since 1976, Brogdon scoring a career-high 23 against Duke in the final.
He said he enjoys facing Tech. He knows several players, including Chris Bolden, Corey Heyward and Marcus Georges-Hunt, from GAC and AAU competition. And there’s probably a little pay-back there, too. Although he was under-recruited until Virginia took an interest, Tech all but ignored him as a prospect.
“They looked at me maybe a tiny bit while Paul Hewitt was there, but they never offered or took a serious interest in me,” he said.
Since then, Brogdon has been a beacon for metro Atlanta players. Evan Nolte, a junior from Milton High, averages 13 minutes as a reserve forward while Isaiah Wilkins, Dominique Wilkins’ stepson who also played at GAC, has seen increased floor time the past three games as a freshman forward.
Somehow, Virginia lost the 11th-leading scorer in school history (Joe Harris) and the seventh-leading rebounder (Akil Mitchell) to graduation and has come out with a seemingly stronger team. Bennett has better depth, and the Cavaliers continue to play brutal defense, allowing only 50.6 points a game and holding 41 consecutive opponents to less than 50 percent shooting.
It’s all been enough to stop Brogdon from wondering how things might have worked out if hadn’t played in the 2010 Peach Jam and he had gone to Harvard.
“I used to think about it. I did,” he said. “But not that much now because I feel like I’m in a really good situation here, and I couldn’t have asked for more.”
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