Brogdon Carving Out Spot Among All-Time UVa Greats

Postseason awards continue to roll in for the Virginia men’s basketball team. Most recently, Malcolm Brogdon and Justin Anderson were named to the National Association of Basketball Coaches All-America team with Brogdon on the second team and Anderson on the third team.

Brogdon also received second-team All-America recognition from the United States Basketball Writers Association and The Associated Press. Brogdon has earned a first-team All-ACC spot and an All-ACC Tournament team slot in each of the last two seasons. He was on the conference’s All-Defense team this season as well.

While postseason honors are becoming a regular occurrence at UVa, the recent rash of All-ACC and All-American honors in all likelihood solidified Brogdon’s jersey retirement in the coming years as well. Every previous two-time first-team All-ACC player at Virginia – Buzzy Wilkinson, Jeff Lamp, Ralph Sampson, Bryant Stith, and Sean Singletary – has had either their jersey or number retired. Keep in mind that Brogdon’s honor last season was from the ACC coaches, a possibility that did not exist until 2013.

It clearly makes sense for Brogdon, who still has one season remaining with the Hoos, to be considered as a potential jersey honoree. In addition to all the postseason laurels, Brogdon has led the team in scoring for the past two seasons and is currently 39th all-time in career points with 1,134. Brogdon’s career free throw percentage of 86.5% is just behind the program’s all-time leader Roger Mason Jr., who hit 86.9% of his shots at the line.

Brogdon has more than 1,000 points (1,134), 400 rebounds (413), 200 assists (220), and 80 steals (82) to date in his career.

There is also the context of team success to remember in Brogdon’s case. He is currently the only Virginia player in the past 15 years to play on three NCAA Tournament teams, though that trend figures to change in his senior season with a long list of players returning. Brogdon helped the 2011-2012 team earn an at-large bid, though he did not finish out the season due to a foot injury that eventually led to surgery and a redshirt season in 2012-2013. That year the Hoos made the NIT with Brogdon sitting out. Since he returned as a full-time starter the past two years, Virginia posted back-to-back 30-win seasons for the first time in program history and earned consecutive trips into the NCAA Tournament. Last season, of course, the Wahoos won only the second ACC Tournament title in school history too.

With the program’s turn-around over the past four years, all of which featured postseason appearances, and Brogdon’s role in that success, it seems likely that the No. 15 will make its way into the rafters at the John Paul Jones Arena eventually.