CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- They're friends and teammates, but Virginia juniors Malcolm Brogdon and Justin Anderson are still intense competitors.
Earlier this week, Anderson -- hand in a wrap, as he's still recovering from a broken finger -- asked Brogdon to go bowling with him.
"I was like, 'Alright, Malcolm, I'm going to beat you in this.' He was like, 'Alright,'" Anderson said. "So we bowled against each other and he rolled like 176 or something. I rolled like 80.
I was like, 'Alright, let's go play pool!' I'm running the table on him, I shoot the shot on the eight-ball, the cue ball goes in right behind the eight-ball, I lose the game. It's like, 'Malcolm, how do you always find a way to win?' That's just his nature. That's just who he is."
Brogdon's stats don't necessarily scream second-team All-America -- 14.2 points per game on 42.8 percent shooting, four rebounds and 2.4 assists. But watching Virginia play, it's clear that Brogdon is the key to everything the Cavaliers do.
He's their best player, period, on both sides of the ball. The smartest, most aware and most instinctual. Virginia's offense, though, isn't built towards one player. It's built around sharing the basketball and making good decisions. And yet, in the second half against North Carolina in the ACC tournament loss and then again in the first half against Belmont in the opening round of the NCAA tournament, Brogdon went into takeover mode.
It clicked, he said, at halftime. He went absolutely bonkers on North Carolina, scoring 20 points in the final 10 minutes of the game to bring his Cavaliers to within striking distance, nearly winning them the game by himself.
It took that self-realization -- plus some loud motivation from his head coach, Tony Bennett -- at the break for him to understand it was time to take over.
"I'm not wired to be selfish. No one in this program really is," Brogdon said. "It's hard to take more shots than I'm used to and to try to get myself more involved, scoring-wise. But sometimes that's what the team needs and I have to be more aggressive sometimes."
Virginia point guard London Perrantes said that after the North Carolina game especially, he and his teammates were trying to encourage Brogdon to get started earlier. If he got off to a good start, he said, the rest of his team would settle in.
That's what he did against Belmont, scoring 16 of his 22 points in the first half.
"These last couple games, towards the end of the regular season, he kind of started off slow. We've always just been preaching to him, just start off strong and you'll put us in a rhythm and we'll be good from there," Perrantes said. "He did that yesterday (against Belmont) and hopefully, he'll keep it going.
" ... Just to be able to start if off like that because then, he gets more rhythm from the beginning of the game instead of having to pick it up at the end."
Brogdon is humble about his basketball skills. But off-the-court competition? That's where the humility stops.
Especially when it comes to his dominance of Anderson.
"I really beat him at almost everything," Brogdon said with a grin. "We play NCAA football, and I destroy him at that, too. ... It's always nice playing someone that's as competitive as you and that hates losing as much as you, so you get up and you find ways to win."
Anderson could relate it back to that North Carolina game. He knows Brogdon could do what he did in the second half of that game any time he wanted to. That doesn't mean that he should, or even will, because Brogdon would rather win.
"Like that game, he knew when to do it. He knows when to be aggressive. He knows when to make the extra pass. Because every game is different," Anderson said. "The way that teams prepare for him is different, and he realizes that, which shows his maturity and his leadership on this team."
