{"id":533921,"date":"2019-05-15T15:17:24","date_gmt":"2019-05-15T19:17:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/?p=533921"},"modified":"2019-05-16T17:05:20","modified_gmt":"2019-05-16T21:05:20","slug":"deandre-hunter-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/the-magazine\/deandre-hunter-story\/","title":{"rendered":"READY FOR THE SHOW: De’Andre Hunter Has More to Prove"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By now, hoop heads have seen, read and heard about 6-7 wing\/forward De\u2019Andre Hunter<\/a>\u2019s heroic performance guiding Virginia to the program\u2019s first national championship in April.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They\u2019ve also heard all the jokes about the Cavaliers being the first No. 1 seed to get bounced in the first round of the NCAA Tournament a year prior. Hunter heard them, too, unable to help his squad as a former redshirt freshman who became the ACC\u2019s Sixth Man of the Year, because he was sidelined with an injured wrist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt taught me a lot,\u201d Hunter says. \u201cI knew my role would increase. So I knew I had to do everything I could to perfect my game to be the best player my team needed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mission accomplished. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He averaged 15.2 points per game and 5.1 boards, and locked up just about any position on the floor defensively on his way to First Team All-ACC and ACC Defensive Player of the Year honors. He capped the season with a career-high 27 points in the national title game\u2014including big shot after big shot\u2014and put the cuffs on Texas Tech star Jarrett Culver<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Cavaliers\u2019 notoriously slow, continuous pace on offense, and defensive connectedness and stinginess, is conducive to winning ball games and titles, but not great for gaudy individual numbers.  So Dre sacrificed stats for a \u2018chip the last two seasons, but wound up with both during his final collegiate game. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI remember (Villanova\u2019s) Donte (DiVincenzo) going crazy in their championship, and it seemed so far away at the time,\u201d says Hunter, a native of Philadelphia, where he attended Friends\u2019 Central School. \u201cI thought about how amazing it would be to be on that stage with all those people in the stadium. So just to be there, and then to win it was a surreal feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standing on the podium next to Jim Nantz as the star of the national championship game must have seemed like a pipe dream when Hunter was 16. He began to garner interest from local Division I schools like Temple and LaSalle during the summer going into his sophomore year of high school, but a broken leg wiped out his ensuing season. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was definitely a big setback for me,\u201d Hunter says. \u201cMy coach told me a few schools were starting to look at me, so when I broke my leg I thought that maybe that would go away because I didn\u2019t play, and I knew other guys would have a chance to do things I couldn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the time Hunter hit the circuit after his junior season of high school, he was back to killing, but still under-the-radar relative to most future lotto picks\u2014both in terms of offers and the arbitrary rankings college fans love to check.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, UVA didn\u2019t even get into the mix until Hunter\u2019s last tournament on the circuit in front of coaches\u2014the Fab 48 in Las Vegas. Virginia associate head coach Jason Williford remembers head coach Tony Bennett saying, We have to have him, that\u2019s our guy<\/em>, during that tournament. The rest is history. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The decision to redshirt came about shortly before Hunter’s freshman season, when it was evident he wasn\u2019t going to be guaranteed a spot in the rotation. Williford, who played at UVA before graduating in 1995, told Hunter that he regretted not redshirting, having logged a total of only 36 minutes his freshman year. Though Hunter was disappointed at first, like any hooper being told they aren\u2019t going to play would be, he dove headfirst into acclimating himself to the Cavaliers\u2019 system, strength program and the overall physicality of DI college hoops at practice.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biding his time until it was his turn was nothing new for Hunter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEvery time we put him in one-on-one drills, to be honest…\u201d Williford explains. \u201cIt\u2019d be one-on-one with guards, or one-on-one with some of the bigger and more versatile forwards, in those settings, we felt like we couldn\u2019t wait to have that guy. He could score the rock.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThen every time we put him in on defense, and he\u2019d have to guard multiple spots, he was staying in front of guards and wings. He just kept getting better over time and we knew we had a good one.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All 2018-19 season, Hunter proved to be a killer from the high post, either facing up and draining jumpers from the elbow or getting by his man off the dribble and finishing at the rim. His length, athleticism, skill and feel allow him to excel in any offensive situation. He\u2019s equally versatile and prolific on the defensive end as well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is the recipe for a lottery pick, which Hunter should be in June. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Williford has high expectations for Hunter in the League, mentioning his ability to adapt to whatever role a coach needs him to play on the court. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAt the next level where the floor is spaced a little more, and the defenses can\u2019t pack in like they do in college, I think you\u2019ll see more to his game,\u201d Williford adds. \u201cIn the summer the guys would tell us all the time how unbelievable he is when they play pickup. Obviously when they\u2019re playing pickup there\u2019s no coaches around, so they aren\u2019t playing our pack-line defense.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can expect to see more of Hunter\u2019s playmaking arsenal on display in the NBA. You can also expect him to make an immediate impact wherever he lands. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m eager to showcase my full game,\u201d says Hunter, who declared for the draft a week after winning the title. \u201cI can do a lot more than I showed at UVA. There were flashes at times but I can dribble, shoot off the dribble do things people think I can\u2019t do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think my defense will help me a lot (in the NBA), and my versatility overall. I feel like there isn\u2019t one thing on the court I can\u2019t do. I think any team would need that. I think that will all translate just fine.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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For someone who missed his entire sophomore season of high school ball with a broken leg and didn\u2019t know if he\u2019d garner major Division I interest, and as someone who entered college without any draft hype, Hunter is used to his game speak for itself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI definitely felt like I was overlooked and felt like I was just as good as the top guys in the country,\u201d Hunter says. \u201cMy coaches have always believed in me, and I worked hard to have a chance to be one of those guys. I feel like in the end, it\u2019s worked out perfectly.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The days of overlooking De\u2019Andre Hunter on the court are officially over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Danny Hazan is a contributor to SLAM. Follow him on Twitter @groovedh<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photos via Getty.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By now, hoop heads have seen, read and heard about 6-7 wing\/forward De\u2019Andre Hunter\u2019s heroic performance guiding Virginia to the program\u2019s first national championship in April. They\u2019ve also heard all the jokes about the Cavaliers being the first No. 1 seed to get bounced in the first round of the NCAA Tournament a year prior. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":201,"featured_media":534003,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49435],"tags":[62553,62523,62534],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-533921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-magazine","tag-deandre-hunter","tag-mantle","tag-slam-222"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/201"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=533921"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533921\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":534147,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533921\/revisions\/534147"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/534003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533921"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=533921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}