City of Basketball Love

Michael Bullock (@thebullp_n)
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PITTSBURGH — Following a year on the sidelines that included a lost duel with the bureaucrats at the NCAA, Samir Doughty finally is going to have his chance to suit up and play for Virginia Commonwealth’s high-octane Rams.

Ruled a partial qualifier by the NCAA — had something to do with initial-eligibility requirements — Doughty sat last season and watched.

Apparently, the two-time Pennsylvania Class A all-state selection (first team) wasn’t completely idle, however, as Doughty performed well in the Richmond, Va., school’s classrooms (better than 3.0 GPA) and added 20 pounds to his slender 6-4 frame.

And once the second semester of Doughty’s freshman year arrived, he was allowed to practice with Will Wade’s talented bunch. Doughty also traveled with the Rams to Spain in August, practicing and playing in games during a 10-day summer tour.

Now that VCU has been practicing for the past few weeks — Wade’s eager Rams (25-11) are looking to defend the Atlantic 10 regular-season crown they shared with Dayton and St. Bonaventure and return to the NCAA Tournament for the seventh straight season — the 185-pounder is full go and ready to contend for regular playing time.

A full year on campus, despite some of the circumstances, should be a plus for the remarkably athletic backcourt standout. In VCU’s first game on its Spain tour, Doughty topped the Rams with 17 points.

“It certainly helps,” Wade said Tuesday, during the Atlantic 10’s preseason Media Day gathering at PPG Paints Arena, the site of the league’s postseason tournament. “He wasn’t able to practice with us until the second half of the year, the way the NCAA ruled on him. He was our student-athlete [of the year], by the way.

“I don’t like our kids being labeled partial qualifiers. I know that’s the term everybody has to use, but Samir has over a 3.0 GPA and was our academic nominee. He’s a smart kid. It’s just the way the NCAA looks at things.

“He was able to put on 20 pounds of muscle. He was able to practice with us second semester. He has a more-advanced understanding than a normal freshman would of what we’re doing. And he’s told me — and he’d tell you if he was sitting here — that the year off really helped him. He wasn’t quite ready to go as a freshman, as much as he needed to be. And the year off was really beneficial for him,” Wade continued.

“He’s a good player. He can really score the ball. He’s got good movement off ball screens. I think it’s going to help him this year and, in turn, help our team.”

And …

“He’s gotten better defensively,” Wade said a few minutes later. “He understands that if you don’t guard, you don’t play around our spot. He knows what the deal is. … He’s worked extremely hard on it. He’s got a good understanding of what we’re doing. He’s going to be just fine defensively.”

Yet when VCU has the ball …

“We move him around,” Wade continued. “We play him at both wing spots. He’s put on 20 pounds, so he looks a little bit better. He was a little skinny back in Philadelphia.

“That’s one thing we really emphasized with him, we said, ‘In high school you could finish all that stuff being skinny, but here, man, you’re gonna get knocked around like a pinball. You’re gonna get nailed.’ So we wanted to make sure we gave him some extra weight, so he could go down there and finish, give them some broader shoulders.

“So he can go down there and take a lot of contact,” added Wade, who also called Doughty an ‘awesome kid.’ “He’s going to be able to drive.”

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GEORGE WASHINGTON'S BROWN SETTLING IN AT SAINT JOSEPH'S: Several hours later, not far from where Wade talked about his VCU Rams, Philly’s own Phil Martelli weighed in on his Saint Joseph’s Hawks and one of their newcomers — 6-7 forward Charles Brown of George Washington by way of St. Thomas More (Conn.).

Brown was the Philly Public League’s Division B player of the year as a senior in 2015.

“He’ll be in the rotation, now where he fits [remains to be seen],” Martelli said. “He’s a shot maker. Through the first three weeks what I’ve noticed is he’s wide-eyed, he’s always looking to please, he takes in everything that I say and he takes it in a very literal sense so I have to be careful in how I present things to him.

“We have to keep him out of the gym at times, out of Hagan Arena, because he’s just in there all the time and he needs to get well-rounded in terms of being a college student and being a college guy,” Martelli continued. “Charles is interesting. I think he has the ability to do special things, not just in our program, but in this league.”

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WESTTOWN'S BOLDEN VYING FOR PLAYING TIME AT GW: Another Philly product that could log playing time this season is former Westtown standout Jair Bolden, the 6-4 guard who landed on a pair of Class AA all-state teams before bouncing off to Washington, D.C., and George Washington University.

After being denied twice with Bolden in the lineup, Westtown finally cashed in last season and captured a Pennsylvania Independent School state championship.

The Moose downed Germantown Academy 73-65 in the title game.

Bolden will play for interim head coach Maurice Joseph, who took over in September when Mike Lonergan was dismissed following an independent investigation into claims that he verbally abused Colonials players.

Joseph played two seasons for Lonergan at Vermont before eventually joining his staff.

GW (27-10) finished fifth in the Atlantic 10’s regular-season standings, but lost to eventual champ Saint Joseph’s in the tournament quarterfinals. Invited to the NIT, GW wound up winning that event, defeating Valparaiso in the title game.

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FORMER CHURCH FARM STAR GUDMUNDSSON IMPRESSING EARLY AT DAVIDSON: Southeastern Pennsylvania basketball fans barely got to know Jon Axel Gudmundsson during his brief stay at Church Farm during the 2014-15 season, but the 6-4 guard has returned to the U.S. from his native Iceland and is a freshman at Davidson.

Gudmundsson was averaging 21 points per game for Marc Turner’s Griffins when he withdrew from the tiny suburban Philly school and went home to play for the Grindavik Basketball Club in Iceland’s Super League for the past two seasons.

Gudmundsson also has represented Iceland internationally at a handful of age levels.

“We are absolutely thrilled with his willingness to work, his tough-mindedness and his ability to grasp things quickly,” Davidson head coach Bob McKillop said. “He not only works hard, but he works smart. The transition from high school to college is very, very difficult at any level and he is making it as seamlessly as we can hope.”