Wofford’s Fletcher Magee: ‘If I Would Have Played a Little Bit Below Average, We’d Have Beat Kentucky’
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Mike Young instructed him to keep shooting. His teammates told him to keep shooting. And Fletcher Magee, the most prolific 3-point
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Mike Young instructed him to keep shooting. His teammates told him to keep shooting. And Fletcher Magee, the most prolific 3-point shooter in the history of college basketball, kept shooting.
Shoot your shot.
He missed. Over and over.
Twelve times in all from beyond the arc.
“It just doesn’t seem right to end on a game where I go 0-for-12. If I go 3-for-12, we win the game,” Magee said after the 62-56 loss. “I just don’t understand how that happens.”
This was finally Magee’s opportunity, his chance to show the world that he was, in fact, the best shooter in the country. It took him four years to get to the NCAA Tournament and now all eyes were on him and his Wofford Terriers in their matchup against mighty Kentucky.
And he couldn’t make a single trifecta.
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Just two nights after setting the NCAA record for most career 3-pointers, he set a record of a more dubious kind: The most attempts in an NCAA Tournament contest without a single one falling.
It was painful to watch, excruciating to see him struggle, sad to watch someone so successful throughout four seasons have arguably the worst performance of his career on the sport’s biggest stage.
When given the choice whether to go to a shootaround at 8 a.m. on Saturday morning, Magee didn’t hesitate. He showed up and did what he always does – take and make shots.
“He’s as hard a worker and as good a kid as I’ve ever coached,” Young said. “The guy’s been so special from his first game at Missouri as a kid when he had 22 points. I have so many fond memories.”
Magee is always a marked man, whether it’s in the SoCon, where he and his teammates ran the table in the regular season this year and also won the conference tournament to earn a No. 7 seed. They dispatched the Big East’s Seton Hall Pirates on Thursday and now came his shot against John Calipari’s band of McDonald’s All-Americans.
UK freshman Tyler Herro drew the primary assignment of containing Magee, who was coming off a game in which he sank seven 3s and became the NCAA’s all-time leading 3-point shooter. Herro, who is considered one of the country’s better long distance shooters, said that while watching tape prior to the game, he realized one thing: “He doesn’t miss.”
But all Magee did was miss on this day. He missed three times from deep in the first half but Wofford trailed by just two points. There was no way he’d go another 20 minutes without making a trey.
There were contested 3s, off-balance ones and even ones in which no one was within 10 feet of Magee. None of them found the bottom of the net. But Young said never once did he think about going away from his star.
Magee took the blame, saying, “I feel like I let everyone down,” which is utterly ridiculous. He also played stellar defense, and his teammates Cameron Jackson brought up the point that there were 30 other plays in which could have altered the outcome of the game.
“He can’t do that,” Jackson said. “That’s ridiculous. In no way is that on him. I hope he doesn’t put it all on himself.”
But the even-keeled Magee still couldn’t put the blame on anyone else for this setback.
“If I would have played a little bit below average, we’d have beat Kentucky,” he said.
He credited Herro and Kentucky, but also made it clear that these were shots he’d made over and over throughout his career. He admitted that he felt like his shot was off in the first half but was confident that most of his shots after the break were headed towards the bottom of the net.
What happened is that Magee had one of those nights. Steph Curry has had them, Klay Thompson has had them and Kevin Durant has had them. He’s not Steph, Klay or KD, but he’s arguably the greatest shooter in the history of college basketball – and he picked the wrong time to have the worst shooting night of his career.
“I still can’t really process what just happened,” he said as he answered every single question from reporters both on the podium and in the locker room without so much as a flinch, and also stopped to take a picture with one elementary school-aged boy.
“I know he’s devastated, but he’ll get through it,” Young said.
But it won’t be easy.
