PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Jesse Agel knew a long time ago he had a tough point guard. Early in the season he could see it in the way he competed with a lot of pressure put on him, and at a position where Brown struggled last year because they didn’t have anyone who was a natural at the position. But even he didn’t think what Sean McGonagill did from on Friday night was going to happen after what happened a couple of days earlier.
During practice on Wednesday, McGonagill and classmates Josh Biber and Dockery Walker went after a loose ball. They all dove at once, and the outcome wasn’t pretty with McGonagill getting the worst of it by far. He made contact with Biber first, then his face went into Walker’s knee, and it was ugly from there. There was plenty of blood, and as one player put it, a lot of the team “was almost throwing up” looking at the aftermath.
“I wondered, ‘what happened to my face?’,” McGonagill recalled. “I thought it was just my teeth, my teeth got knocked in a little bit. I wondered, what am I going to have to do, how long am I going to be out?”
McGonagill needed to have several hours of plastic surgery because he bit right through his mouth and several teeth were pushed inward, although he didn’t lose any of them. Anyone could figure he was surely out at least for this weekend, and understandably so. A source said as of a few hours before the game, it was still not known if he would play, and it was only earlier in the day Friday that the face mask McGonagill donned for the game arrived.
Agel doubted he would play anytime soon after it happened, although he didn’t dismiss the possibility given who it was.
“Today, when I woke up, all reports were that he wasn’t going to play. I didn’t want him to play unless he was 100 percent okay,” said the Brown mentor. “He’s just so tough. It was a big hit, I thought, the fact that he’s so tough brought across the thought that he might play but wouldn’t play, and boy did he play. He played and he played.”
That he did. McGonagill put on a show that would be worth talking about even if he was perfectly healthy, scoring 39 points, with 28 of them in the second half as he missed just one shot, and the Bears pulled out an 87-79 win over a Columbia team that has looked like they will be a factor in the Ivy League race.
The numbers get more impressive. He was 15-19 from the field, including 3-4 from behind the arc. He drove to the basket, finished with both hands, and hit a couple of mid-range jumpers that included step-back shots, which assistant coach T.J. Sorrentine has spent time working with him on. He matched his point total from his first four Ivy League games in just one night, and he added six assists as well.
As one might imagine, the effort goes into the record book in a few places. He tied the Pizzitola Sports Center scoring record with Earl Hunt, who had 39 against Harvard just over 11 years ago. That also tied the Brown freshman scoring record for one game with the same game by Hunt. His 15 made field goals is a new arena record as well, with Hunt making 12 against Army on January 2, 2002.
Said Agel: “It was an epic performance which he, and everyone else who was lucky enough to be here and witness will remember for the rest of their lives.”
McGonagill’s performance was not in vain thanks in part to some good support from two others who have done much more than play well on Friday night. Adrian Williams, who continues to battle a balky knee, had 20 points on 7-11 shooting with some clutch three-pointers. He’s also been a key leader for this team through its struggles early on in Ivy League play, as Friday night’s win was their first.
“Adrian has been my big brother throughout this entire process,” said McGonagill. “Adrian’s the big guy of the team, he helps us out. All of the seniors are just keeping us intact and keeping us going. Even though we started off 0-4, they’re keeping us going.”
Walker, meanwhile, had a good second half as well, and Friday’s game mirrored his season thus far. After going scoreless in the first half with five rebounds, he finished with 13 points and 12 rebounds. It was his third double-double, all coming since the calendar flipped over to 2011. Since that time, he has improved significantly.
“He’s growing by leaps and bounds,” said Agel. “He hit the jumper, which he’s capable of doing, and just trying to work on competing hard. When he does that, the rebounding comes naturally to him. He’s a gifted rebounder and gets a ton of rebounds above the rim, which you don’t see a lot of at this level.”
Williams and Walker were not alone, as senior Garrett Leffelman came up big at the defensive end. He held Noruwa Agho, the Ivy League’s leading scorer, without a point in the second half. Agho had six assists, so he wasn’t entirely ineffective, but Leffelman didn’t let him get going and that went a long way to helping with the win.
But McGonagill’s game will be what anyone there remembers from that evening. His coach knew he was capable of something like it all along, although even he couldn’t have written quite the script that played out.
