Charles Buggs, a 6-foot-8 forward from Chatham (VA) Hargrave Military Academy, signed with Minnesota in the early signing period. However, since most people have never seen him play in person, Gopher fans are curious about what type of player they will be seeing next fall.
Hargrave Military Academy does a recap of each game and Buggs has only been listed once, leading Gopher fans to question what kid of player they are getting.
GopherHole.com recently caught up with Hargrave head coach A.W. Hamilton to learn more about Buggs’ season for the 18-0 team.
Buggs played for Arlington (TX) Martin and helped lead the team to a 17-14 mark as a high school senior. Buggs graduated with a 3.7 GPA and is fully NCAA qualified, but decided to attend prep school to get more recruiting looks.
Hargrave is a loaded team with several players who will also signed in the early signing period. They are Andre Washingotn (Wake Forest), Montrezi Harrell (Virginia Tech), John Burks (UMKC) and Codi Miller-McIntyre (Wake Forest).
Buggs is considered a good athlete who will play the small forward position in college. He run the floor well and can step out to the three-point line. Buggs is a good shot blocker and defender.
Gopher Hole: Gopher fans, like all fans, obsess incoming recruits, especially ones that they haven’t seen in person. They will check up the recaps of your games and not see him listed. You know how fans can be, right?
A.W. Hamilton: No doubt. What we try to do with our recaps and we don’t do as great job with our recaps, but we will target a couple of guys and write about them. If we wrote about everybody, we would have a two or three page of information
Gopher Hole: I think that he has only been mentioned in one of the recaps and I know that you told me that he is averaging 17 points, eight rebounds and three steals. Sid Hartman from the Minneapolis StarTribune had his stats as 17 points and 18 rebounds, so he probably got the info wrong.
A.W. Hamilton: He got the info wrong. I wish he was averaging 18 rebounds (laughing). If he was averaging 18 rebounds, I’d demand a raise. He is doing great. He is a tremendous talent and just an unbelievable kid. His upside is through the roof. He has got a chance to be special for Minnesota.
Gopher Hole: The one game that he was in the recaps, he had ten points, so if you do the math and you only listed the players who reach double figures, he probably couldn’t be averaging 17 points per game. When you have that many good players on one team, it is hard to put up big numbers sometimes.
A.W. Hamilton: One thing that the recap wouldn’t tell you is what he does on the defensive end. One thing, we are going to do at Hargrave is press you for 40 minutes and he is tremendous in the press. He gets six, seven deflections. He’ll get three or four steals. He just causes havoc in the press, which makes him so good for us. The recap will never tell you that. The last game we played before Christmas break, we had 67 deflections as a team. We don’t put that in there and they will put in who our leading scorers were, but those are the things that he does really well.
Gopher Hole: The way I look at it is that if you are on a good team your numbers might not be as good as if you were on a bad team. When you are playing with five other Division I signees, I don’t expect a kid to average 30 points and 20 rebounds, but I have people asking me how is Charles doing.
A.W. Hamilton: You can call me anytime and I’ll fill you in on how he is doing. When we get back in the swing on things, January 2nd and I’ll get you some more information.
Gopher Hole: When is your next game?
A.W. Hamilton: January 7th. We play a prep school out of Georgia. A really good team called True Academy. It should be a good test for us. I think that they have five or six Division I guys as well.