Standout sophomore season leads to ACC accolades for Rochester's Matthew Hurt
Amid a rough season for the Duke Blue Devils men’s basketball team, Rochester’s Matthew Hurt shined in his sophomore campaign — taking home high honors from the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) in the process.
Hurt, a 6-foot-9-inch, 235-pound forward, was named the conference’s Most Improved Player Monday morning, in addition to receiving first-team all-ACC honors. Hurt is the second Blue Devil to ever win Most Improved Player (Grayson Allen the other, in 2016), and becomes Duke’s 75th first-team selection.
A former five-star recruit and McDonald’s All-American out of high school, Hurt added 20 pounds of muscle while working out in Rochester over the offseason. The extra work helped the former John Marshall Rocket take his game to the next level, improving in nearly every statistical category from his freshman season.
Hurt led the ACC in scoring with 18.7 points per game, nearly doubling his total from last season (9.7 PPG). He made 56 percent of his shot attempts - eighth-best in the conference — and hit nearly 44 percent of his three-pointers, while pulling down 6.2 rebounds per game.
His single-game performances improved as the season wore on, earning ACC Player of the Week honors twice and garnering the National Player of the Week title in January, after leading Duke to two wins while averaging 21.5 points and 8.5 rebounds per game.
Last Thursday, while preparing for Duke’s last regular-season game of the year, Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said Hurt made a “significant jump” toward the end of the season - partly a product of the offseason bulk-up, but also thanks to the sophomore getting more comfortable with the pace of the college game.
“For really good players, there’s an evolution, there’s a progress that you need to make,” said Krzyzewski. “His quickness, his strength — not just his foot quickness, but his speed at which he played, got his shot off, how he moved — just his whole movement needed to get a lot quicker. He knew that. He learned from going from the right lane to the left lane on a highway. You’ve got to learn how to drive in faster traffic, and he’s done that.”
Hurt’s dominance, however, has not led Duke to its typical success. The Blue Devils finished the regular season with a record of 11-11, their worst since 1995. The team will likely need to win the ACC tournament to secure a bid to March Madness, after losing three games in a row to finish the regular season and falling off “the bubble.”
Their ACC tournament run starts tomorrow afternoon against Boston College.
After the season ends, there is the possibility Hurt could forego his last two seasons at Duke and declare for this summer’s NBA Draft, although recently-instituted draft rules would allow the 20-year-old to return to college if he finds his draft prospects to be lower than expected.
The Athletic ranks Hurt as the no. 35 overall draft prospect, which would make him a candidate to be selected around the end of the first round.
Isaac Jahns is a Rochester native and a 2019 graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism. He reports on politics, business and music for Med City Beat.
Cover photo: Reagan Lunn / Duke Athletics
