Hunter Cattoor: A Perfectionist From Orlando Just Enjoying The Journey

Growing up, many children dream of playing college basketball, especially in the NCAA Tournament in March. Hunter Cattoor was one of those kids.

Like many around the country, it was a tradition for him to compete in a bracket pool with his family to see who could be the most accurate.

On Friday in Milwaukee against Texas, the Virginia Tech guard will have the opportunity to take the floor in the second NCAA Tournament game of his three-year career. What’s more, this appearance comes after a historic event: Tech’s first-ever ACC Tournament Championship over Duke on Saturday, in which Cattoor was named the event’s Most Valuable Player.

“I still don’t think it’s set in yet,” Cattoor said Thursday of Tech’s ACC title. “I think it’s still crazy. … To have this now, being the first team in the ACC history for Virginia Tech to win, it really was a blessing.”

Yet before April 2019, Cattoor planned on attending Wofford, where he would’ve played for Mike Young, alongside Keve Aluma and Storm Murphy.

How did he end up at Virginia Tech and become the player he is today? The story starts in his neighborhood, the place Cattoor found his love for the game.

Outside as soon as the sun came up until it went down, the Orlando, Fla. native spent most of his time hooping in the driveway. He and his childhood friend, current North Florida guard Jose Placer, spent as much time outdoors as they could growing up.

At Bishop Moore High School, you could find him on the hardwood as a guard or on the gridiron as the quarterback. Cattoor always knew he wanted to play a sport in college, but it wasn’t until his freshman year of high school that he stopped playing football and settled on basketball.

During his junior year, he received his first offer from Furman. The following summer, he blew up with offers from mid-majors all over the country.

“At that point, I was like, ‘all right, I’m having a respectable name out there in the recruiting world,’” Cattoor said.

As Young alluded to in Brooklyn at the ACC Tournament, he almost didn’t get Cattoor because of Fletcher Magee. The two-time SoCon Player of the Year broke the record for NCAA career 3-pointers as a senior with 509, right before Cattoor, who had committed in September, was scheduled to go to Spartanburg.

“I thought I was going to lose him,” Young said of Cattoor after the ACC title game. “He said, ‘Coach, I don’t think I can be Fletcher Magee.’ I said, ‘Hey, buddy, I don’t need you to be Fletcher Magee, I need you to be Hunter Cattoor.’”

But Young got him, despite deciding to take the Virginia Tech job in April of 2019. Cattoor followed, which jumpstarted his career in Blacksburg.

It took some time for him to adjust to life in the ACC. At first, it was back-and-forth mentally. But playing alongside veterans helped.

“Physically, you get here and you’re like, ‘I’m this little kid from Orlando,’’ Cattoor said. “’I see these dudes from North Carolina, Duke, I don’t know if this is for me,’ but mentally I knew, ‘I’m smart enough, I’m going to figure it out, I work hard enough, I’ll figure it out, and I had help from [Wabissa] Bede just being here. He was a good vet to me, just breaking things down for me and just the speed of play.”

Cattoor played in 31 of Tech’s 32 games as a freshman, starting three, and averaged 6.5 points and 2.5 rebounds in 20 minutes per game. He also shot 40.2% from distance (51-127).

That was just the beginning. Thanks to his work ethic, which teammate Justyn Mutts said is unmatched in the program, he continued to improve. Being a self-proclaimed perfectionist also plays a factor, too.

Two years later, he scored a career-high 31 points and made seven of his nine 3-point attempts in the Hokies’ ACC Championship win over Duke.

“He’s such a serious basketball player,” Young said. “He wants to coach. … He watches film with us every night when we’re on the road. It’s kind of a superstition for all of us, now he’s got to do it. But he wants to do it. He made a comment last night [Wednesday], he makes little comments from time-to-time. And I look at him like, ‘kids don’t make those comments.’

“Very astute, very keen observation that we will get to our team today in an effort to help us win. … He’s just a basketball player, man. He’s just a basketball player, and as good a dude as I’ve coached, and I’ve coached a lot of great ones.”

That goes to show how far Cattoor has come in such a short time. Young joked after the title game that he and assistant head coach Kevin Giltner, who was on staff at Wofford, never thought he’d be named the ACC Tournament MVP.

However, the success isn’t surprising to anyone who has seen him in the gym away from the spotlight. On both ends, for that matter.

Back on Feb. 21, Young referred to Cattoor as his defensive centerpiece. “I’m riding him like a mule night-in and night-out,” Young said then. But offensively, Cattoor is Tech’s best option (of many good ones) on the perimeter, having made 142 treys, good for 67th in the country.

“He’s the most consistent worker on our team in terms of like… from the summer through the season,” Mutts said of Cattoor. “It’s tough to sustain consistency even now, we’ve played 2-3 games in a week, we’re practicing every day too, he’s one of the only guys still getting up those reps every single day that you can rely on to do that.”

Ten-plus years from now, few will likely remember the shooting slump Cattoor endured before that ACC Tournament final. Nine straight games, only one occurrence of ten-plus points. 11-of-47 (23.4%) from deep over that stretch, well below his season mark of 41.8%.

A run like that would be overwhelming for anyone, but for someone who strives for perfection? It sure helps to have a coach like Young and a teammate like Storm Murphy who encouraged him to keep shooting.

“It’s tough mentally going through all that just knowing when my shot feels good and it’s not going in,” Cattoor said. “It kind of plays with your mind like, ‘alright, this is everything you worked on, it’s muscle memory but the ball’s not going in,’ so you kind of have to trick yourself, because most people when it’s not working, they’re like, ‘I’ve got to fix this, fix that.’

“Just having people like that tell you, ‘You’re a great shooter, don’t change anything, this stuff happens, you’re not going to be perfect all the time.’ It’s tough, but just trying to stay positive. Just reading books, meditating, just trying to keep a positive mindset and positive thoughts in my mind.”

A combination of all of the above helped him snap out of it, and the performance couldn’t have come at a better time. Murphy said playing alongside Cattoor was like “sitting on the couch watching TV.”

“I felt like I was playing in my front yard,” Cattoor described.

Every player on this Virginia Tech team is valuable, and even irreplaceable in many cases. To give you another sense of Cattoor’s worth, Buddy Boeheim (Syracuse) and Kihei Clark (Virginia) were the only two ACC players on the floor for more minutes this season than him.

The junior wing from Orlando who ventured to Blacksburg as a Wofford recruit has turned out to be a crucial constant in Young’s project. If the Hokies plan on making a run on college basketball’s biggest stage, Cattoor’s going to be a focal point.

He’s just playing for the love of the game, cherishing the journey and the opportunity to play basketball in March.

“Through the highs and lows, it’s all worth it,” Cattoor said. “Going into battle with these guys and these coaches every day just makes it all worth it at the end of the day. When the confetti was coming down, all the hard work we went through, all the hard times, it makes it all worth it. Going through that, being here, and having the opportunity to play another game, we’re all grateful.”