‘HE’S GOT THAT SAME COMPETITIVE FIRE’
UMBC’s Horvath has matured, but he still plays with passion
In Brandon Horvath’s senior year at Southern, varsity boys basketball coach Will Maynard sought to prepare the 6-foot-4 Bulldogs star for life on the collegiate level by emphasizing that he would not get the benefit of calls from officials. So during intrasquad scrimmages, Maynard’s assistants swallowed their whistles and allowed Horvath’s teammates to take their shots with few consequences.
“He was getting hacked, and my assistant wasn’t calling it because he purposefully was trying to get Brandon to play through contact and get him mad because we all knew that Brandon did not like losing,” Maynard recalled. “After his team lost one of those segments, he went crazy. I’m talking about hitting everything, going to the basket, going to the hole, dunking on people, smacking the backboard after dunks, talking big trash.”
Horvath chuckled when reminded of Maynard’s practices.
“I remember those times because he would put me in situations where basically he would stack everything against me and see how I would react,” Horvath said. “I think that just made me a better person and a better player.
“I can remember those times because I was really angry at the time. That was just my competitive spirit. I hate to lose, and sometimes I can go overboard with it. I’ll be playing
Monopoly or something, and I’ll be trying super hard at it.
“The people I’m playing with will get mad, but I don’t know any other way to play but to play to win. That’s just how I’ve always been.”
That attitude has served Horvath well at UMBC, where the West River resident is in the midst of an unprecedented year. The 6-foot-10, 210-pound senior forward is posting career highs in scoring (15.2 points per game), rebounds (8.1), assists (two) and blocks (0.5). He also has set career bests in field-goal percentage (57.4), 3-point fieldgoal percentage (42.9) and free-throw percentage (70.6).
The Retrievers are 9-2 overall and 5-1 in the America East, and that’s even more rewarding to Horvath.
“I’m just trying to be the best I can be,” he said. “I don’t think I’m at that level yet, but I’m definitely playing pretty well. And we’re having team success, which is more important to me. It’s early. We’re not even halfway done, but it’s a good start.”
Horvath was one of the first players successfully recruited by UMBC coach Ryan Odom, who said Horvath’s height belies his ball-handling skills and long-range accuracy.
“He has become a tough matchup for opponents because he can play on the outside and make shots from behind the line, but he also can post up and he doesn’t have to be right around the rim,” Odom said. “He can dribble into it.
“We’ve tried to change our offense a little bit this year to give him more opportunities to where he can showcase his skills. He’s doing well so far. We’re really pleased and hopefully he can continue on the path that he’s on.”
Maynard, Horvath’s coach at Southern, called him “a very underrated passer” while playing shooting guard and small forward.
“When you find somebody like him that can shoot the ball that way and can spread the defense and open things up in the interior, I’d be a fool to have him just sitting on the block and posting up,” Maynard said.
He said one of Horvath’s more memorable performances occurred in a regional tournament game against Largo, which was headlined by Abdulai Bundu, who was the Washington Post’s All-Metro Player of the Year in 2015. Bundu, who played at Quinnipiac, scored a game-high 28 points and Largo won 84-51, but Horvath as a junior scored 24 points, including five 3-pointers.
“He had that whole gym going crazy,” Maynard said. “They were going, ‘Who is this kid right here just killing us like that?’ ”
Horvath said he was still growing and didn’t get to dunk much. When he hit another growth spurt just before enrolling at UMBC, he relished opportunities to throw it down, but that —and some overexuberance — led to three technical fouls over two seasons, which is tied with junior forward
Dimitrije Spasojevic for a team high since the start of the 2018-19 season.
Horvath has avoided technical fouls this winter, which he attributed to reaching another level in his personal growth.
“Now that I’ve been there, it’s kind of the old phrase of, ‘Act like you’ve been there before,’ ” he said. “So I’ve kind of stayed away from the taunting and the talking-trash parts. There are times when I get out of character and do it, but I try [not to].”
Odom said he had a few conversations with Horvath about toning down his on-court outbursts.
“You’re going to have moments when you get a little bit out of character,” Odom said. “That’s not who we want to be, but for him it was all about letting his play do the talking as opposed to flexing for the crowd or whatever, and he understands that.
“A lot of that is just maturity. When you’re younger, all of us are not as mature as we would want to be, and we look back on it and say, ‘Gosh, I can’t believe I did that.’ He’s learned from those situations and now he’s way calmer, but he’s got that same competitive fire.”
The same refinement that Horvath has experienced when it comes to reining in his emotions is what he cited as a factor in his personal success this season.
“I’m thinking the game more than I ever have,” he said. “I’m really taking in the film sessions, seeing tendencies and how people act, and I’m using that more to my advantage than I ever have. So I think it’s really helping me out. I’m more mature than I was. I’m a year older, and I have another year under my belt at UMBC, so that’s always helpful.”