City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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After three years of rejection, it would have been understandable if Peter Spiotta gave up on playing basketball for Penncrest.

As a freshman, sophomore and junior, Spiotta tried out for head coach Mike Doyle’s program, and each time he was told he wasn’t good enough--not just for varsity, but the JV team, too. It was the second one of those rejections that nearly had him thinking that high school hoops maybe just wasn’t in the cards.

“Sophomore year, I went to the first two tryouts, didn’t go to the last one because I didn’t think I was good enough,” Spiotta said. “And then junior year, I thought I was better, but it wasn’t enough.”

Then, between his junior and senior year, the basketball gods smiled warmly upon Spiotta, who grew from “around 5-foot-10” during that junior tryout to 6-foot-5 by the time he returned for his senior year of high school.

That made such a difference that when it was time for cuts, Spiotta wasn’t even called into Doyle’s office to find out whether or not he would be finally get the opportunity to don the Lions uniform he’d coveted since he arrived at the Media (Pa.) high school.

“I didn’t even get pulled in the room, I was just out there playing with the varsity kids,” he said. “It was awesome.”

As it turns out, Spiotta’s growth spurt has made a huge difference, not just personally but for the whole team. With senior forward A.J. Taylor out for the season after suffering a hand injury in a loss to Ridley last week, it’s Spiotta that’s moved into the starting lineup and asked to help replace Taylor’s double-double production alongside senior forward Mike Mallon.

Step up was exactly what Spiotta did in a Central League game at Harriton on Friday, scoring 10 points to help the Lions to a 53-42 win.

“Peter’s a classic example of a kid who just keeps working,” Doyle said. “I say it almost everyday in practice, ‘whoever the coach was last year should be fired for cutting you.’

Then the 13th-year head coach continued, before trailing off, “if we knew he was going to be 6-foot-5…”

Hindsight, of course, is always 20/20. Now the Lions are certainly just happy to have Spiotta around as they push towards a berth in the District 1 AAAA playoffs.

Penncrest (9-9, 6-6) was buoyed by another big game from sophomore guard Tyler Norwood, who continues to emerge as a player-to-watch in District 1 moving forward with a 22-point, nine-assist, one-turnover performance that also saw him corral six rebounds despite his 5-foot-10 frame.

His older brother Shaun Norwood, a senior, added nine, including a pair of triples off assists from his younger brother.

“Tyler’s blossoming before our eyes,” Doyle said. “Those numbers are unbelievable, he’s blossoming into one of the best guard in the area as a sophomore. And Shaun can really shoot--when he’s on, he’s on.”

After scoring two points in the first half, Spiotta tallied six in the third quarter, including Penncrest’s first two buckets out of the break to help his team take a three-point lead through halftime and turn it into a 45-33 advantage going into the final eight minutes of play.

“He had a little bit of a rocky start in the first quarter, but you could see to start the second half we went right back to him because we thought we had a little bit of a size advantage there,” Doyle said. “He’s a little more skilled than people think.”

It was a strange atmosphere at Harriton, as the Rams (7-10, 4-8 Central) were forced to play a home game in a near-empty gym as majority of the Delaware Valley prepared for the incoming snowstorm that began not long after the final buzzer; the planned Coaches vs. Cancer quad-header was cut down to just the varsity boys’ game.

But Harriton coach Jesse Rappaport wasn’t going to use that as a crutch for why his team never seemed to make a serious push on the Lions over the majority of the second half, after keeping it close early on.

“There’s no excuse,” Rappaport said. “We’ve been playing well since after break, this was our worst performance since then.”

Spiotta capped off his performance with a 13-foot jumper midway through the fourth quarter, a closing eight minutes that saw Penncrest led by between eight and 14 the whole way through as Harriton couldn’t hit the necessary 3-pointers to make its comeback.

Harriton was just 5-of-27 (18.5 percent) from beyond the arc for the game, while Penncrest was 6-of-16 (37.5 percent). Junior guard Will Esposto, one of five juniors who start for the Rams, led the way for his team with 12 points.

This is likely Spiotta’s first and only season of competitive basketball, as he’s already planning on attending Penn State’s main campus next fall to study engineering.

It’s the only year he needed to feel a sense of accomplishment that was four years in the making.

“I just wanted to be on the team,” he said. “Persistence pays off, I guess.”