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WC East's Mike Dedda grows into college ballplayer

06/30/2021, 10:45am EDT
By Sean McBryan

Sean McBryan (@SeanMcBryan)

Mike Dedda was a multi-sport athlete at the ripe age of five. Even as a kindergartener, he remembers his love for basketball overshadowing every other sport. Born and raised in West Chester, he began attending the crosstown basketball rivalries between East, Henderson and Rustin in middle school; he was hooked.

Dedda wasn’t sure what his basketball career would entail as a freshman at West Chester East. 


Mike Dedda (above) thought he was too small to play college hoops when he began his high school career. (Photo: Josh Verlin/CoBL)

“I was pretty short and small and I wasn’t very good,” he admitted. He didn’t think he had the size or the skill to have a high school career, let alone play in college.

Four years, two Ches-Mont titles, and a District 1 Class 5A trophy later, Dedda has committed to Mount Saint Mary College to play college basketball for the Knights.

Mount Saint Mary is located in Newburgh, N.Y., overlooking the Hudson River. The Knights play in NCAA Division III as part of the Skyline Conference. 

Dedda, like his friend and high school teammate Kieran Hefferan, is off to play college basketball in New York after playing freshman and sophomore seasons on the Vikings’ JV team. 

“I really didn’t think I was going to play college basketball coming into high school,” Dedda said. “It was something over time that I really worked on and started believing toward the end of my sophomore year and beginning of junior year that I could play at that level.”

The Vikings went 9-14 in Dedda’s freshman season in 2018. Gibby Trowery, a 5-foot-9 junior point guard at the time, made a positive impact on the freshman. 

“He was a very talented point guard that pushed me,” said Dedda, who also stands at 5-9. “He took me under his wing and helped me understand how to play competitive and hard at the high school level.”

Things started looking up for West Chester East in Dedda’s sophomore season, with Trowery and juniors Andrew Carr and Tym Richardson leading the Vikings into the district championship game, a loss to Sun Valley. Dedda dressed for a few games, but did not see any significant playing time on varsity.

It was Dedda’s turn to take the reins at starting point guard as a junior, and he immediately became a valuable member of the lineup. His averages of six points, five assists and two steals per game don’t paint the full picture: his biggest impact came on the defensive end, the side of the ball Dedda said he prefers. 

“He really makes the opposing point guard work the entire game, the entire floor,” West Chester East coach Tom Durant said. “He just changes the opponent's game. People don’t realize the impact of a true defending point guard. On the offensive end, he’s a grinder. He wants to get his points, but he also wants to win. So he’s looking for the opportunity for the team, not just himself. He’s a tough kid.”

His offensive game couldn’t have shown up at a better time his junior year, when he scored 12 points in the district championship blowout win over Penn Wood. The Vikings also won the Ches-Mont League, finished the season 28-2 and were making a state run until COVID prematurely ended the season.

That summer, the college looks started to flow in. Dedda began sending out his junior year tape and playing AAU ball with Pro Skills Basketball showcased his skills to presumptive college teams: Penn State-Brandywine, Penn State-Abington, Stockton and Mount Saint Mary's all showed interest heading into his senior season.

With Richardson (West Chester) and Carr (Delaware) graduated, Dedda and Hefferan became the leaders, and were also looked upon to up their offensive output.

“I really worked this offseason on my jumper, midrange game and taking it to the basket,” Dedda said. “I’m always looking to distribute to my teammates and hit them for open shots. I had a lot of shooters around me so it was a great system to work in.”

Dedda improved his statistics across the board, averaging nine points, six assists, four rebounds and three steals as a senior. The Vikings didn’t reach the lofty heights of the 28-2 district champions, yet the team was still Ches-Mont champions, finished with a 13-4 record and won a district playoff game after moving up into the 6A bracket.

Parallels can be drawn between Dedda’s early and current basketball careers. Dedda took a freshman, Ryan Price, under his wing much like Trowery did for him four years prior. Price ended up in the starting lineup as the season went on. 

Dedda reminisced about watching the West Chester crosstown rivalries as a middle schooler. He ended up being right in the middle of it.

“Rustin was a pretty big rivalry for us,” Dedda said. “They had Griffin Barrouk, who is a Hofstra commit. Every game it was a five-point game. We played them three times this year and there were no other games where we were just competing like that. We beat them three times in a row.”

Dedda toured Mount Saint Mary in February and committed in March. He said he liked the distance of the school from home, not too far or too close, and also enjoyed the campus atmosphere. He felt a connection with the coaches, who emphasized putting together a challenging schedule, and his soon-to-be teammates. 

In 2019-20, their last season of competition, the Knights went 9-17 (7-9 Skyline). Under head coach Ryan Kadlubowski, who’s entering his 13th year as head coach (12th season), Mount Saint Mary has had multiple 20-win seasons, capturing the 2012 ECAC championship and setting the program record for conference wins (16) two years after that. 

Dedda plans to major in finance, following in the footsteps of his father who is a financial advisor.

And he gets to continue playing basketball. Pretty good for a kid who thought he was too short, too small, and not good enough four years before.


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