Penn has had only had 1 winning season in the past decade so they are in dire need of some good recruits to help restore the program to its past glory. 1 of those incoming freshmen who hopes to make the Quaker alumni proud is AJ Brodeur out of Northfield Mount Hermon School. He committed to Penn after his junior year, then finished his senior year by winning a conference title. HoopsHD’s Jon Teitel got to chat with AJ about why he chose Penn and what he knows about Coach Steve Donahue.
You received offers from schools like GW/Notre Dame: why did you choose Penn? As the recruiting process started to wind down I began looking closer into each school and concluded that the Ivy League was where I wanted to end up. I narrowed it down to Harvard/Penn/Yale and then took visits to all 3 schools. I chose Penn because of all that it had to offer: location, facilities, city, etc. Coach Donahue just finished his 1st year there and I really bought into his vision and what he is doing. I felt that he could help me become who I wanted to be as a player/person.
Coach Donahue 1st offered you scholarship when he was at BC: how have you bonded with him over the past few years and what makes him such a good coach? A lot of my high school’s own offense was taken from him, so knowing how the system works and seeing that it also works at the college level definitely makes me feel comfortable. He has kept in contact with me and some of my teammates: it has been a good process.
You committed last July: why did you make your decision so early in the recruiting process? My thought process was to commit before my senior year of high school. I had more information than I needed and felt like I was ready to make my decision. It would not have made sense to me to be playing as if I was uncommitted and still wanted to be recruited: I did not want to waste anyone’s time.
You played PF at Northfield Mount Hermon School: what position are you most comfortable at, and what position do you think will be your best fit in college? I feel very comfortable playing the 4 or 5. I played in the post a lot growing up with my back to the basket, but I started to face up more and extend my shooting range during high school. I expect to play the 4 in college but want to play wherever the coach sees fit.
You were team captain as a senior: what is the key to being a good leader? You need good communication skills and have to set a good example: if 1 of these factors is not your strong point then the other 1 can still help. You have to mean business and get things done the right way.
In April you helped lead your team to a NEPSAC Class AAA championship with a 10-PT win over St. Thomas More: what did it mean to you to win a title? I cannot remember the last time I felt prouder: that meant everything to me. We were not expected to do as well this year as we had over the 2 previous years and a lot of people felt that we were past our prime. It was 1 of the greatest experiences that I have ever had.
Penn already has 2 Northfield Mount Hermon alums already on the roster (Jackson Donahue/Colin McManus): are you guys just developing a pipeline from Gill to Philly? That would be nice: I would love to have more NMH guys come to Penn! We are known for sending more basketball players to the Ivy League than any other conference in the country. It is the perfect style of basketball for the Ivy League.
What will it be like to face your former NMH teammate Ian Sistare (who signed with Dartmouth) twice a year? It will be fun to play against him. Ian is the hardest working guy who I have ever met: on the court, off the court, out of season, etc. He makes all of the effort plays.
You also played volleyball in high school: are we going to see you as a 2-sport athlete for the Quakers? I wish! Penn men’s volleyball is a club team but if they were a varsity team then I would seriously consider it. I only started playing volleyball in high school, but being 6’8” definitely helped. The skill set translates directly over to basketball (vertical leap/lateral movement) so it is a good off-season workout.
Your mother played college basketball at North Adams State: who is the best athlete in family? She was a good athlete who also did a little track. We will see if I can pass her at some point over the next 4 years: I have my work cut out for me!
Puppet Ramblings: The “Bathroom Law” Boycott Will Accomplish Nothing!
For starters, I don’t like it when sports, particularly college sports, are used as a political tool by political leaders who have nothing to do with sports. I obviously love college basketball, but I also love international soccer. If anything, it is refreshing to be able to not harp on your different political ideologies, but rather set them all aside and collectively enjoy something that belongs to all of us. This is definitely true with international soccer, but I feel that it is true for all levels of sport, including college basketball. Given the current climate of this country, we need more shared experiences, not less of them, and for better or worse, sport appears to be one of the vehicles where we can have a shared experience with people who have very different views and opinions, but during that experience feel like we are the same.
I need to say that we, as a staff, do not like to talk politics on Hoops HD. This is not a political site. Although we all have political opinions, we do not express them here or use this site as a vehicle for our own political ideologies. I am not writing this as an attempt to change or criticize anyone’s political viewpoints or opinions, but rather to criticize the methods New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has chosen to use in response to the HB2 laws (ie the Bathroom Laws) in North Carolina. More specifically, the impact those methods have on the college basketball programs in the state of New York (and Albany in particular), as well as college basketball as a whole.
This past March, Governor Cuomo issued an executive order banning all state sponsored non-essential travel to the state of North Carolina. He did this, presumably, because he felt that the HB2 laws were discriminatory toward the LBGTQ community and wanted to disassociate himself from that discrimination. Is this nothing more than disingenuous political posturing on his part?? I don’t know. Does he actually think this will be effective?? I don’t know. Did he ever consider how it was possibly unfair not just to the intercollegiate teams in the state of New York, but to the people in the state of North Carolina who strongly oppose the HB2 laws?? I don’t know. I don’t know what is in his heart or in his head, so I won’t even try and guess. I will say this, though….
This method is both unfair and ineffective. Albany was scheduled to open the upcoming college basketball season at Duke, and has now been made to back out of the game. The only people that are really directly impacted by this are the players and coaches on both teams, and none of them had anything to do with the HB2 laws. In addition to that, Duke is a private institution, so it is not tied to the state of North Carolina. Not only that, but as an institution Duke was strongly opposed to the HB2 laws. I fail to see how not allowing Albany’s basketball team to play at Duke, which is a private institution that opposes the HB2 laws, will do anything change the laws. If anything, I think that going there and playing the game would create an assembly of people where the vast majority of them also oppose the law, so in a way not going to play the game results in less opposition to the Bathroom Laws, not more of it.
STATEMENT FROM DUKE “DEPLORING IN THE STRONGEST POSSIBLE TERMS” THE HB2 LAWS
Taking this a step further, in addition to Duke being strongly opposed to the laws as you can read in the link above, it is my understanding the majority of the people in the state of North Carolina are opposed to the laws as well. So, what is accomplished by disassociating yourself with them?? What is accomplished by deciding not to engage them in an inclusive and shared experience such as a sporting event?? I understand not liking bigotry. I also feel that if you want to combat bigotry, then alienating people who are not bigots (which the vast majority of college students and student-athletes are not), but happen to live in a state with laws that you feel are bigoted, is not the way to go about it. Rock & Roll, Soul, and R&B acts that toured the Deep South during the Civil Rights Movement accomplished a lot more than they would have by boycotting those states. Seriously, if Governor Cuomo genuinely feels opposed to the HB2 laws and isn’t just doing this for political posturing, then why isn’t he ENCOURAGING the New York college teams to go to a place like Duke who is also openly opposed to them?? This boycott is unfair. This boycott is ineffective. And, to take it a step further, this boycott is arguably COUNTER-productive. How so?? Well….
We’ve seen sports boycotts before. The 1980 and 1984 Olympics comes to mind. I cannot think of a single example where a sports boycott had any sort of a meaningful impact. Not one. Now, having said that, I can think of multiple examples of where NOT boycotting had HUGE impacts. Jessie Owens did not boycott. Tommy Smith and John Carlos did not boycott. If you’ve ever seen the movie Invictus, Nelson Mandela seemed to do the exact opposite of a boycott. Like I said at the beginning, sports allow us to have shared experiences with people that are different than us, and during that event make us the same. In many cases, it may be the only time we feel that we are the same. Is that bad?? I sure as hell don’t think so. If anything, we need more of that, not less of it. You’re not going to change peoples’ hearts and minds by ignoring them. You have to engage them. You have to find common ground. And, sport IS common ground. It’s one of the few common grounds that we have. It is a shame that there aren’t more, but at least sports gives us something
So, Governor Cuomo, please, keep your political differences out of college sports. Do not be unfair to the individual student-athletes who played no political roll in the HB2 laws, and who probably disagree with the laws themselves. Do not deny people with different political viewpoints and ideologies the chance to have a shared experience with one another. Sports brings us together, and it will do more to make us better than it will to make us worse. This boycott will accomplish nothing.